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

[Joel S. Berson]

At 8/30/2009 01:36 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:

>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.

An interesting exercise.  The source is _Province and Court Records
of Maine_; I have no idea how many instances of "mis" and. "mis." one
might discover in the proceedings of the surrounding decade, or
half-century, or century.  (I did not read chronologically, just for
a small number of topics, via the index.)  Nor do I know how many
different court reporters transcribed the records in those periods.

I do not mean to disparage Mark's suggestion, since I too had noted
that looking at the specific ms. page for the 1652 quotation would
probably be necessary.  But only to suggest that the wider
examination would not be quick.

Joel

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