Script Type : minuscule cursive

Date : 15th century

Location : England

Function : personal letter hand

Distinctive letters : This example of personal handwriting of the late 15th century shows similar letter forms to the cursive or bastarda book hands of this period. The main difficulty with reading it comes from its informality, with some variation in letter forms, personal idiosyncrasy and some general messiness. This is a private letter from an individual, not the work of a professional scribe.

Ascenders of letters such as b, d, h, k, and l tend to be looped, while descenders of g and y are open and curvy. The letter for th, not used every time the letter combination appears, is identical to y. The second form of y, known as yogh, which appears only once in this document, derives from the insular minuscule g and supposedly represents a sound intermediate between g and y. I am not exactly sure what that would sound like, but the concept is intriguing. What did English of this time actually sound like as a spoken language? But that is a diversion.

Some letters are variable in form, the letter r particularly so, while s appears in both the tall and the short and curly form. The letter e is also variable, particularly at the ends of words where it sometimes turns itself back to front and at other times is reduced to a frivolous little loop.

There are some abbreviations in the text.

The segment shown is not continuous text, as it is from a corner of the document, but pass the cursor slowly over it to pick out a few words. If you want to find out what students of the 15th century wrote to their older brothers about, you can look at the whole letter in the paleography exercise.

Paleography exercises using Flash

Requires at least the Flash 5 plugin