ſhallshall
The long s
The tall letter ſ is not an f (look closely: it has no crossbar on the right). It's simply how a lowercase s was written at the start and in the middle of words until about 1800.
A friendly guide
Reading old books
You don't need to be a scholar to enjoy a book written four hundred years ago. Our editions already do the hard work of modernizing the spelling, but if you peek at an original printing (or our Then & Now pages), here's what you'll meet.
vnto · haueunto · have
U and V
Printers treated u and v as two shapes of one letter: v at the start of a word, u in the middle. So “vnto” is “unto,” and “haue” is “have.”
iudgejudge
I and J
There was no separate letter j yet, so i did both jobs. “Iesus” is “Jesus,” and “iust” is “just.”
Cæsar · ÆonesCaesar · aeons
Æ and œ
Æ and œ are two letters joined into one (a and e, o and e), a habit taken over from Latin, in Latin words and words from Greek: “Cæsar” is “Caesar,” and “phœnix” is “phoenix.” Our editions sometimes keep them in Latin and in learned terms, as in John Owen's “the Valentinian Æones”: the aeons, the chain of divine beings an ancient Gnostic sect said had flowed out of God.
fro̅ · yͤfrom · the
Printer's shorthand
To fit a line, printers left out letters and marked the gap: a line over a vowel meant a missing m or n, and a small e over a y meant “the” (the y stood for an old letter for “th”).
he lovethhe loves
-eth and -est
“-eth” was the old ending for he, she or it: “he loveth” means “he loves.” “-est” went with thou: “thou knowest” means “you know.”
thou · yeyou (one) · you (many)
Thou and ye
Older English had different words for “you” depending on how many people you meant: thou, thee and thy for one person; ye, you and your for more than one. Our editions usually keep them, because they tell you something plain “you” can't: whether a verse speaks to you alone or to everyone together.
a Booke of great Pricea book of great price
Capitals everywhere
Printers capitalized many ordinary nouns for emphasis, a bit like German still does. It doesn't signal anything special about the word.
shew · fayth · sinneshow · faith · sin
Spelling by ear
English spelling wasn't standardized until the 1700s. Writers and printers spelled by sound, and sometimes by how much room was left on the line.
Tips
Getting the most out of an old book
1
Start short
A sermon like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God takes half an hour. All of Grace takes an evening. Build up to the longer works.
2
Read aloud
Most of these books began as sermons, spoken to ordinary people. Read a difficult sentence out loud, and it often makes sense at once.
3
Don't stop for every word
If an old word puzzles you, keep going. The next sentence usually explains it. You can always come back.
4
Long sentences are fine
Older writers built long sentences out of short pieces joined by semicolons. Take them one piece at a time.
5
Read a little, often
Ten minutes a day goes a long way. Many of these books are in short chapters made for exactly that.
6
Use Then & Now
Curious what the author really printed? Every book has a Then & Now page showing the original beside our edition.
Ready to try one?
