In reading the excerpt below from Of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford, words are less where they are more today. There’s a conciseness in the writing style and word length that reminds me of text messages and tweets. The old and new fit oddly together. The paragraph, which I broke into three, would fill 10 tweets, by the way. To me, the excerpt evokes similar feeling of unfamiliarity and recognition I have reading modern texts and tweets—and I wonder: what will language be like in 400 years?

Photo Credit: Christine Hasman

Do you have a historical story that you’d like told? Please e-mail Joe Wilcox: oddlytogether at gmail.com.