Early "mis[s]"(1652) as title?

[Mark Mandel]

On Sun, Aug 30, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

> At 8/30/2009 11:19 AM, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >Were abbreviations consistently marked with periods? If not, even the
> >confirmed absence of a period wouldn't settle that part of the question.
>
> I don't know (but when were manuscript writers ever
> consistent?  Especially in the 17th and 18th centuries).  However,
> one of the 1606 quotations for "miss n.2" does use a period; the
> other is terminated by a question mark, so we can't tell.  (I think
> these 1606 quotations are the earliest in the OED entry.)
>

The ideal would be to see an image of the ms. itself. I wouldn't assume any
kind of universal consistency, but one might hope for some consistency by a
single writer in a single ms.

m a m

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