This was replaced by Insular script, a cursive and pointed version of the half-uncial script. 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 from around the 8th century. The Middle English manuscripts Stowe MS 57 and Cotton Titus D 18 do not present the letters in the exact same order, but both place the non-standard Latin letters at the end of the alphabet.Ī table entitled "The Saxon-Alphabet" on the last page of John Fortescue's The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy (1st ed., 1714) The first column ("Figure") of the table shows the letters of the Old English Latin alphabet, and the second column ("Power") their modern equivalents. The letters J, Q, V, W and Z were essentially left unused outside of foreign names, while the letter K was used by some writers but not by others. Of these letters, most were directly adopted from the Latin alphabet, two were modified Latin letters ( Æ, Ð), and two developed from the runic alphabet ( Ƿ, Þ).
The Old English Latin alphabet generally consisted of about 24 letters, and was used for writing Old English from the 8th to the 12th centuries.
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