其實在近代英語剛出現的時候，英文的拼寫法仍然沒有固定標準，比如 Julius Caesar 寫成 Julius Cæſar, Ivlivs Cæſar, Jvlivs Cæſar, Iulius Cæſar 都可以。He 這個單詞，在同一個句子裡寫成 he 或者 hee 都行，莎士比亞的戲劇中就存在此類現象。
my, mine, thy與thine在名詞前被用作所有格形容詞，亦可作為後面不加名詞的所有格代名詞。All four forms are used as possessive adjectives: mine and thine are used before nouns beginning in a vowel sound, or before nouns beginning in the letter h, which was usually silent (e.g. thine eyes and mine heart, which was pronounced as mine art) and my and thy before consonants (thy mother, my love). However, only mine and thine are used as possessive pronouns, as in it is thine and they were mine (not *they were my).
From the early Early Modern English period up until the 17th century, his was the possessive of the third-person neuter it as well as of the third-person masculine he. Genitive "it" appears once in the 1611 King James Bible (Leviticus 25:5) as groweth of it owne accord.
動詞
時態與數量
在近現代時期，動詞的屈折變化在向現代形式發展的過程中逐漸簡化。
情態助動詞
完成體與進行體
現代英語中的一些常用詞是經過了語義縮小的。以動詞 suffer 為例，字面上講是「承受痛苦、困難」的意思。但自從十四世紀開始，這個詞有了「允許」的意思。這一義項一直被保留到近代英語，例如《欽定版聖經》中的《Suffer the little children》。然而現代英語中已經沒有這個意思了。
.W. Skeat, in Principles of English Etymology, claims that the o-for-u substitution was encouraged by the ambiguity between u and n; if sunne could just as easily be misread as sunue or suvne, it made sense to write it as sonne. (Skeat, Principles of English Etymology, Second Series. Clarendon Press, 1891. Page 99 （頁面存檔備份，存於網際網路檔案館）.)
