Semi-uncial

Uncial is a majuscule Glaister, Geoffrey Ashall. (1996) ''Encyclopedia of the Book''. 2nd edn. New Castle, DE, and London: Oak Knoll Press & The British Library, p. 494. script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic and Coptic.

Development

Early uncial script most likely developed from late rustic capitals. Early forms are characterized by broad single-stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of the new parchment and vellum surfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple-stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus. In the oldest examples of uncial, such as the fragment of '' De bellis macedonicis'' in the British Library, of the late 1st-early 2nd century, all of the letters are disconnected from one another, and word separation is typically not used. Word separation, however, is characteristic of later uncial usage.

As the script evolved over the centuries, the characters became more complex. Specifically, around AD 600, flourishes and exaggerations of the basic strokes began to appear in more manuscripts. Ascenders and descenders were the first major alterations, followed by twists of the tool in the basic stroke and overlapping. By the time the more compact minuscule scripts arose circa AD 800, some of the evolved uncial styles formed the basis for these simplified, smaller scripts. There are over 500 surviving copies of uncial script, by far the largest number prior to the Carolingian Renaissance. Uncial was still used, particularly for copies of the Bible, until around the 10th century outside of Ireland. The insular variant of uncial remained the standard script used to write the Irish language until the middle of the 20th century.

Forms

In general, there are some common features of uncial script:

* , , , , are relatively narrow.
* , and are relatively broad; is formed with curved strokes (although a straight first stroke may indicate an early script), and is written as to distinguish it from and .
* is formed with a curved stroke, and its arm (or ''hasta'') does not connect with the top curve; the height of the arm can also indicate the age of the script (written in a high position, the script is probably early, while an arm written closer to the middle of the curve may indicate a later script).
* has a small base, not extending to the right to connect with the next letter.
* has a long, curved shoulder , often connecting with the next letter.
* resembles (and is the ancestor of) the "long s" ; in uncial it looks more like than .

In later uncial scripts, the letters are sometimes drawn haphazardly; for example, runs together at the baseline, bows (for example in , , ) do not entirely curve in to touch their stems, and the script is generally not written as cleanly as previously.

National styles

Due to its extremely widespread use, in Byzantine, African, Italian, French, Spanish, and "insular" (Irish, Welsh, and English) centres, there were many slightly different styles in use:

*African (i.e. Roman North African) uncial is more angular than other forms of uncial. In particular, the bow of the letter is particularly sharp and pointed.
*Byzantine uncial has two unique features: "b-d uncial" uses forms of and , which are closer to half-uncial (see below), and was in use in the 4th and 5th centuries; "b-r" uncial, in use in the 5th and 6th centuries, has a form of that is twice as large as the other letters, and an with a bow resting on the baseline and the stem extending below the baseline.
*Italian uncial has round letters (, , etc.) with flatter tops, and with a sharp bow (as in African uncial), an almost horizontal rather than vertical stem in , and forked finials (i.e., serifs in some letters such as , , and ).
*Insular uncial (not to be confused with the separate Insular script) generally has definite word separation, and accent marks over stressed syllables, probably because Irish scribes did not speak a language descended from Latin. They also use specifically Insular scribal abbreviations not found in other uncial forms, use wedge-shaped finial