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In the following text of Pamela by Samuel Richardson, well is capitalised — possibly to denote speech, where inverted commas have been neglected. As GEdgar points out, this is not an isolated case. I wonder why only, but there may be no explanation:

He took my hand, in a kind of good-humoured mockery, and said, Well urged, my pretty preacher! When my Lincolnshire chaplain dies, I'll put thee on a gown and cassock, and thou'lt make a good figure in his place.—I wish, said I, a little vexed at his jeer. Well, well, Pamela, said he, no more of this unfashionable jargon.

RegDwigнt
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track2now
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    Capitalising nouns, or at least "important" nouns (and even some non-nouns), is a feature of some older texts and a practice that continues in German, in which all nouns are capitalised. For example, in "Gullliver's Travels", published 1726: "The King's Reaction to Gulliver offering him the knowledge of Gunpowder". I can't answer for specifically why/when/until when this was done, but it certainly was not a printing error, and probably not a usage error as it was quite a widespread practice. Hopefully this can inform your research! – nxx Jan 13 '14 at 14:25
  • Related: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/10522/capitalisation-of-nouns-in-english-in-the-17th-and-18th-centuries – nxx Jan 13 '14 at 14:27
  • Or look in a facsimile of the Declaration of Independence: you will find lots of capitals. "...in the Course of Human Events it becomes necessary...". As nxx said, it was common at that time, and not an error. – GEdgar Jan 13 '14 at 14:29
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    In the future, please always edit your question directly. Do not rely on people reading an entire comment thread to understand what it is you are asking. Thank you. – RegDwigнt Jan 13 '14 at 14:44
  • I am also certain this is a duplicate, but I myself am unable to find the original right now. – RegDwigнt Jan 13 '14 at 14:45

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This is nothing to do with the practice (common in the 18th and 19th centuries) of capitalising Important Words (not just nouns). The passage clearly moves into direct speech, though for some reason, probably stylistic, the inverted commas are omitted. Thus Well urged, I wish and Well, well are each the beginning of a new sentence, and so have to be in capitals.

Tim Lymington
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    Pamela was written in 1740. Wikipedia's history of quotation marks seems to be internally inconsistent (I expect that they're not clearly distinguishing their history in England and in Europe), but among other things, it says that quotation marks were first used for direct speech in English in 1714, and that the practice was widespread by 1749. So the reason may just be that the printer Richardson used wasn't completely up-to-date on the latest punctuational innovations. – Peter Shor Jan 13 '14 at 15:53
  • Tim, this explains the example shown, but not the other examples I have come across, where so called important nouns are capitalised. I put it down to the discrepancies of emergent standardisation following Johnson's dictionary. – track2now Jan 20 '14 at 16:47