2. Introduction In the year 768, Charlemagne became the King of the Franks and by 800, he was Emperor of the West. He was very interested in the growth of writing and book-making, but desired the presence of a legible, standard script that could be used throughout the empire. He called upon Alcuin, an English monk educated at the cathedral school in York, to develop this script. By 789, all books, religious texts and legal records were written in this script, known as Carolingian.
3. Carolingian Script(also known as Carolingian Miniscule, Caroline Half Uncial, Caroline Miniscule and Tours Minuscule.) The hallmark trait of Carolingian script is its legibility. Scribes took care to separate both individual letters and words (with some cursive convenience). It also features rounded curves and ascenders/descenders decreased in length in order to facilitate easier writing and reading. We have retained all of the letters used in Carolingian script with the exception of the tall “S” character.
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5. The descender of p was the same length as the bowl. The same is true for the ascender of the letter b.
17. Proto-Gothic Script This transitional script was used during the 11th and 12th centuries, particularly for administrative documents. As the demand for university textbooks grew, scribes sought to fit more words on the page and to do so in less time. The script became less rounded and more condensed.
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19. The half r began to follow letters other than oand W.
28. The appearance of g, as it grows more compact begins to look like 8.
29. Small s at the end of words.Excerpt from The Solid Form of Language by Robert Bringhurst (2004).
30. Versals and Conjoining In Proto-Gothic script, versals and conjoining became increasingly more popular. Versals were rounded capital letters with swelling curves and straight, narrow middle strokes. Conjoining or butting between letters such as be, bo, od, og, oo, pe, and po was used as a means of conserving space on the page.
31. Early Gothic Script Early Gothic, or litteramoderna emphasized word uniformity and more text in less space to reduce both time and cost. Scribes writing this script either shortened the letter height and used a narrow pen, or wrote letters using the same height and pen, but with a narrower width. The latter was preferred. There was no clean transition from Carolingian to Gothic script. It happened at different times throughout different countries and was a slow, unordered shift.
37. The left leg of x extended below the minim and beneath the base of the preceding letter.
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39. Capital letters took traits from Roman Square, Roman Rustic, and Uncial and exaggerated the lines of round strokes broader at their widest point and the vertical mid-strokes were narrowed. For large letters, the mid-strokes were often eliminated entirely so as not to appear too heavy.
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42. W, y, and z became permanent alphabet letters.
