Other glyphs

The English language was in flux due to the influence from other languages.

The letter J, for example, was a foreign glyph used for multiple purposes. The letter originated as a simple typographical swash or variation on the letter i, and so it is often identical to it in sound. (For example, the word "wife" is often spelled wijf and "paradise" is paradijs in Middle English.) Illiterate, native speakers of Middle English would have known of no difference between instances of i and j. Sometimes, the written j was to be pronounced like a modern y rather than a homophone of jay. Many Hebrew names and words translated into English (via the Latin Vulgate, the Greek Septuagint, or the Greek New Testament) used the letter J for the Hebrew Yodh, which has a sound similar to y (as in Hallelu j ah). The yodh was commonly transliterated as the Greek letter iota (ɩ), which looks and sounds a lot like the Middle English i, although the yodh is really a voiced palatal approximant. Middle English words include Jerusalem, Juda, Jordan, Joseph, Joon, all of which are spelled similar in Modern English, however, the pronunciation would have followed the centuries-old Latin pronunciation, which used the voiced palatal approximant, similar to the y sound for each J (e.g. Yer-oo-sa-lem).

There were certain foreign words, notably from Old French, that used the letter j for a different sound. The word joie (modern "joy"), derived from Old French and used in Wycliffe's Bible, was pronounced with a /dʒ/ sound. The j from French sounded like the Old English /ddʒ/ sound, which was spelled cȝ. As Middle English turned into Modern English, both j and dg would be used to represent these sounds as the ȝ glyph lost favour.

Just as Latin used both the U and the V for both the vowel "u" and the consonant "v," Middle English continued this diversity in writing. The letter "v" appeared at the beginning of a word whether it was the vowel or consonant, like v pon for "upon" and v ois for "voice." The letter "u" served for either sound in the middle of a word, like e u entid for "eventide" and þo u for "thou."

Because Middle English was written primarily by scribes, clergymen, and educated laymen, many scribal abbreviations from Latin were used. Abbreviations were used for frequently used words and names. It was common for the Lollards to abbreviate the name of Jesus (as in Latin manuscripts) to ihc. The letters n and m were often omitted by placing a mark above an adjacent letter, so the word in was written as the letter i with a horizontal mark above it, like ī. The word þ^t supplanted "that" due to space concerns. Various forms of the ampersand replaced the word "and."

Arabic numerals were not used in Middle English, so all notations were in Roman numerals.