Upright, narrow, compact, supremely even, with wide verticals, angular: the diamond-shaped serifs at the tops of the minims give this script its characteristic 'picket fence' look.

The aspect ratio of our test letters is:

o is 2:1	m is 1:1	e is 5:2

The script is evenly spaced between the head- and base-line. This is emphasised by the way the feet of the minims are cut off neatly on the base-line:

Only the curves of the s overflow the baseline.

Minims and all uprights are vertical and extremely evenly spaced. The space between minims is only slightly wider than the minims themselves, which gives a very compact look.

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

The rest (b, d) are even shorter.

Descenders are about the same proportions below the line as the shorter ascenders are above: see e.g. p, g, and q

All the curves in Early Gothic have become angles.

Even letters which still retain some curve are angled wherever possible:
	The top part of g is a slightly bulging hexagon with a sharply angled curve on the closed tail.
	Even the short s, which looks like an overbalancing figure 8, is made with sharp turns of the pen.

The pen is angled so that \ strokes are wide, whereas / strokes are hair-fine, the width of the pen moving horizontally.

	This gives the impression that the tops of letters which had originally been curved are now made up of two contiguous angled strokes.
	The spaces inside o or d appear to be quadrilateral, whereas the outside edges are hexagonal. They are also about the same width as the vertical penstrokes.

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Serifs

The tops of minims have marked diamond-shaped serifs.

Though in this hand the different letters are kept quite distinct, in some hands they just appear as a run of minims whose serifs touch at the top to create the 'picket fence' look.

But just in case the reader might be misled, the scribes have started marking the top of an i with a hairline stroke. This is the beginning of our 'dotted i'.

The ascenders on b, l, and h have a concave curve at the top:

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© MEG TWYCROSS 1999