Aestheticism of writing and spelling changes

All the books in England until 1747 were handwritten, and producing a book was a long and a tiresome business. Books were rare, and each of them was a rather great value. Under such circumstances books production developed into a special art with its own aesthetic principles and its own technique of writing letters.

Letters were written with the help of certain strokes the number of which was limited. Different letters could be produced by means of the same strokes varying in size, number and arrangement. Thus, the letters m, n, u, i appeared in OE manuscripts as:

Too many vertical strokes placed one after another, as in the word munk (monk), could lead to difficulties in reading, e.g.:

To avoid these difficulties u in such positions was replaced with o, e.g.:

It should be noted that this change was purely graphic. The sound form of the word did not change, e.g.: OE munc [munk] > ME monk [munk], OE sume [‘sume] > ME some [‘sume], OE sunu [‘sunu] > ME sone [sune], OE lufu [l’uvu] > ME loue (love) [‘luve].

There were also other changes in the ME period connected with the aestheticism of writing. The letter i in the final position was replaced with the letter y, and the letter u when found at the end of the word was replaced with w. Both replacements may be accounted for by calligraphic purposes; w and y turned out to be more ornamental and therefore more suitable to be placed at the end of the word, e.g.: OE bī > ME by; OE mī > ME my; OE nū > ME nou > ME now; OE hū > ME hou > ME how.

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