Shortcuts to Letter Forms, Easily Made Mistakes, Capital Letters.

Letter Forms: Variant Letters

This scribe uses a whole range of variant letter-forms:
		He uses the 'ordinary' e, but his most common form is the 'back to front' e.
			This can turn into a completely closed letter:
		He uses both forms of g, the Secretary form with the horns and a curved form of the Gothic bookhand form.
			This scribe only uses two forms of s, the short 'Chelsea bun' version for the ends of words, and the long version for the middle of words. He saves the 'open padlock' s for his capital letter. However, his closed s can look very like a small capital b.
			There are three forms of r, and each has a 'closed' and an 'open' version. The first is a version of the bookhand r. The second is the long r .The third is the 2-shaped r.
			The 'open' versions of the first two of these could cause confusion, especially with v and y. The 'open' version of the 2-shaped r shows where our cursive r comes from.

He uses y, but does not use þ. However, he does have a z, like a 3.

Do not mix up:

e	d	s	s	b
v	r	r	y	n
w	lb	ll	x	p

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This piece displays an almost complete range of Capital Letters:

A	B	C	D	E	F	G
H	I/J	K	L	M	N	O
P	R	S	T	W	Y

Notice that there are:

			several versions of D, two of which you could mistake for S.
		And two versions of N, one of which has been squashed into the space before a capital A in line 2, presumably because the scribe made a mistake. The person is John Nappytt.

Don't mix up:
	R with K:						C with T:
	B with E:						M with Y or aj:

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© MEG TWYCROSS 1999