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| The History of l (2) |
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| In the document hands and later cursive book hands, there are variants on the treatment of the ascender and foot of l, with a tendency for the letter to be looped in the more informal cursive hands, while the more formal hands may add extraneous little flourishes. |
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In this formal protogothic example of a document hand from the 12th century, l is slightly curved, with a wedged top and fine diagonal base. |
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In a less formally scribed writ of the reign of Henry II, the letter l is simple, straight and angular. |
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A calligraphic charter of the 13th century displays a straight and simple l with a rounded base. |
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In this example of cursiva anglicana, which first appeared in the 13th century, the curved ascender of l has a fine split at the top and a fiddly little foot. |
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In this formal ecclesiastical charter of the 13th century, the letter l forms a sort of wiggly curve. |
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In this example of the formal English chancery hand of the 13th century, based on cursiva anglicana, there are two quite different versions of l present. One is a very simple broad cursive loop. The other has the fiddly split ascender, giving a sort of palm tree efect, as is found in other tall letters in this script. |
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This example of l from an early 13th century writ has a simple curved ascender with an angular hairline base. |
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This 14th century example of l from a French cursive document hand is a simple, single penstroke, cursive loop. |
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In this early 14th century cursive English book hand the l is looped, but with a more formal, angular quality. |
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This example from an English 15th century charter is the simple cursive loop. |
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In another 15th century charter, the letter has an angled loop and a little fiddly foot. |
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This example of l from a formal and mannered version of French bâtarde script has a looped ascender and a formal curly foot. |
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In the later English chancery hand, as shown here from an Elizabethan document of conservative penmanship and formal quality, l has a simple but elegantly angular loop, but is done in cursive style without a foot. The letter is very tall. |
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In this genealogical document of late 15th or early 16th century, l has a simple rounded loop, but sports a little foot. |
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In this endorsement on a mid 15th century petition to the English chancery, l is a short and simple loop. |
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In this cursive hand of the 16th century, the letter l is a simple sloping cursive loop. |
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Humanistic book hands, as usual, reverted to the simple form derived from Caroline minuscule. |
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In this example from a 15th century Italian book hand, l is plain and neat, with a shot angular foot. |
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This 16th century example dates from after the advent of printing and is equipped with little blocky serifs and a hairline foot. |
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| It is a bit intriguing that a letter with such a simple underlying form as l should be able to appear in some many variants. It is generally not a hard letter to recognise, once you are aware of the general particualrities of the script under examination. |
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 Histories of Individual Letters |
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History of Scripts |
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| What is Paleography? |
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