WOW.... I asked if anyone in the Pyracy Pub knew a source for eairlier writting styles, and got these links......

English Handwritting 1500-1700


How to Read 18th Century British -American writting

Well now to start practicing writting it.............

Did you notice in the "How to read....." link on all the cursive hands there is no letter Jj.....

I noticed that.... but looking at some other documents from about the period, they had a J for the names (John etc...) of some condemed Pyrates...... guess I'll have to use those J's.....

Fascinating! Thanks for the links.

I've recently developed an interest in late 18th century British handwriting as in this excerpt from Capt. Cook's log. The thing about it I really like is the reverse ascenders on the d's. The page peppered with these reverse ascenders is ... well, is so cool looking. Anyone know what handwriting this is called or if there are any "methods" from the era that would provide guideance?

Doug

P.S. I used to marvel at how legible the writing of these journals are -- nice, tidy, writing, on a pitching ship at sea! I'm doing some research on this, but I believe most of these 18th century captain's logs were transcribed at a later date from the captain's scribbles by someone with nice handwriting. Oh well...

HDoug - I first started using reverse ascenders (I like that term BTW ) on my minuscule "d"s quite a while ago. I saw them I think for the first time in a Christmas card that Edward Johnston sent to Alfred Fairbank. Johnston had many influences, but his everyday handwriting was a mixture of styles from several 16th century Italian masters (simillar to mine, though his handwriting was exponentially better than my scratch will ever be). Sometimes I loop the ascender down and use it as a ligature to the next letter in the word, and sometimes I don't and it just hangs in mid air like a happy lemur's tail.

There are some good examples of this sort of thing in A Book Of Scripts, by Alfred Fairbank. If memory serves, the Christmas card is in there.

I was playing with writting today.... Just using one of my fountain pens untill I get the new one with a flexable nib.......




Using some lined paper as a guide might help... And I have to work on my Upper Case letters.......

The elongated "S's" and the Y for "Th" are still "throwing me off"...... but if I keep playing with it, it should get easier.........

You might enjoy a book I read recently, purchased off of Amazon: "Handwriting in America". Begins with the first European settlers, has many, many of the 16th, 17th and 18th century styles used for different purposes.

Y’s were only used for "th" in blackletter because it resembles the letter "thorn" (Þ/þ).

In 18th century writing, you’d probably use a "th".

I’ve also never heard of the "ſ" (long s) being used to replace "ss".

You could use "ß" though, if you have an "ss" at the end of a word. For example: "Paß" for "Paſs" or "Pass". However "ß" is intended more for an "ſʒ" (sz) ligature rather than an "ſs" ligature.

Long-s-short-s is the combination that replaces "ss", unless you're being all Germanic about it, in which case you can use an eszett, which is a ligature of long-s and either a short-s or a z, depending on who you talk to (Internet sources say both).

Some info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9F

Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

I doubt the eszett will even stay in existence much longer, since no one uses long-s’s in type any more. Switzerland doesn’t use it any more, and with the German spelling reform of 1996, much less words use it now too.

What ink did you use?

-Hana

This just made me happy. That is all.

It's the last of a bottle of Pilikan (it could be Pelikan... there is an ink blure over the second letter...) 4001 that I bought way back in High School (sometime about 74) .....A bit too redish.... but it is almost all gone now......


GOOD NEWS.... my new pen arrived today.... and I've only been playing a little with it..... but I can get the letters exactly how I want them..... YAY......

I have given up on using "Y" for the "Th"... found anouther period source that didn't do it.... so I don't have to confuse anyone with that "bit"..... still like the enlongated "S" tho.........

Will post a new example later........

Until the very early 19th century, English and most other languages considered "j" and "i" interchangeable: just optionally slightly-different ways of forming the same letter that could serve as either a consonant or a vowel.
For instance, if you look at Samuel Johnson's (18th-century) dictionary of the English language, the word "jam" appears in alphabetical order right before the word "iambic" — if you have ever seen Thomas Jefferson's visiting-card (printed by himself on his home press, and now on display at Monticello), it gives his name as "Th. IEFFERSON."

I found this .... it's too bad that the examples wern't shown.......


Rules made by F.B. for Children to write by.

For ye shorte wrytyng of "with": manie documents of ye xvii centurie and erlier imploye a "t" wryt somwhat small above a "w", whych may plese ye wryter in ye browne incke.


;-)

Last weekend I went to Key West for Pyrates in Paradise. On Sunday a bunch of Pyrates went to the Pyrate Soul musem, and in one of the exibits, there is a ships log..... dang... the ink used is almost the same as the pelican ink that I use to have (gotta order another bottle of it now...)

Some of the other Pyrates had to get out to the Wolf for the sea battle, so I didn't have a chance to see if there was anything in the gift shop showing the log.... drat... maybe next year....

The writting was slightly smaller than what I'm doing..... But DANG.... my writting hand is realy close.....

I'll have to post something when I get the brown ink (I'm using blue right now, because thats all I have.....)