palaeography Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

, a minim is a short, vertical stroke used in handwriting. The word is derived from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...

''minimum'', meaning ''least'' or ''smallest''. A minim is the basic stroke for the letters i, m, n, and u in uncial script and later scripts deriving from it. Parts of other letters are based on minims as well: when a minim is extended above the line, it becomes an '' ascender'', as in the letters d and b, and when it is extended below the line, it becomes a ''

descender In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v' ...

'', as in the letters p and q. It is a ''stem'' when it forms only part of a letter, such as r. Minims often have a connecting stroke which makes it clear that they form an m, n, etc.; however, in

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

scripts, also known as especially in late examples, minims may connect to each other with only a hair line stroke making it difficult for modern readers to tell what letter is meant. A 13th-century example of this is: ("the smallest mimes of the gods of snow do not wish at all in their life that the great duty of the defences of the wine be diminished"). In Gothic script this would look almost like a series of single strokes (this problem eventually led to a dotted and separate letters and ).

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old Englis ...

scribes adopted a practice of replacing before , , or with in order to break up the sequence of minims. The resulting spellings have persisted into modern times in words such as ''come'', ''honey'', and ''love'', where an ''o'' stands for a short ''ŭ''. This is the reason

Richard Coates Richard Coates (born 16 April 1949, in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and educated at Wintringham School) is an English linguist. He was Professor of Linguistics (alternatively Professor of Onomastics) at the University of the West of England, Bristo ...

gave, in his 1998 article, for 'LOndon' changing its spelling from . Gothic minims may have various decorations (essentially

serif In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...

s), from a simple initial headstroke, to large diamond-shaped ''finials'' at the top and bottom, such as in , the most decorated form of Gothic. , literally "textualis without feet", has minims with no finials at all, while has round finials.

References

{{reflist, refs= {{cite journal , last1=Meyer , first1=Wilhelm , title=Die Buchstaben-Verbindungen der sogenannten gothischen Schrift , journal=Abhandlungen der königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaft zu Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse , series=Neue Folge , year=1897 , volume=I , issue=6 , pages=97 {{cite book , url=http://dingo.sbs.arizona.edu/~hharley/PDFs/WordsBook/Chapter8b.pdf , title=A Linguistic Introduction to English Words , publisher=Blackwell , author=Harley, Heidi , year=2003 , pages=293 Ch. 8, p. 293.] {{cite book , title=Spell It Out: The Singular Story of English Spelling , publisher=Profile Books , author=Crystal, David , year=2012 , pages=107–8 , author-link=David Crystal Palaeography