spread to Germany and the British Isles in the late 7th and early 8th centuries and to France in the late 8th century. In manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries, ae, æ, and ę are all common. By the 10th century the e caudata had mostly replaced the digraph ae, and it remained the most common way of representing the phoneme ae until the 12th century. However, its use remained uneven, as it was used less frequently in texts which used fewer abbreviations for the sake of greater clarity or formality, such as those written in Carolingian minuscule. E-caudata-like diacritics were also sometimes used on ligatures including an e; for instance, the letters aet were sometimes represented by an ampersand with a loop or hook under it, or the letters quae by the abbreviation for que with a loop or hook under it. In the 12th century, the e caudata started to be replaced by the plain e, which from then until the Renaissance remained the most common way of representing the phoneme ae in manuscripts. In the Renaissance, the e caudata, along with the ligature æ and the digraph ae, was reintroduced by humanists as part of an attempt to return to a more classical writing system, since they believed that the 11th and 12th century manuscripts they read were actually ancient Roman. The e caudata was introduced on this basis by Coluccio Salutati and was used frequently in humanist minuscule and occasionally in Gothic script during the Renaissance. References External links CELT, a corpus of Celtic texts Latin-script ligatures Latin letters with diacritics Old Norse Palaeographic letters Vowel letters de:Ę