The Editors: Marina Dossena is Professor of English Language at the University of Bergamo. Her research interests, on which she has published extensively, focus on the features and origins of British varieties of English and the history of specialized discourse. She is also the author of Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary, and is currently compiling a corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence in co-operation with Richard Dury.Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a Chair in English Socio-Historical Linguistics at the University of Leiden. Her research interests include historical social network analysis and the standardisation process (codification and prescription), on which she has published widely. She edits the internet journal Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics and is the director of the VICI research project ‘The Codifiers and the English Language’.

• Contents: Marina Dossena/Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Introduction – Arja Nurmi/Minna Palander-Collin: Letters as a Text Type: Interaction in Writing – Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Letters as a Source for Reconstructing Social Networks: The Case of Robert Lowth – Susan M. Fitzmaurice: Epistolary Identity: Convention and Idiosyncrasy in Late Modern English Letters – Richard Dury: Handwriting and the Linguistic Study of Letters – Anni Sairio: Bluestocking Letters and the Influence of Eighteenth-Century Grammars – Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw: The Letter-Writing Manual in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: From Polite to Practical – Tony Fairman: Strike-Throughs: What Textual Alterations can Tell us about Writers and their Scripts, 1795-1835 – Anita Auer: «The letter wihch that I wrote»: Self-corrections in Late Modern English Letters – Marina Dossena: «We beg leave to refer to your decision»: Pragmatic Traits of Nineteenth-Century Business Correspondence – Stefan Dollinger: Colonial Variation in the Late Modern English Business Letter: ‘Periphery and Core’ or ‘Random Variation’?

The Editors: Marina Dossena is Professor of English Language at the University of Bergamo. Her research interests, on which she has published extensively, focus on the features and origins of British varieties of English and the history of specialized discourse. She is also the author of Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary, and is currently compiling a corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence in co-operation with Richard Dury.Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a Chair in English Socio-Historical Linguistics at the University of Leiden. Her research interests include historical social network analysis and the standardisation process (codification and prescription), on which she has published widely. She edits the internet journal Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics and is the director of the VICI research project ‘The Codifiers and the English Language’.

• Contents: Marina Dossena/Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Introduction – Arja Nurmi/Minna Palander-Collin: Letters as a Text Type: Interaction in Writing – Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Letters as a Source for Reconstructing Social Networks: The Case of Robert Lowth – Susan M. Fitzmaurice: Epistolary Identity: Convention and Idiosyncrasy in Late Modern English Letters – Richard Dury: Handwriting and the Linguistic Study of Letters – Anni Sairio: Bluestocking Letters and the Influence of Eighteenth-Century Grammars – Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw: The Letter-Writing Manual in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: From Polite to Practical – Tony Fairman: Strike-Throughs: What Textual Alterations can Tell us about Writers and their Scripts, 1795-1835 – Anita Auer: «The letter wihch that I wrote»: Self-corrections in Late Modern English Letters – Marina Dossena: «We beg leave to refer to your decision»: Pragmatic Traits of Nineteenth-Century Business Correspondence – Stefan Dollinger: Colonial Variation in the Late Modern English Business Letter: ‘Periphery and Core’ or ‘Random Variation’?

The Editors: Marina Dossena is Professor of English Language at the University of Bergamo. Her research interests, on which she has published extensively, focus on the features and origins of British varieties of English and the history of specialized discourse. She is also the author of Scotticisms in Grammar and Vocabulary, and is currently compiling a corpus of nineteenth-century Scottish correspondence in co-operation with Richard Dury.Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade has a Chair in English Socio-Historical Linguistics at the University of Leiden. Her research interests include historical social network analysis and the standardisation process (codification and prescription), on which she has published widely. She edits the internet journal Historical Sociolinguistics and Sociohistorical Linguistics and is the director of the VICI research project ‘The Codifiers and the English Language’.

• Contents: Marina Dossena/Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Introduction – Arja Nurmi/Minna Palander-Collin: Letters as a Text Type: Interaction in Writing – Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade: Letters as a Source for Reconstructing Social Networks: The Case of Robert Lowth – Susan M. Fitzmaurice: Epistolary Identity: Convention and Idiosyncrasy in Late Modern English Letters – Richard Dury: Handwriting and the Linguistic Study of Letters – Anni Sairio: Bluestocking Letters and the Influence of Eighteenth-Century Grammars – Lyda Fens-de Zeeuw: The Letter-Writing Manual in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: From Polite to Practical – Tony Fairman: Strike-Throughs: What Textual Alterations can Tell us about Writers and their Scripts, 1795-1835 – Anita Auer: «The letter wihch that I wrote»: Self-corrections in Late Modern English Letters – Marina Dossena: «We beg leave to refer to your decision»: Pragmatic Traits of Nineteenth-Century Business Correspondence – Stefan Dollinger: Colonial Variation in the Late Modern English Business Letter: ‘Periphery and Core’ or ‘Random Variation’?