A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is a, plural aes. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type.
Digamma or wau is an archaic letter of the Greek alphabet. It originally stood for the sound but it has remained in use principally as a Greek numeral for 6. Whereas it was originally called waw or wau, its most common appellation in classical Greek is digamma; as a numeral, it was called episēmon during the Byzantine era and is now known as stigma after the Byzantine ligature combining σ-τ as ϛ.
The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions, it forms the Latin script that is used to write many modern European languages, including English. With modifications, it is also used for other alphabets, such as the Vietnamese alphabet. Its modern repertoire is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet.
Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic handwriting. It is concerned with the forms and processes of writing; not the textual content of documents. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria.
The ampersand, also known as the and sign, is the logogram &, representing the conjunction "and". It originated as a ligature of the letters et—Latin for "and".
Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It is thought to have originated before AD 778 at the scriptorium of the Benedictine monks of Corbie Abbey, about 150 km (93 mi) north of Paris, and then developed by Alcuin of York for wide use in the Carolingian Renaissance. Alcuin himself still wrote in a script which was a precursor the Carolingian minuscule, which slowly developed over three centuries. He was most likely responsible for copying and preserving the manuscripts and upkeep of the script. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, pagan and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule.
The alphabet for Modern English is a Latin-script alphabet consisting of 26 letters, each having an upper- and lower-case form. The word alphabet is a compound of the first two letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta. The alphabet originated around the 7th century to write Old English from Latin script. Since then, letters have been added or removed to give the current letters:
Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish languages until the 1870s, Latvian language until the 1930s, and for the German language until the 1940s, when Hitler's distaste for what he or members of his party claimed was a "Jewish-influenced" script saw it officially discontinued in 1941. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is incorrectly referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is sometimes referred to as Old English, but it is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc. Along with Italic type and Roman type, blackletter served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.
The r rotunda ⟨ ꝛ ⟩, "rounded r", is a historical calligraphic variant of the minuscule (lowercase) letter Latin r used in full script-like typefaces, especially blackletters.
Roman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old cursive and new cursive.
The Mandaic alphabet is thought to have evolved between the second and seventh century CE from either a cursive form of Aramaic or from Inscriptional Parthian. The exact roots of the script are difficult to determine. It was developed by members of the Mandaean faith of Lower Mesopotamia to write the Mandaic language for liturgical purposes. Classical Mandaic and its descendant Neo-Mandaic are still in limited use. The script has changed very little over centuries of use.
Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic kingdom in Hispania. Its more limiting alternative designations littera toletana and littera mozarabica associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively.
Merovingian script or Gallo-Roman script was a medieval variant of the Latin script so called because it was developed in Gaul during the Merovingian dynasty. It was used in the 7th and 8th centuries before the Carolingian dynasty and the development of Carolingian minuscule.
The Avestan alphabet is a writing system developed during Iran's Sasanian era (226–651 CE) to render the Avestan language.
Saint Alfanus I or Alfano I was the archbishop of Salerno from 1058 until his death. He was famed as a translator, writer, theologian, and medical doctor.
Greek ligatures are graphic combinations of the letters of the Greek alphabet that were used in medieval handwritten Greek and in early printing. Ligatures were used in the cursive writing style and very extensively in later minuscule writing. There were dozens of conventional ligatures. Some of them stood for frequent letter combinations, some for inflectional endings of words, and some were abbreviations of entire words.
Elias Avery Lowe, originally surnamed Loew, and known in print as E. A. Lowe, was a Lithuanian-American palaeographer at the University of Oxford and Princeton University. He was a lecturer, and then reader, at the University of Oxford from 1913 to 1936, and a professor at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study from 1936.
Long i, written ⟨ꟾ⟩, is a variant of the letter i found in ancient and early medieval forms of the Latin script.
The Palmyrene alphabet was a historical Semitic alphabet used to write Palmyrene Aramaic. It was used between 100 BCE and 300 CE in Palmyra in the Syrian desert. The oldest surviving Palmyrene inscription dates to 44 BCE. The last surviving inscription dates to 274 CE, two years after Palmyra was sacked by Roman Emperor Aurelian, ending the Palmyrene Empire. Use of the Palmyrene language and script declined, being replaced with Greek and Latin.
Atenulf was the Abbot of Montecassino from 1011 until his death. He was a cousin of Prince Pandulf II of Capua, a younger son of Prince Pandulf III and brother of Prince Pandulf IV.
