Script Type : minuscule
Date : 8th to 12th centuries
Location : France, Germany, England, Spain, northern Italy, Scandinavia
Function : Book hand and basis for document hands
Distinctive letters : This is a very easy script to read as the letter forms are mostly very familiar to us from modern typefaces, and it helps that this is a particularly bold, rounded example with letters well separated. The only slightly unfamiliar letter is s, which has a high form. The letter t is low, without a tall ascender and a wide cross at the top. There are two forms of r, the second a simplified form which sometimes appears after vowels, particularly o. A characteristically English feature is the slight wedge shape to the ascenders in letters such as l, d and b. This is a feature carried over from insular minuscule. As in usual in medieval scripts, i is not dotted, and u and v are identical. There are no examples in this sample of h, j, or x or the rare letters k, y or z.
The first letters of the line are in uncial script, as shown by the diagnostic rounded M.
There are a number of abbreviations in the example.
Pass the cursor slowly along the lines of text and follow the words in the box below. For more detail proceed to the paleography exercises.
Paleography
Exercises using Flash 
Requires at least the Flash 5 plugin
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