<P> The original printing was made before English spelling was standardized, and when printers, as a matter of course, expanded and contracted the spelling of the same words in different places, so as to achieve an even column of text . They set v for initial u and v, and u for u and v everywhere else . They used long s for non-final s . The glyph j occurs only after i, as in the final letter in a Roman numeral . Punctuation was relatively heavy, and differed from current practice . When space needed to be saved, the printers sometimes used ye for the, (replacing the Middle English thorn with the continental y), set ã for an or am (in the style of scribe's shorthand), and set & for and . On the contrary, on a few occasions, they appear to have inserted these words when they thought a line needed to be padded . Later printings regularized these spellings; the punctuation has also been standardized, but still varies from current usage norms . </P> <P> The first printing used a black letter typeface instead of a roman typeface, which itself made a political and a religious statement . Like the Great Bible and the Bishops' Bible, the Authorized Version was "appointed to be read in churches". It was a large folio volume meant for public use, not private devotion; the weight of the type mirrored the weight of establishment authority behind it . However, smaller editions and roman - type editions followed rapidly, e.g. quarto roman - type editions of the Bible in 1612 . This contrasted with the Geneva Bible, which was the first English Bible printed in a roman typeface (although black - letter editions, particularly in folio format, were issued later). </P> <P> In contrast to the Geneva Bible and the Bishops' Bible, which had both been extensively illustrated, there were no illustrations at all in the 1611 edition of the Authorized Version, the main form of decoration being the historiated initial letters provided for books and chapters--together with the decorative title pages to the Bible itself, and to the New Testament . </P> <P> In the Great Bible, readings derived from the Vulgate but not found in published Hebrew and Greek texts had been distinguished by being printed in smaller roman type . In the Geneva Bible, a distinct typeface had instead been applied to distinguish text supplied by translators, or thought needful for English grammar but not present in the Greek or Hebrew; and the original printing of the Authorized Version used roman type for this purposed, albeit sparsely and inconsistently . This results in perhaps the most significant difference between the original printed text of the King James Bible and the current text . When, from the later 17th century onwards, the Authorized Version began to be printed in roman type, the typeface for supplied words was changed to italics, this application being regularised and greatly expanded . This was intended to de-emphasise the words . </P>

The history of the king james version of the bible