"I have tberf ore deatroyed tbeir blood and ao shall I do tbyn yf then canste not asaoylle or ao- phyme that I shall make to the"500 years on, these words are barely comprehensible, but their significance is huge.
I used to presume that a nationwide advertising campaign in the primary language of that nation should be easy to communicate to the masses but if I take into account the ever-widening gap between printed and spoken word and the variety of accents and dialects, it no longer seems so simple.
William Caxton printed these words in The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy, the first book to ever be printed in the English Language. However, the book was originally written in French, so Caxton faced two problems, translating various French idioms and dialects into English, and editing to whole book into the first standardised English Language. That language has evolved into the written English we use today, an essential means of communication in the field of Graphic Design and pretty much every other industry imaginable.
Bibliography:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/caxton_william.shtml
http://www.archive.org/stream/recuyellhistory00lefgoog/recuyellhistory00lefgoog_djvu.txt
Image: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2007/03/06/magazines460.jpg
Elliot Hay
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