some extent a bewildering variety of spellings have been used to represent the varied pronunciation of the Shetland dialect varieties. Latterly the use of the apologetic apostrophe to represent 'missing' English letters has been avoided. On the whole the literary conventions of Modern Scots are applied, if not consistently, the main differences being: The and realisation of what is usually and in other Scots dialects are often written d and t rather than th; "thing" and "there" written "" and "". The realisation of the qu in quick, queen and queer is often written wh; "queer" is written "". The realisation of initial ch, usually in other Scots dialects, is often written sh; "chair" is written "". The letters j and k are used rather than y and c, influenced by Norse spelling. The letter j is often used to render the semivowel of the letter y, especially for the palatalised consonants in words such as Yule in English— rendered in Scots— which becomes written in Shetland dialect (for the additional change of the Scots ui to ø in this word, see below). Literary Scots and (vowel 12 and sometimes vowel 17) are often represented by in written Shetland dialect. Literary Scots and (vowel 7) are often represented by , , or influenced by Norse spelling. Grammar The grammatical structure of Shetland dialect generally follows that of Modern Scots, with traces of Norse (Norn) and those features shared with Standard English. Articles The definite article the is pronounced often written da in dialect writing. As is usual in Scots, Shetland dialect puts an article where Standard English would not: gyaan ta da kirk/da scole in da Simmer-- 'go to church/school in summer' da denner is ready 'dinner is ready' hae da caald 'have a cold' Nouns Nouns in Shetland dialect have grammatical gender beside natural gender. Some nouns which are clearly considered neuter in English are masculine or feminine, such as spade (m), sun (m), mön (f), kirk (f). This can also apply to dummy constructions, e.g. what time is he? In a study comparing pre-oil Shetland dialect usage from oral history recordings and contemporary speech from interviews, the gender system in Shetland dialect was found to be a stable feature of modern dialect usage, and is not tied to use alongside "traditional lexical items". The plural of nouns is usually formed by adding -s, as in Standard English. There