Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of Insular script typefaces devised for printing Classical Gaelic. It was widely used from the 16th until the mid-18th century (Scotland) or the mid-20th century (Ireland) but is now rarely used. Sometimes, all Gaelic typefaces are called Celtic or uncial although most Gaelic types are not uncials. The "Anglo-Saxon" types of the 17th century are included in this category because both the Anglo-Saxon types and the Gaelic/Irish types derive from the insular manuscript hand. The terms Gaelic type, Gaelic script and Irish character translate the Irish phrase (). In Ireland, the term is used in opposition to the term , Roman type. The Scottish Gaelic term is (). (–1770) was one of the last Scottish writers with the ability to write in this script, but his main work, , was published in the Roman script. Characteristics Besides the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet, Gaelic typefaces must include all vowels with acute accents as well as a set of consonants with dot above , and the Tironian sign et , used for 'and' in Irish. Gaelic typefaces also often include insular forms: of the letters and , and some of the typefaces contain a number of ligatures used in earlier Gaelic typography and deriving from the manuscript tradition. Lower-case is drawn without a dot (though it is not the Turkish dotless ), and the letters have insular shapes . Many modern Gaelic typefaces include Gaelic letterforms for the letters , and typically provide support for at least the vowels of the other Celtic languages. They also distinguish between and (as did traditional typography), though some modern fonts replace the ampersand with the Tironian note ostensibly because both mean 'and'. Origin The Irish uncial alphabet originated in medieval manuscripts as an "insular" variant of the Latin alphabet. The first Gaelic typeface was designed in 1571 for a catechism commissioned by Elizabeth I to help attempt to convert the Irish Catholic population to Anglicanism. Use Typesetting in Gaelic script remained common in Ireland until the mid-20th century. Gaelic script is today used merely for decorative typesetting; for example, a number of traditional Irish newspapers still print their name in Gaelic script on the first page, and it is also popular for pub signs, greeting cards, and display advertising. Edward Lhuyd's grammar of the Cornish language used Gaelic-script consonants