W. M. Lindsay, An Introduction to Latin Textual Emendation

---

Letters confused in other scripts

In Irish or Anglo-Saxon script the most readily confused letters are r, n, s. The g is often mistaken by copyists for z. Subscript i (see above) is particularly common in this script.

The Lombard form of a, not unknown in Caroline minuscule, is easily confused with cc or oc; the Lombard (and Visigothic) t with ot or at, or ai or it; the k with lc or hc.

The Visigothic g looks like a ligature of cí. A form of t closely resembles a.

In the Merovingian script the characters are so rudely and irregularly formed that the possibilities of confusion are very numerous, as numerous almost as in the early Roman cursive hand which we find in the graffiti of Pompeii. There is a great temptation for an editor, puzzled with the variety of mistakes in the MSS. of a classical author, to solve the difficulty by the hypothesis that the archetype, if a mediaeval MS., was in Merovingian script, or, if of much earlier date, was in early Roman cursive.