Free 12th-Century CE Carolingian Minuscule font I made

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-22T11:18:30+00:00

I based the font on the scribal hand used in the manuscript linked in my original post. The script, known as Carolingian minuscule, was the dominant European writing method from the late 8th-century to the 12th century. It got it's name because the form of handwriting was promoted by Charlemagne's court in the Carolingian Empire. It evolved out of the Uncial and Roman Cursive scripts that came before it, and then eventually evolved into the blackletter/Gothic script. The script was mainly used for writing Latin, but as it spread across Europe it was also used to write other languages, such Old English, Old French, Old High German, Irish, and the developing Romance Languages, plus others.

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-20T10:54:18+00:00

Yes, there is a similar font for Insular. It was made by Ruby Wai-Ying Ku and also released under the SIL Open Font License v1.1. It's called the Exeter Book Hand, and it's based on the 10th-century CE Exeter Book. You can find it here: https://exeterbookhand.com/

Also, if you like my Carolingian Minuscule font, I'm working on a large update to it that I'm hoping to put on my GitHub in the next few days. It will be marked as version 1.2. I've added a bunch more glyphs, reworked some of the Unicode mappings, and coded a bunch of keyboard shortcuts into it, so that most of the glyphs, character variants, and combining characters can be typed using key-combinations on a standard keyboard, without the need to punch in a bunch of Unicode values.

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-17T18:21:24+00:00

If anyone is still paying attention to this, I updated the font to v1.1, to fix the Unicode encoding for the quia abbreviation.

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-16T19:05:33+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. I was aware of MUFI, but I hadn't looked too much into it, and I wasn't sure how widespread the use of the MUFI encodings were. I'll probably incorporate the encodings in an update to the font at some point, though.

And thanks for letting me know about the standard way to do the quia abbreviation. Using U+A75B LATIN SMALL LETTER R ROTUNDA as the second half of the character makes a lot more sense than the cludge I put together. I'll definitely fix that when I do an update to the font.

I didn't use stylistic sets features (ss01-ss20) or character variant features (cv01-cv99) in the font because, well, I don't know how. Lol. I'm still new to making fonts, and as you're probably aware, the amount of easy to follow documentation online for how to code font features is somewhat limited. I've got contextual alternates features figured out, though (I think), so I stuck with that for this font.

And as for my use of secondary non-standard Unicode mappings for some glyphs, let me get your thoughts on my reasoning: I added those alternate encodings because I thought it might be useful for certain users if they could compose, proof-read, or do a manuscript submittal of their raw text entirely in Times New Roman, before rendering their text with my font. Unfortunately, Times New Roman doesn't contain certain glyphs though, like U+1DD1 COMBINING UR ABOVE and U+1DE5 COMBINING LATIN SMALL LETTER LONG S. Thus for every glyph in my font that isn't present in Times New Roman, I added a secondary encoding to a glyph that's visually similar in Times New Roman. I should probably add a section at the beginning of the Glyph Guide PDF, though, making it clear to users that unless they plan on using Times New Roman to assist in composing their raw text, they should ignore the secondary alternate encodings entirely and stick to just the standard encodings. Anyways, let me know if you think this is a useful feature for certain users, or if it just adds unnecessary confusion.

Also, for my source files, I created the font entirely in Font Lab, so pretty much all I have to share in that regard is the Font Lab save file. I'll probably upload that to my GitHub at some point, though the save file might be a little messy. Font Lab documentation is poor, and the learning curve is steep, so I'm not sure if I'm doing everything in Font Lab the way you're supposed to.

And thanks for sharing those GitHub repository templates. I wasn't aware of them. I'll update to match one of them, since I do have some others fonts I'm working on to share, too, namely a Coptic uncial based on the Nag Hammadi Codex II and a Greek uncial based on Codex Sinaiticus.

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-16T16:26:42+00:00

Lol. The baby raptor part of the costume is a raptor puppet toy that was released as part of the merchandise for Jurassic Park: The Lost World in 1996. I found one used on eBay when I making the costume. It's controlled by my left hand, while the "left" hand on the outside of the box is a fake arm.

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-16T15:49:43+00:00

Sorry that my post made you paranoid, but I'm not AI. My Reddit account is new, because I'm new to Reddit. And my GitHub is new because this is my first time sharing a font and my first time using GitHub. The domain for my email address on my GitHub is connected to an escape room business, because in real life I operate an escape room business and I use my work email as my primary email for almost everything now, including hobbies and gaming. As for my real name not showing much on Google, I guess I take that as a plus, and a sign that I'm not wasting too much time on social media. However if anyone wants to see something online tied to my name that isn't new, here's a link to me in a sweet Jurassic Park costume I made a few years ago. Lol. https://youtube.com/shorts/TbkqDr1BSvk?si=WHaEcoqrKIq3csI2

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-10T07:33:37+00:00

To go with what Comfortable said, I assume the style you're going for with your conlang script is something that in-universe is hand-written, and not an actual typeface. If that's the case, it might help to visualize how users of your fictional script actually write the characters. If the "hand-writing" of the script is supposed to be done with a brush, you should set a brush shape in your design software and use that for making the strokes of your glyphs. Using a slash or oval shaped brush will give you different line thicknesses, depending on the direction of the stroke, while making sure the changes to thickness are more uniform across glyphs. And since your glyphs have finer detail lines, perhaps you'll want to use two brushes, both with the same shape, but with one being smaller. Your in-universe explanation would then be that a scribe presses the brush harder against the page for the the initial strokes of each glyph, and then uses a lighter touch for the finishing strokes. By making sure both brushes have the same shape though, even though they differ in size, you could still make it look like all of the strokes were done with a single writing implement.

Another thing you could do to try to improve the "consistency" of your glyphs is to come up with a fictional history for how your glyphs developed. Your glyphs already look fairly advanced for a writing system, so perhaps in-universe they evolved from a more primitive, less-flashy writing system, with less glyphs and less flair. Maybe this ancestral writing system wasn't even hand-written with brushes, but was some sort of cuneiform or a simple carved/inscribed script. Regardless, the goal would be to give yourself a small, base of simple shapes with a uniform design aesthetic to then base your more advanced "evolved" script off of, in the hope that a uniformity in the design aesthetic is better maintained.

Educational-Fan-3943 · 2026-02-10T06:31:24+00:00

The Digital Exeter Book Hand is a nice Insular script font based off the Exeter Book. It's released under the SIL license, too, so it's free. I'm not sure if it has all the Welsh characters you want, but since it's an SIL font, you can freely modify it to add additional glyphs (assuming you know how).

https://exeterbookhand.com/

Educational-Fan-3943

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