Eighteenth-century English grammars

This is a legal note on the history of capitalization in the United States Constitution. A brief review of the history of capital letters is considered together with the influence of eighteenth century British grammars on capitalization practices that would have been familiar to the Founding Fathers.

The corpus of the paper is a close comparison of drafts of the Constitutional Convention's Committee of Detail and Committee of Style and their particular deviations in capitalization, with a focus on what this might convey about the Constitution in relation to grammatical understandings at the time of the founding. Additional points of interest include the "Great Semicolon Debate of 1823." A close review of some capitalization provisions in the official, engrossed copy of the Constitution and their implications are also considered. Finally, this paper offers some thoughts on contemporary issues in originalism, with a particular assessment of the role that capitalization could play in understandings of drafters' intent originalism.

Program: Juris Doctor, William & Mary Law School

In the second half of the eighteenth century the number of English school grammars underwent a dramatic increase, and grammar writers used title pages, prefaces and, in general, other book components to attract potential buyers. A very common commercial strategy consisted in adding supplementary material to the grammars. Among this material, a type of supplement, commonly called " directions for reading " , is often found in these grammars. This was intended to provide guidance on reading aloud to students, since a successful and effective oral delivery was considered a polite social asset and an important professional skill at the time. This article aims (i) to present a representative list of school grammars of English with " directions for reading " , (ii) to compare the directions for reading contained in different works to identify those aspects considered essential for a good reading performance, and, finally, (iii) to explore the relationship between these directions for reading and some works of the eighteenth-century elocutionary movement.