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This chapter explores the number of Scottish sailors in the seventeenth to eighteenth century, and addresses the growing shipping trade that called for a high demand of men. It presents the difficulties of working with estimations, or ‘guestimations’, and criticises the lack of statistical data available on Scottish sailors. The report also researches the social habits of sailors and reflects on their bad reputation in Scottish society.

This chapter examines the shipbuilding output in Scotland in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, tracking its long history of minimal growth through to the tremendous increase in production that raised Scotland’s role in British shipbuilding to the forefront. Particular attention is given to the development of Clydeside and the emergence of the term ‘Clyde-built.’

This book is an account of the evolution of the spelling system, or orthography, of Scots, the language of lowland Scotland. Substantial written records in Scots survive from the fourteenth century and they are evidence of a distinctive language that was used in speech and as a language of written record in the Scottish kingdom until the end of the sixteenth century; thereafter broader written use of Scots declined. Written Scots was, however, revived, largely as a medium for literature, in the eighteenth century, and it has been used by a very large number of poets, novelists and dramatists ever since this ‘vernacular revival’ occurred. It thrives as a literary medium today. The way in which Scots has been fashioned in writing, however, has always been characterised by a wide range of variation and diversity in spelling. The present volume surveys the main reasons for this variation and diversity historically, and suggests ways of understanding and exploring it with a view to encouraging literacy practices in Scots.

This chapter begins a more detailed description of the developments outlined in brief in the introduction. In particular, it details the development of the consonant graphemes that were used in the Older Scots period (1375–1700). The discussion in this chapter considers Older Scots phonology insofar as it impacts on spelling; a much more detailed discussion of the phonological system of Older Scots can be found in Johnston (1997a).

If the consonants of Older Scots present us with a relatively uncomplicated orthographic system, the Older Scots vowels are a different matter. The geographical and chronological variations we find among different accents of Scots are largely a matter of differing vowel sounds: vowels change more than consonants do, over space and time. In this chapter, we consider why vowels are generally less stable than consonants, sketch out the major systemic changes in the vowel system over the Older Scots period, and explore how the variable and changing systems of pronunciation mapped onto the Older Scots vowel graphemes. The most thorough discussion of this topic is in Aitken and Macafee (2002), and this chapter largely offers a synopsis of the much more extensive descriptions found there. A briefer account is given in Smith (2012: 29–33). Other relevant studies that have informed the content of this chapter include Aitken (1977), Johnston (1997a), Lass (1999) and Macafee and Aitken (consonant