After that thread.......

bigmomma I have copies of some wills from about 1600, and they are full of abbreviations. For instance, administration is written as admon with a line over the mon. I believe the apostrophe was a development of that line above an abbreviated part of a word.

No apostrophes in Chaucer, but the possessive is an added 's'.
In the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales he says that pilgrims come from 'every shires end'.

Yes, Elegran, I noticed lots of abbreviations too. It all added to the difficulty of transcription as the writing was so difficult to make out, that is until I got my eye in, so to speak. Fascinating stuff.

Elegran is quite right about the line above indicating an abbreviation. I was given a voucher for a couple of modules at local University as a retirement present from DDs and chose Paeleography for one. We were working in Scots with a fair smattering of Latin and went up to the early 1700s. Not a single apostrophe only the ~~~ above the word with the missing bit, or sometimes superscript with a line below. I am not surprised that they used so many shortcuts when all lengthy documents had to be handwritten. BTW - I found the subject fascinating - it was like being a code breaker and Oh the joy when you deciphered a particularly tricky bit!

My son gave me a cpy of Fowler for a present saying " you'r a pedant. So be one with authority"

I live in n Somerset so perhaps it should have been yurr a pedant!

But then I was born in the black country, so should it have been " youm a pedant?"

Lastly (much as I hate text speech)" u r a pedant". Actually it should be "you're a pedant". Finis.

Granny23 One of my "wills" turned out to be a "sententia". It was in Tudor legal Latin full of abbreviations and lawyerisms, written by dipping a spider in ink and chasing it across the page, and finally very badly photocopied. It appears that someone had left a will leaving stuff to various relations, mostly to a brother and a brother's son (I knew that bit, I had previously transcribed that will, which was suitably taken to probate by the nephew)

Then, after a year, the same nephew and the rest of the legatees - plus another relation previously not mentioned - were petitioning for the money to be paid to them "as uncle had died intestate" as had his brother by now. There was clearly a story there - had they lost the original will in the upheaval of another bereavement? Had the other relation cut up rough at being excluded, so they were all playing it that there was no will in the first place?

The 's to indicate possession is not from 'John his land' but from the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) genitive case, which for many masculine verbs ended in s, as is still the case in German.

Exactly, Raggygranny!

I am having difficulty with Gransnet abbreviations
Ok so DD is Dear Daughter and DIL Daughter In Law
whats husbands ?

swansong Dh= darling/dear husb. OH=other half. OG=old Git.

Ha Ha Thanks

And occasionally MOG: My Old Geezer.

And it could sometimes be TBI - that * idiot! (But only now and then!)

In yesterday's Sunday Telegraph in the gardening section you were adivised to take "proscribed" amount of something or other - I'm afraid I didn't get any further!!
Also on a webpage for a (posh) shop that was described as being on the "boarders" of somewhere.
[gnashing of teeth emoticon]