An article titled Eighteenth-Century Grammars on the British Literature Wiki (hosted by University of Delaware) explains when the capitalization of common nouns (substantives) came in and out of fashion, the use of the long s in English, and more.
Noun Capitalization
« Noun capitalization… seems to be a trend in the late 17th and 18th centuries… However, by 1795… the practice of the capitalization of all nouns soon became a thing of the past. »
Sentence Construction
« There are four sentence types commonly used in English: simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex. »
« A number of elements can reduce the readability of a document: periodic sentences, prepositional phrases, passive verbs, and words per sentence. »
« Periodic sentences, where the essential information is held until the end, are more difficult for readers to understand. »
The Long S
« Throughout eighteenth-century literature, it is common to see two forms of the letter “s.” One form, which we use today, is called the short s, and gets its appearance from the capital letter S in Roman inscriptions. The other form is called the long s. The long s appears as a lowercase f without the right hand part of its crossbar… and it originates in the “straggling form given to this letter in Roman cursive script” (Typefounder). Printers using what was called the Carolingian hand employed the use of the long s throughout text. However, when printers began using humanistic scripts, the convention was adopted of using a long s at the beginning and middle of words, and the short s at the end. The use of the two letter s’s, which we see in the 1792 version of Joseph Andrews, continued until the end of the eighteenth century with very few exceptions. »
Articles of Interest 