Words, Wordes

While working on catching up my other blog (and I’m almost there!), I ran across a mention of Wynkyn de Worde in one of the quotations. After a little research, I found that he was one of the first printers in England and was an apprentice to William Caxton who is credited with standardizing English via his adoption of the printing press. De Worde was also the founding printer on Fleet Street in England, which is most likely why (and now we come to the reason that I was so intrigued by the mention of this name) Terry Pratchett borrowed that name for the protagonist (William de Worde) of his novel The Truth, which deals with the printing press and newspapers coming to his Discworld. I never guessed it was based, however loosely, on a real person.