Style

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//**Styles**//

Historians soon learn not to assume that people in the past thought about and experienced life in the same ways that we do today. Something as basic to us as writing was quite different in 18th Century British-America. British-Americans in that century spoke English, yet they used words that we do not, and we use words that did not even exist then. 18thCentury pronunciation differed from ours, and many of the rules of spoken and written usage differed as well. Literacy estimates vary, but it is thought that almost all of the adult New England population at the end of the eighteenth century could read at least to some degree. Maybe half of those could write. The ability to read the printed word did not necessarily result in the ability to read handwriting. Likewise, the ability to write one’s name or copy phrases in one "hand" or style did not necessarily mean that the same person could compose original prose.