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About the Search Function

This website contains many types of texts, including:
  • scholarly articles written in modern Canadian English;
  • diplomatic transcriptions of early modern texts that faithfully reproduce the inconsistent spellings typical of printed and manuscript texts from this period;
  • site informational pages; and
  • technical project documentation.
Although you can search the whole site (Everything), it will often be more efficient to select one or more of the document types in the checkbox list on the search page to search only a subset of the collection.
Generally speaking, if you search for a modern word such as love, the search engine will apply stemming and return related forms such as loving and loves. However, a search for any word will not return instances of that word with historical variant spellings. For example, the results of a search for love will not include loue. If you want to find variant spellings of usury in the diplomatic transcriptions, try adding some predictable variants to your search. See Early Modern Spelling below for information on early modern spelling.
When searching for placenames which may have variant spellings, the simplest approach is to search for the modern canonical name first; if there is an entry in the encyclopedia for the place, you can visit that page to see a list of all the variant spellings occurring in the collection, with links to the documents containing them.
If you are searching for a proper name, use appropriate capitalization, and also quotation marks. For example, to search for someone called Spearing, use "Spearing". This ensures that stemming does not take place, meaning that only instances of the exact name will be found, not spear, speared, and so on.

Early Modern Spelling

To cover the maximum number of variant spellings in a full-text search, keep in mind the following peculiarities of early modern typography:
  • i and j were interchangeable. If you were looking for the word journey, you might try iourney as well.
  • u and v were interchangeable. If you were looking for the word usury, you might try vsvry, vsury, and usvry as well.
  • w was often spelled using a double v, especially in the upper case. If you were looking for water, you might try vvater as well.
Renaissance orthography (spelling) was not standardized. Here are a few tips:
  • Try replacing i with y. For example, search for both ivy and yvy.
  • Try adding a terminal e. For example, search for both gold and golde.
  • Try replacing -y endings with -ie and -ye. For example, search for lady, ladie, and ladye.
  • Try replacing -ed endings with -’d. For example, search for both placed and plac’d.
  • Try doubling consonants and adding an e. For example, search for both dog and dogge.
  • Vowels can be spelled in multiple ways. For example, gold can also be spelled gould and gowld.
For more information about early modern orthography, we recommend Carl B. Smith and Eugene W. Reade’s Word History: A Guide to Understanding the English Language. See especially the section titled Orthography and Printing in Shakespeare’s Day.

References

  • Citation

    Smith, Carl B., and Eugene W. Reade. Word History: A Guide to Understanding the English Language. Bloomington: Indiana U, 1991. Print.

    This item is cited in the following documents: