Monday, April 20, 2009

Rush Me to the ER

Abbreviated ‘er’

Abbreviation of ‘er’, ‘ur’, ‘or’ is used quite often in old wills and parish records. They are mostly an upward sweeping hook or a zigzag superscript character.
Examples of the zigzag:




‘Butter’ from the 17th century.




‘Manner’ from the year 1646.

Examples of the upward sweeping hook:





Once again we have the word ‘manner’ which can be transcribed as ‘mann~’ , ‘mann(er)’ or ‘manner’.





This word from 1683 is ‘every’, likewise transcribed as ‘ev~y’, ‘ev(er)y’ or ‘every’. Consistency is important in transcribing. However, using italics in these cases may not be as good. Sometimes when you copy and paste, some of the letter format is lost.

A combination abbreviated word with a superscript ‘t’ and the ‘er’:





Here is the word ‘whatsoever’ also from 1683, transcribed as ‘wtsoev~’, ‘w(ha)tsoev(er)’ or ‘whatsoever’.

Content of the surrounding words is also important to determining the actual word.
When p~using an old will or lett~, you will s~prise y~self when you discov~ your first ‘er’ word.

Word of the Week:
Fyrth = Forrest

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Be sure and don't make any (errors )when transcribing or the (errors ) will stand out. This case it would sound like a (rore) of a lion or somthing else.