Caxton's Printing Press

[bodybeatrock]

I'm starting to write an essay on the implications of Caxton's printing press with a specific reference to the standardisation of English in the centuries that followed Caxton. I'm looking for references to help me build on the arguement that without Caxton modern spelling and possibly even meanings of some words would be completely different. How close to the truth would that statement be?

Thank you

[Tatty Rollox]

........ and, whilst we are waiting, here is William Caxton (1422 - 1491) and here is a sheet from Chaucer printed by Caxton ..........

[mike b]

Can't remember the reference, but I read somewhere that in the first centuries of printing, the flexibility in spelling was used to help justify the ends of the lines of type, and it wasn't until the time of the Civil War, with vast amounts of pamphlets and propaganda being churned out, that they worried less about neatness and found it saved time to use a more regular form of spelling.