The relatively small number of Paleography texts currently available are all of a similar format. Each includes reproductions of manuscripts which illustrate the principal handwriting styles of a given era. Some of the texts also mention a degenerative transformational process, especially evident in Spain, which resulted from the need for a more rapid execution of official correspondence. Because of the inordinate amount of documentation produced in Spain and her American colonies and the presence of colonial scribes who had been trained in Spain, a similar process is presumed to be evident in the New World. The sixteenth-century colonial documents included in this study were found to be representative of such a process. The documents were also found to be representative of sixteenth-century Spanish orthographic conventions and thus attest to the New World's conformity to these linguistic phenomena.