Old English Latin alphabet

The Old English Latin alphabet (Old English: Læden stæfrof) generally consisted of 24 letters, and was used for writing Old English from the 8th to the 12th centuries. Of these letters, 20 were directly adopted from the Latin alphabet, two were modified Latin letters (Æ, Ð), and two developed from the runic alphabet (Ƿ, Þ). The letters K, Q, and Z were not in the spelling of native English words.

Majuscule forms (also called uppercase or capital letters)
AÆBCDÐEFꝽ/GHILMNOPRSTÞUǷXY
Minuscule forms (also called lowercase or small letters)
aæbcdðefᵹ/ghilmnoprs/ſtþuƿxy
A table entitled "The Saxon-Alphabet" on the last page of John Fortescue's The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy (1st ed., 1714)[1] The first column ("Figure") of the table shows the letters of the Old English Latin alphabet, and the second column ("Power") their modern equivalents.

Old English was first written in runes (futhorc) but shifted to a (minuscule) half-uncial script of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish Christian missionaries[2] from around the 8th century. This was replaced by Insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. This was used until the end of the 12th century when continental Carolingian minuscule (also known as Caroline) replaced the insular, along with a shift in spelling conventions toward the Old French alphabet, leading to Middle English.

The letter ðæt ⟨ð⟩ (called eth or edh in modern English) was an alteration of Latin ⟨d⟩, and the runic letters thorn ⟨þ⟩ and wynn ⟨ƿ⟩ are borrowings from futhorc. Also used was a symbol for the conjunction and, a character similar to the number seven (⟨⁊⟩, called a Tironian et or ond), and a symbol for the relative pronoun þæt, a thorn with a crossbar through the ascender (⟨ꝥ⟩). Macrons ⟨¯⟩ over vowels were rarely used to indicate long vowels, but it was also used occasionally as a nasal indicator (sort of like a tilde) if the vowel was succeeded by an s (ms or ns would turn into ◌̄s).

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References
  1. John Fortescue (1714), The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy: As it More Particularly Regards the English Constitution. Being a Treatise Written by Sir John Fortescue, Kt. Lord Chief Justice, and Lord High Chancellor of England, under King Henry VI. Faithfully Transcribed from the MS. Copy in the Bodleian Library, and Collated with Three Other MSS. Publish'd with some Remarks by John Fortescue-Aland, of the Inner-Temple, Esq; F.R.S. (1st ed.), London: John Fortescue Aland; printed by W[illiam] Bowyer in White-Fryars, for E. Parker at the Bible and Crown in Lombard-Street, and T. Ward in the Inner-Temple-Lane, OCLC 642421515.
  2. Crystal, David (1987). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press. p. 203. ISBN 0-521-26438-3.

Bibliography
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