Abbreviations

History

Abbreviations were frequently used in early English. Manuscripts of copies of the Old English poem Beowulf used many abbreviations, for example the Tironian et (⁊) or & for and, and y for since, so that "not much space is wasted". The standardisation of English in the 15th through 17th centuries included a growth in the use of such abbreviations. At first, abbreviations were sometimes represented with various suspension signs, not only periods. For example, sequences like ⟨er⟩ were replaced with ⟨ɔ⟩, as in mastɔ for master and exacɔbate for exacerbate. While this may seem trivial, it was symptomatic of an attempt by people manually reproducing academic texts to reduce the copy time.