Thus the following are the normal spellings: iudge, inijcere or iniicere (= lat. injicere), vse, euent, vua (= lat. uva). Certain printers varied the practice in a few books, but the rule followed by most was absolutely rigid. It is quite incorrect to say that the letters were used indifferently, or that the sixteenth-century usage was the converse of the modern.... Rimes and puns show that the Elizabethans called V by the name we now give to U (hence W is called double-u). I have failed to discover the originator of the modern name "ve...."
In England no example of the distinction [between i and j, u and v] seems to have been found earlier than J. Banister's History of Man, printed by John Day in 1578. The new method is followed in a few other books of Day, and in 1579-80 we find it followed by Henry Middleton in reprinting a Latin Bible from a Frankfurt edition in which the distinction had been made. From that time onwards to the end of the century we find a certain number of books following the new system either completely or with certain modifications, and thereafter the number gradually increased until between 1620 and 1630 it became the general rule.
The majuscule U at first employed was of the general design of the lower-case u with a small tail or serif at the foot (which has been revived in some modern fonts). The modern U begins to come into use in English printing about the middle of the seventeenth century.
The letter w
In early fonts this is often represented by vv. In later times the same is often found in fonts of extra large size (presumably of foreign origin), and in ordinary fonts when there happened to be a run on the w and the compositor had not enough.
Ligatures
Two or more letters joined together, or differing in design from the separate letters, and cast on one type-body, such as
or ffi, are called a ligature. There were two reasons for their being so cast, custom and convenience.