Shortcuts to Letter Forms, Ligatures.

Letter Forms

We have seen all the letter forms before: despite their distinctive look, the only difference is that all the curves in earlier scripts have become angles.

Variant Letters

		There are two forms of s. By now the convention has become that the tall s appears at the beginning and middle of a word, but the short s only appears at the end (see similis in line 2). Tall s still has the traditional triangular protuberance at head-line height.
		The two forms of r appear: the 'lower-case' one appears anywhere in the word,
		but the 2-shaped r only follows o, as in glorificatur (line 4), or another bowed letter, as in brachio (line 14).

Though the flicks at the bottom of letters such as t and e occasionally touch the following letters, this is not a cursive script. The only links between letters are cross-strokes and ligatures.

Cross-strokes, on t, g and f, are made with the nib turned at an angle so that they emphasise the head-line. The cross-strokes join these letters to the following one.

	Ligatures: st is a ligature;
	but ct is in a strange halfway house: the t is lengthened, but the c no longer rises to meet it. Instead, the space is filled with a tendril.

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© MEG TWYCROSS 1999