2048: Ye and The Jul 24, 2020

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The word 'the' has had a number of spellings, in part because of how simple and common it is. Like other symbols including & for 'and', 'the' used to be typed as 'ye' to make use of what was available on German printing presses, but actually this was just an approximation of another, older Germanic letter. In fact, it was often spelled in exotic ways to save space, as exhibited in the document shown below.

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