Script Type : minuscule
Date : Late 8th century
Location : Germany
Function : book hand
Distinctive letters : This script has been identified with the term Germanic minuscule and comes from the abbey of Lorsch. It is quite neat, and superficially resembles the later Caroline minuscule, until you look closely at some of the letter forms. The letter a, for example, is open at the top, while g appears in both the open and closed forms. Ascenders and descenders tend to be tall and relatively straight. Only the long s is used, but it is shorter than other tall letters, while t is short.
The letter d is tall and straight when it appears in text, but has the backsloping form when it is used in Roman numerals.
The letters u and v are identical.
There are no examples of j, w, y or z.
The
real trick comes with the use of ligatures,
which not only alter the appearance of letters but also seem to break
up the word spacing in funny ways. These particularly involve the use
of e as in 
ec or 
en or
er or 
et or 
ex.
Pass the cursor slowly along a few lines of text to get a bit of an idea of it. To investigate it in greater detail, proceed to the paleography exercises.
Script
Index Paleography
exercises using Flash
Requires at least the Flash 5 plugin
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