[libstripper]

English is surprising, in part, because it stabilized in the early to middle sixteenth century to the point where a modern American reader can read and understand a document in English that was printed at that time. That's more than four centuries ago. However, if you go back four centuries before that to the twelfth century, "English" documents are almost unintelligible.

[Theophilous Meatyard III]

Printing press first used mid 1400s? Would explain what came after (stability of writing) and what came before (unintelligible).