Changing functions: English spelling before 1600

Writing systems most commonly take shape gradually, through an evolutionary process sometimes referred to as ‘tinkering’: recycling earlier materials, making small additions and adjustments.1 Occasionally, they are designed from scratch; more commonly, an existing tinkered system is revised and regularized by a person or a committee, or a ‘new’ system is built up on the basis of existing ones. The English writing system has, for the most part, been allowed to evolve with a minimum of intervention. It was highly variable until the eighteenth century, although the patterns of variation changed through the centuries, along with changes in the functions and modes of writing. When it gradually became fixed, it was largely through the work of scholars (dictionary makers, schoolmasters, authors of spelling books) who were building upon established practices, not replacing them