Eunice: >in many of our >old letters they often have an apostrophe before the 'd' at the end of the >word, and it seems pointless to me, as if you put in an apostrophe, you may >as well have put in an 'e' - things like >dress'd, imagin'd The 'e' used to be pronounced usually, so when the writer wanted it not to be, usually in poetry, to make it scan, he would substitute an '. Presumably, when the 'e' was no longer usually pronounced the habit of the ' continued. Regards, John Moore