A World of Words Before the Press

Imagine a time before dictionaries, before a “correct” way to spell a word existed. In 15th-century England, a writer in London might spell the word for “church” as churche, while a scribe in Yorkshire might write kirk, and another in Kent might jot down cherch. None of them were wrong. Language, before the mid-1400s, was a gloriously messy, fluid, and predominantly spoken entity. Written language was a craft reserved for a select few—monks, scribes, and clerks—who painstakingly copied texts by hand. Each copy was unique, bearing the linguistic fingerprints of its creator: their local dialect, their phonetic interpretations, and even their personal spelling quirks.

This was a world of immense linguistic diversity. Regional dialects weren’t just charming accents; they were distinct varieties of a language with their own vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation, all of which were reflected in the written word. There was no central authority, no single standard to which everyone was expected to adhere. Language evolved organically, like a sprawling, untamed forest.

Then, around 1440, a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented a machine that would act as both a cultivator and a scythe for this forest. The printing press was about to change everything.

The Machine That Chose the “Right” Words

Gutenberg’s invention of movable type was revolutionary not just because it allowed for the mass production of books, but because it allowed for the mass production of identical books. For the first time, hundreds or thousands of copies of a single text could be created, each one a perfect replica of the last. This presented early printers with a new and profound challenge: which version of the language should they use?

A scribe could write knyght, cnihit, or knycht, and the meaning would be clear in context. A printer, however, had to make a choice. Setting type was a laborious process. It was inefficient and costly to change spellings from one page to the next. Consistency became a commercial necessity. Printers needed to choose one spelling and stick with it. But which one?

The answer lay in commerce and power. Printers set up their workshops in the bustling hubs of politics, religion, and trade. In England, this meant London. The dialect spoken by the powerful and educated elite in the triangle of London, Oxford, and Cambridge—known as the Chancery Standard, from the language used in official government documents—was already gaining prestige. Printers like William Caxton, England’s first printer, naturally adopted this dialect. It was the language of their wealthiest customers, their most influential authors, and the seat of national power.

Caxton and the “Eggs” or “Eyren” Dilemma

Caxton himself famously illustrated this problem in a preface to one of his books. He recounted a story of a merchant from the North of England who, stopping at a house in Kent, asked for some “egges.” The woman of the house didn’t understand him, replying that she couldn’t speak French. Another person clarified that the man wanted “eyren,” the local Kentish word for eggs. The woman then understood perfectly.

“And the good wife answered, that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but would have had eggs, and she understood him not. And then at last another said that he would have ‘eyren’. Then the good wife said that she understood him well. Lo, what should a man in these days now write, ‘eggs’ or ‘eyren’?”

Caxton’s question was rhetorical. As a London-based printer, he chose “eggs,” the version from the East Midlands dialect that was becoming dominant in the capital. By making this choice and printing it thousands of time, he wasn’t just reflecting a trend; he was accelerating it. The London dialect was no longer just one regional variant among many. It was becoming the standard, solidified in lead type and distributed across the entire kingdom.

The Great Spelling Freeze

The consequences of these printers’ choices were monumental. As books became more widespread, so did the spellings they contained. The versions chosen by London printers became the foundation for what we now consider “correct” English spelling. This process, however, had a peculiar side effect: it froze our spelling at a very specific moment in linguistic history.

This is where things get truly fascinating. English spelling began to standardize in the 15th and 16th centuries, right in the middle of a massive pronunciation shift known as the Great Vowel Shift. Over several generations, the way English speakers pronounced long vowels changed dramatically. For example, the word “mouse” went from being pronounced “moose” to its modern pronunciation, and “bite” shifted from sounding like “beet.”

But while the pronunciation continued to evolve, the printed spelling was already being locked into place. This is why English spelling is notoriously illogical. We still write knight with a “k” and “gh” because that’s how it was pronounced before the press and before the vowel shift. The spelling is a fossil, a snapshot of a pronunciation that has long since vanished.

An Extinction Event for Dialects

The rise of a printed standard was a double-edged sword. While it fostered a unified national identity and boosted literacy, it came at a great cost to linguistic diversity. The effects were clear:

• Demotion of Dialects: Regional varieties from the North, West, and other parts of the country, which had once been perfectly valid forms of written English, were now relegated to “non-standard” or “incorrect” status. They became associated with being rural, uneducated, and provincial.
• Loss of Prestige: To be taken seriously in government, academia, or literature, one had to write in the London standard. The rich written traditions of other regions withered.
• A New Hierarchy: The printing press created a clear hierarchy between the “correct” language found in books and the “incorrect” language spoken by ordinary people in their daily lives. This divide between standard and non-standard language persists to this day.

The press didn’t kill spoken dialects overnight—many thrive even now—but it effectively silenced them in the formal, written record. It pruned the sprawling forest of language into a carefully manicured garden, where one type of plant was prized above all others.

This process wasn’t unique to English. In Spain, the Castilian dialect rose to prominence. In France, it was the Parisian dialect. In Germany, Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible, printed and distributed widely, played a key role in standardizing German. In each case, the printing press was the mechanism that took one regional dialect, elevated it to the status of a national language, and in doing so, froze its form and cast countless other beautiful variations into shadow.