Changes in the 16th century

2.1. The preference for balanced variants

Scribes and typesetters made an effort during this period to coin new spell-ing variants. In Voeste (2008) I tried to show that the process of coinspell-ing did not lead to the stochastic aligning of segments, but to tagmatically regu-lated variants. Out of a number of possible variants, only a comparatively small number was in fact coined. Although the typesetters of my study strove for variation, they took account of the graphotactic structure of words. Such a graphotactic or tagmatic segmentation means analyzing the interplay of the word’s elements: Which letters can be joined together, and how does this influence the shape or weight of the whole word?

I found approaches in which word-forms were revamped in accor-dance with aesthetic criteria in such a way as to create a balance between a word’s beginning and its end. There is a tendency to add segments to a word’s end in two cases: first, if the beginning of the word is “naked” or contains an <l>, which is the thinnest letter in the letter-case. Here, visual emphasis or weight is added to the whole word by increasing the number of elements (end > endt, land > lanndt). In the second case, in word-forms with two or more segments at the beginning, an equilibrium is created be-tween the beginning and the end by adding segments (pferd ‘horse’>

pferdt, ſchuld ‘guilt’> ſchuldt). Both tendencies can be observed, even though variability remains vital throughout the century – and even though there are regional differences.

An analysis of 2,189 words with l, r, m, n + dt such as ſchuldt, herdt ‘flock’, hemdt ‘shirt’, landt ‘land’ in my corpus of 30 chronicles has shown that words without a left margin like __endt were written with <-dt>

four times as often as those with only one segment in the left margin like handt (not counting the records with <l> or the many variants of vndt ‘and’).

Under the appearance of stochastic variation – and this is my conclu-sion – the typesetters in fact developed graphotactic word patterns. Using

the segments of the letter-case to set words, they considered and changed the width of the consonantal word margins. Irrespective of the stylistic im-perative, regulated variants emerged, corresponding to aesthetic patterns.

We therefore have to take into consideration the fact that aesthetic princi-ples are not only responsible for the imperative to create variation, but they also played an important role in the emergence of regulated, aesthetically-shaped spelling variants. Some of those aesthetic patterns were to become an integral part of today’s orthography: we do not extend the right margin of a word if the left one already shows a cluster of three or four consonants, cf. *Schwahn (Schwan), *Strohm (Strom), *Schahl (Schal).

2.2. The demands of good craftsmanship

Typographic alignment of text in an equably-set column that is even-margined on the left and right demands the skills of a good craftsman: it is not easy to avoid so-called “loose” lines (with extended spaces) or “tight”

lines (with compressed spaces). As long as printing was closely related to the scriptorial graphic traditions, abbreviations and titled letters were an integral part of printed texts. They were the typesetters’ best friends, ena-bling them to avoid loose and tight lines (cf. figure 3).

Figure 3. Abbreviations (d^s, wʒ) and titled letters (ō, ī, ē) in a chronicle printed in Munich (Ebran von Wildenberg 1501: aiiij r)

From about 1500 onwards, the use of abbreviations decreased significantly (cf. Ruge 2004: ch. V and Voeste 2008: ch. 3.4.), while other methods such as the doubling of consonants remained in force. This can be proved by comparing the different variants of vnd ‘and’. The use of the short form with titled letter, vn̄, decreased in the course of the century, while the ex-tended form, vnnd, shows no downward trend. The following two scatter diagrams (figures 4 and 5) show the distribution of both forms throughout the century. The diagrams are based on my above-mentioned corpus of 30 printed chronicles.

Figure 4. Percentage distribution of <vn̄> in printed texts

Figure 5. Percentage distribution of <vnnd> in printed texts

One can assume that essential changes in the printing shops led to printers gradually turning away from older calligraphic customs (as was already observed by Catach 1968: 14). Beginning in the late 15th century, technical and economic factors that had an impact on letterpress printing led to pro-fessionalization of the production processes as well as of the crafts and trades involved in printing. Technical innovations increased the efficiency of the printing presses just as finer wire-mesh sieves improved paper qual-ity and cut down on misprints (cf. von Stromer 1993: 1–6). As a result, the printers’ daily output rose considerably. The increased workload that a printer could handle in a day had an effect not only on production costs, but also on the price of the end product, both of which fell significantly (cf.

Wittmann 1991: 29). The mode of remuneration of printers also changed in accordance with the pressures exerted by modernization: 16th-century printers no longer received time-based wages, but were paid according to their output (cf. Reith 1999: 216–225). The situation of the typesetters,

0 10 20 30 40

1500 1520 1540 1560 1580 1600

0 10 20 30 40

1500 1520 1540 1560 1580 1600

however, was totally different: they were not paid by the number of charac-ters they set, but rather according to the kind of printing form, the publica-tion format, the typefaces used for the text and the languages that were used. Nevertheless, the professionalization of the printing crafts and trades put the typesetters under pressure, too. When they failed to deliver a print-ing form on time, the printers’ pay was docked accordprint-ingly. For this reason, printing guild regulations from the mid-century onwards contained the stipulation that the typesetters had to make their printing forms available on time (cf. Reith 1999: 219). They assumed responsibility for the printing process not being delayed as well as for the proofreader having sufficient time to check the text prior to it going to press. As a result, the typesetters speeded up the typesetting process by “cleaning up” their letter-cases. Old-fashioned letter variants, ligatures and abbreviations adopted from the manuscript tradition were eliminated. The only ligatures retained were those that prevented the breakage of very thin individual letters and reduced the high cost of casting type. Now, with a streamlined letter case, the type-setters could find what they needed faster and work more efficiently (cf. Stetter 1997: 66). In the course of the 16th century, the modernized methods of typesetters entailed discrediting the earlier “unprofessional”

methods. At the close of the 17th century the British printer Joseph Moxon described those old practices as a sign of bungling:

If the Compositor is not firmly resolv’d to keep himself strictly to the Rules of good Workmanship, he is now tempted to make Botches; viz. Pidgeon-holes [i.e., “Pidgeon-holes” in the line], Thin-Spaces, no Space before a Capital, Short &s, Abbreviations or Titled Letters, Abbreviate Words, &c.²

The efforts to standardize the letter-case also had an impact on orthography.

Previously, the existence of several different spelling variants for the same word had been possible. This was a far cry from uniformity (cf. the possible variants of kinder ‘children’ and kind ‘child’ in figure 6).

Figure 6. Spelling variants of kinder ‘children’ and kind ‘child’

Once numerous characters had been purged from the letter-case in order to speed up the typesetting process, the newly-reduced repertoire dictated the typographical possibilities available, and many variants became technically unfeasible. This process of maximizing efficiency thus generally led to greater consistency of form.

3. The emergence of etymological spellings