Among the topics treated in Scots and its Literature are the status of Scots as a national language; the orthography of Scots; the actual and potential degree of standardization of Scots; the debt of the vocabulary of Scots to Gaelic; the use of Scots in fictional dialogue; and the development of Scots as a poetic medium in the modern period. All fourteen articles, written and published between 1979 and 1988, have been rescrutinised for this collection and extensively updated. J. Derrick McClure is a senior lecturer in the English Department at Aberdeen University and a well-known authority on the history of Scots.