Transcriber’s Notes
About this book. The Art or crafte of Rhetoryke, by Leonard Cox (or Cockes) was originally published c. 1530; the second edition was published in 1532. It is considered the first book on rhetoric written in the English language.
Typography. This e-book was transcribed from the 1532 edition. The original line and paragraph breaks, hyphenation, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation, including the use of a spaced forward slash (/) for the comma, the use of u for v and vice versa, and the use of i for j, have been preserved. All apparent printer errors have also been preserved, and are hyperlinked to a [list] at the end of this document.
The following alterations have been made:
1. Long-s (ſ) has been regularized as s.
2. The paragraph symbol, resembling a C in the original, is rendered as ¶.
3. Missing hyphens have been added in brackets, e.g. [-].
4. Abbreviations and contractions represented as special characters in the original have been expanded as noted in the table below. A macron means a horizontal line over a letter. A cursive semicolon is an old-style semicolon somewhat resembling a handwritten z. Supralinear means directly over a letter. Superscript means raised and next to a letter. The y referred to below is an Early Modern English form of the Anglo-Saxon thorn character, representing th, but identical in appearance to the letter y.
| Original | Expansion |
| &c with macron | &c[etera] |
| q with cursive semicolon | q[ue] |
| superscript closed curve | [us] |
| long final s | [e]s |
| crossed p | p[er] or p[ar] |
| p with looped downstroke | p[ro] |
| p with macron | p[re] |
| consonant with supralinear upward curve | consonant[er] |
| w with supralinear t | wt[h] |
| y with macron | y[at] (i.e., that) |
| y with supralinear u | y[o]u (i.e., thou) |
Superscript letters are rendered as they appear in the original, e.g., ye = the; yt = that.