1. Setting the scene, letters, standards and historical sociolinguistics Richard J. Watts; 2. Assessing variability and change in early English letters Juan Manuel Hernández-Campoy and Juan Camilo Conde-Silvestre; 3. Private letters as a source for an alternative history of Middle New High German Stephan Elspaß; 4. Language in print and handwriting Tony Fairman; 5. Heterogeneity vs homogeneity Marianne Hundt; 6. Emerging standards in the colonies, variation and the Canadian letter writer Stefan Dollinger; 7. Linguistic fingerprints of authors and scribes Alexander Bergs; 8. Stylistic variation Anita Auer; 9. English aristocratic letters Susan Fitzmaurice; 10. Early nineteenth-century pauper letters Mikko Laitinen; 11. A non-standard standard? Exploring the evidence from nineteenth-century vernacular letters and diaries Barbara Allen; 12. Archaism and dialect in Irish emigrant letters Lukas Pietsch; 13. Assessing heterogeneity Lucia Siebers; 14. Hypercorrection and the persistence of local dialect features in writing Daniel Schreier; 15. Epilogue: where next? Anita Auer, Daniel Schreier and Richard J. Watts; References; Index.