Letter Forms

The letter forms are based on Roman Half-Uncial, as interpreted in various continental scripts, with some influence from Insular Half-Uncial.

Because the Italian Renaissance adopted a version of this as their standard typeface, most of the forms are familiar to us today.

	a is become a more curvaceous version of the Uncial a. It looks like our typeface version.
	g has developed a closed bow and a curved tail.
	r has lost its descender and shortened its loop, like a slightly less tipsy version of Half-Uncial r. (The Lindisfarne Gospels use an elegant version of this r, which can be inadvertently mistaken for an n.) Carolingian Minuscule r is recognisably our typeface version.
	There is another type of r, the '2-shaped' version which we will see in later scripts being used after bowed letters. It looks like a R without its downstroke. On this page it is used once (section 5, line 2), after o.
	n is the 'lower-case' version, like the Insular Majuscule and Anglo-Saxon Minuscule n,
	though there is an Insular Majuscule N in section 6, line 9.
	The tall version of s is used, like the alternative s in Insular Majuscule .

A couple of letters are interesting because of their history:

	Y (section 5, line 9) is the smallish, exotic-looking Greek g: here it appears in the Greek word Abyssus, 'deeps'.
	This (section 2, line 1) is a 'tagged e'. It was used to indicate the 'open e' or [e], which had developed phonetically from the Latin diphthong [ae]. This is the letter which was used for Anglo-Saxon æ. The word celum is from Latin caelum, 'sky, heaven'.
	The scribe writes out the whole word below (section 4, line 8). There is further evidence in section 1, line 1 that he is confused about this sound. What is it?

Serifs

There is a restrained use of serifs.

	The tall s has the characteristic triangular bump at head-line height.
	Letters like p begin with a slight triangular serif.
	Letters with short minims like u, m, and n begin with a sideways stroke of the pen, which adds to the generally cursive look of a script where the letters are not in fact conspicuously joined.

Tall letters are clubbed.

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Aspect.

An even, upright, rounded script. It gives the impression of clarity, and a certain cursive quality.

The script is evenly spaced between the head- and base-line:

Ascenders on d, b , and l, all of which have straight verticals, are as tall again as the body of the text:

Descenders are on the whole not so deep, though p, g, and occasionally q can be the depth of the body of text:

Other letters such as s do not rise as high above the headline; f, and occasionally s descend slightly below:

Verticals are upright and evenly spaced:

The width of the pen strokes is vertical, but the angle of the nib produces thinner lines where the stroke rises up into a curve. This creates an oval effect on bows, and a slanting effect on diagonals:

The aspect ratio of our test letters is:

o is roughly square	c is roughly 1:.8	m is roughly 1:1.6

The generally curved look is due to

The cursive aspect is enhanced by the fluent way letters are flicked upwards
at the end of the pen-stroke. Diagonals are making a return in a small way:

the even Romanesque arches of letters like:

the curved tops of f and s:

the oval curves on the bows of b, d, and h, p, q, and g:

and other curvilinear letters such as:

the elegant arches of the ligatures of st and ct:

notice the angle of the cross-stroke on e.

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© MEG TWYCROSS 1998