Early Modern English refers to the English language as it was from about the end of the fifteenth century until around the middle of the eighteenth century.
Modern English is often dated from the Great Vowel Shift which took place mainly during the 15th century. English was further transformed by the spread of a standardised London-based dialect in government and administration, and by the standardising effect of printing. By the time of William Shakespeare (mid-late 16th century) the language had become clearly recognizable as Modern English. The year 1500 is often given as the cutoff date between later Middle English and Early Modern English.
Having already in the Middle English period acquired numerous French loanwords. English in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries added a still larger number from Latin and Greek. The process has continued, albeit more gradually, since then, with both new loanwords from numerous modern spoken languages, as well as new coinages from Latin and Greek roots, particularly in the area of technical innovations (e.g. "telephone," "photograph," and "panorama"). It has also added new and variant forms via compounding, clipping, blending, and back-formation of existing words.
Due largely to the retention of now-silent letters, as well as the agglomeration of different spelling conventions from Germanic and Romance conventions, English spelling is largely systematic but variable. English also possesses several grammatical and syntactical features, such as a highly irregular verb for "to be," a cadre of surviving "strong" verbs with different past and preterite forms, and irregular plural nouns.
From Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667
From the United States Declaration of Independence, 1776, by Thomas Jefferson