half-uncial, or "Irish majuscule": the most formal; became reserved for rubrics (highlighted directions) and other displays after the 9th century. Insular hybrid minuscule: the most formal of the minuscules, came to be used for formal church books when use of the "Irish majuscule" diminished. Insular set minuscule Insular cursive minuscule Insular current minuscule: the least formal; current here means ‘running’ (rapid). Brown has also postulated two phases of development for this script, Phase II being mainly influenced by Roman Uncial examples, developed at Wearmouth-Jarrow and typified by the Lindisfarne Gospels. Usage Insular script was used not only for Latin religious books, but also for every other kind of book, including vernacular works. Examples include the Book of Kells, the Cathach of St. Columba, the Ambrosiana Orosius, the Durham Gospel Fragment, the Book of Durrow, the Durham Gospels, the Echternach Gospels, the Lindisfarne Gospels, the Lichfield Gospels, the St. Gall Gospel Book, and the Book of Armagh. Insular script was influential in the development of Carolingian minuscule in the scriptoria of the Carolingian empire. In Ireland, Insular script was superseded in 850 by Late Insular script; in England, it was followed by a form of Caroline minuscule. The Tironian et — equivalent of ampersand (&) — was in widespread use in the script (meaning agus ‘and’ in Irish and ond ‘and’ in Old English) and is occasionally continued in modern Gaelic typefaces derived from Insular script. Unicode Unicode treats representation of letters of the Latin alphabet written in insular script as a typeface choice that needs no separate coding. Only a few Insular letters have specific code-points because they are used by phonetic specialists. To render the full alphabet correctly, a suitable display font should be chosen. To display the specialist characters, there are several fonts that may be used; three free ones that support these characters are Junicode, Montagel, and Quivira. Gentium and Charis SIL support the alphabetic letters (U+A77x and U+A78x). According to Michael Everson, in the 2006 Unicode proposal for these characters: See also Carolingian minuscule Gaelic type Hiberno-Saxon art Insular G Latin delta Tironian et Irish orthography List of Hiberno-Saxon illustrated manuscripts References Sources O'Neill, Timothy. The Irish Hand: Scribes and Their Manuscripts From the Earliest Times. Cork: Cork University Press, 2014. Further reading 'Manual of Latin Palaeography' (A comprehensive PDF file containing 82 pages profusely illustrated, June 2014). External links Pfeffer Mediæval An Insular minuscule as