Early Gothic is Carolingian Minuscule squashed together sideways and pulled out upwards. It has also developed pointed Gothic arches.

Letter Forms

There are no really new letter forms, save that g has developed a closed loop:
	There are two forms of s in Early Gothic. The tall s appears anywhere in the word, but the short s, which looks like our modern lower-case letter, only appears at the end of a word. However, in this manuscript, only the tall s is used. Tall s has the characteristic triangular serif at head-line height.
	There are two forms of r, the modern 'lower-case' one, and the 2-shaped r which follows o or another bowed letter.

Aspect.

Like Carolingian Minuscule, it is even, upright, and curvaceous. It is easy to read, and slightly cursive. However, it is lettered with a relatively broader nib, and the minims are closer together. This gives a more compressed look.

The aspect ratio of our test letters is:

o is 1:·7	c is roughly 1:·5	m is roughly 1:1·5

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

Ascenders on d, l, and b are less than half the height of the body of the text: the ratio is about 7:3.

Descenders are about the same proportions below the line as ascenders are above, or appear slightly longer because sloped: see e.g. p, g, and q

Other letters such as s and f rise higher above the headline; but they finish on the baseline:

Minims are upright and evenly spaced. but closer together than in Carolingian Minuscule:

The width of the pen is on the downstrokes, which gives an impression of solidity, but instead of a rounded curve at the top in letters like m and n, it forms a curved angle at the apex. The rising stroke of this curve is thin, and the descending stroke is thick. This encloses a series of even arches:

Curved and bowed letters are sharply angled at the top, especially b and p, but are still rounded at the bottom, which gives an almond or tear-drop shape to the enclosed space, and makes individual letters look as if they are leaning over backwards slightly:

The diagonals are all fine pen-strokes rising from bottom left to top right. This gives a cursive effect, which is reinforced by the bottoms of the curved letters. These are finished by curved strokes which often join to the next letter:

The cross-strokes of t and g are made with half the width of the nib, and lie on the head-line. They also join their letters to the next one.

There are ligatures of st and (though not on this page) ct

This curved-at-thebottom, pointed-at-the-top effect is reinforced by the heavy triangular serifs on the minims on letters like m, n, u, r, and i, and p. Sometimes these approach the characteristic diamond-shaped serifs of full-blown Gothic textura.

Minims are finished off at the base by a diagonal upwards flick.

Ascenders like b, d, l, and h are thickened or 'clubbed'at the top:

	Descenders are finished off by an upwards-slanting flicked serif
	Ascenders are sometime also flicked or even forked.

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© MEG TWYCROSS 1999