{"id":55568,"date":"2022-08-05T08:05:45","date_gmt":"2022-08-05T13:05:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=55568"},"modified":"2022-08-06T16:57:12","modified_gmt":"2022-08-06T21:57:12","slug":"trends-in-book-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=55568","title":{"rendered":"Trends in book titles"},"content":{"rendered":"

I've been interested for some time in the way that (written) English sentence lengths have evolved over time — see \"Trends<\/a>\", 3\/27\/2022, or the slides from my 5\/20\/2022 talk at SHEL12<\/a>, \"Historical trends in English sentence length and syntactic complexity<\/a>\". It's well known that the titles of published books have undergone an analogous process, but I don't think I've written about it. (Nor do I know of any scholarship on the topic — perhaps some commenters will be able to suggest some.)<\/p>\n

A couple of days ago, while looking for the origins of an idiom, I stumbled across a contender for the title-length championship<\/a> in in an interesting work from 1740 (image here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

THE ART of READING: OR, THE ENGLISH TONGUE<\/em> MADE Familiar and easy to the meanest Capacity. CONTAINING, I. All the common words, ranged into distinct tables and classes; as well in regard to the number of letters in each word, as to the easiness of pronunciation, and the bearing of the accent. With useful notes and remarks upon the various sounds of the letters occasionally inserted in the margin. II. A large number of lessons, regularly suited to each table. III. An explanation of several words; particularly such as are of the same, or nearly alike in sound: designed to correct and prevent some orthographical errors and mistakes. IV. Some observations, rules, and directions, relating to the reading and writing English properly and correctly. The whole done after a new and easy Method.<\/em> Approved of, and recommended, as the best book for the use of children, and all others, who would speedily attain to the knowledge of the English tongue. By P. SPROSON, S. M.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Just as in transcriptions of spontaneous speech, it's not at all clear where \"sentences\" begin and end. Here periods are used to divide the title page into eight or nine segments:<\/p>\n

THE ART of READING: OR, THE ENGLISH TONGUE MADE Familiar and easy to the meanest Capacity.
\nCONTAINING, I. All the common words, ranged into distinct tables and classes; as well in regard to the number of letters in each word, as to the easiness of pronunciation, and the bearing of the accent.
\nWith useful notes and remarks upon the various sounds of the letters occasionally inserted in the margin.
\nII. A large number of lessons, regularly suited to each table.
\nIII. An explanation of several words; particularly such as are of the same, or nearly alike in sound: designed to correct and prevent some orthographical errors and mistakes.
\nIV. Some observations, rules, and directions, relating to the reading and writing English properly and correctly.
\nThe whole done after a new and easy Method.<\/em>
\nApproved of, and recommended, as the best book for the use of children, and all others, who would speedily attain to the knowledge of the English tongue.
\nBy P. SPROSON, S. M.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

The whole thing is arguably a single noun phrase, with clear syntactic relationships among its parts. But it could also be considered a series of fragments, connected only by a rhetorical structure — if we believe that there's a bright line between syntax and rhetoric…<\/p>\n

(I'll note passing that I've left off the two pseudo-quotations from Cicero, and the information about who published it when and for whom, which actually have a similar relationship to the preceding array of fragments.)<\/p>\n

This general sort of title was normal for its time. Here are three other random 18th-century examples:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

THE English Theophrastus<\/em> : OR, THE Manners of the Age. Being the Modern Characters OF THE COURT, the TOWN, and the CITY. The Second Edition.<\/em> With the Addition of 37 New Characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

THE ROMAN<\/em> History From the Removal of the Imperial SEAT By Constantine the Great<\/em>, To the Taking of ROME BY ODO ACER<\/em> K. of the Heruli<\/em>. AND THE Ruin of the Empire in the West<\/em> : And from the Ruin of the Western<\/em> EMPIRE To its Restitution by CHARLEMAGNE<\/em>. Containing in all the Space of 474 Years. VOL. III. Being a Continuation of Mr. Rebard'<\/em>s History.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE : IN WHICH The WORDS are deduced from their ORIGINALS, AND ILLUSTRATED in their DIFFERENT SIGNIFICATIONS BY EXAMPLES from the best WRITERS. TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED, A HISTORY of the LANGUAGE, AND An ENGLISH GRAMMAR. By SAMUEL JOHNSON, A.M. In TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I.<\/p>\n

So this leads me to wonder about the longer-term historical trajectory of book titles, in English and in other languages: Overall length, structure, punctuation, font types\/sizes\/colors, capitalization, line divisions, etc.<\/p>\n

There's also more to say about Mr. Sproson's reader — but that's all I have time for this morning.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I've been interested for some time in the way that (written) English sentence lengths have evolved over time — see \"Trends\", 3\/27\/2022, or the slides from my 5\/20\/2022 talk at SHEL12, \"Historical trends in English sentence length and syntactic complexity\". It's well known that the titles of published books have undergone an analogous process, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,111,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-punctuation","category-rhetoric","category-style-and-register"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55568"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55568\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55600,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55568\/revisions\/55600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}