18 - Exploring Orthographic Distribution

Summary

This chapter discusses the concept of distribution in historical handwritten and printed compositions understood in its widest sense, considering the text not only as a mere arrangement of the sentences and paragraphs on the pages, but also as the contribution of other elements associated with spacing in Late Middle English and Early Modern English. The first part of the chapter describes the rationale behind the composition of early English handwritten documents, reconsidering the formatting and the layout of the folios in the preparation of the writing surface, and assessing the use of columns, margins, ruling, number of lines and line justification. The main notions of the concept of spacing are then discussed, describing the different types of word division. Finally, two case studies are offered reconsidering the emerging of spacing in the Middle Ages and its development throughout Early Modern English, both in the middle and at the end of lines. The data used as source of evidence come from the Late Middle English and the Early Modern English components of The Málaga Corpus of Early English Scientific Prose and the scientific material of the Early English Books Online corpus together with other sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientific compositions.