--- In qalam@yahoogroups.com, "Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@...> wrote:

> "Ancient Writing and its Influence" by B.L. Ullman discusses the
> history of the Latin script and the development of lowercase in
> great detail. You can usually find a copy fairly cheap on
> abebooks.com.
>
> Basically, there were capital letters, then as people wrote more,
> and also more quickly, they started developing cursive forms, and
> ligatures, and so on. Many different styles emerged, including
> uncial and so-called "half-uncial", often using what we would
> recognize as minuscule forms. There were national hands all over
> Europe, etc. Eventually it all came down to Carolingian Humanist
> script, which spread all over the continent and supplanted just
> about all the existing national hands (except the "Gothic" in
> Germany and a bit in England, and the uncial in Ireland).

Well, the 'Gothic' or Blackletter was developed from the Carolingian
script. A strange feature of it is that its uppercase letters aren't
the capitalis, but the uncials. In the renaissance, the humanist just
reintroduced the Carolingian minuscules, because there were so many
Latin manuscripts in that letter.

gry@...:
j. 'mach' wust