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| | Old Style Handwriting and Printers' Ligatures. Smoot Family Association, Smute, Smoote, Smout, Smootz, Smoot, Smoots, ... (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-03) |
 | | They had adapted the letter from the Greek letter iota, however the origins of the letter can be found in the much earlier Phoenician alphabet. |
 | | The Romans version of the letter looks just like our modern I. The Romans had no miniscule (lower case) letters, and in their alphabet, the letter U did not exist. |
 | | Scholars were slow to add the letter to dictionaries and more importantly, many civil record book sets omitted the letter J with books being lettered A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, etc. The clerks often would record J names in the I names section of their record books. |
| www.usgennet.org /family/smoot/oldhand/i-j-letters.html (216 words) |
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