Locke's Orthography and the Dating of his Writings

Abstract


 
 
 Anyone reading Locke’s works, especially those edited from manuscript, in an unmodernised edition can hardly avoid noticing that his preferred spellings are by no means always those used in present-day English. Something which has been less often noticed is that in several cases his habits changed as he became older, an old-fashioned spelling becoming replaced by a more modern one. The account below focuses on one case of this, and its possible use in estimating the dates of writing—or revision— of several of Locke’s writings.