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From the sixth century a book hand called the "Insular half Uncial", these guys, they
are luscious. The book of Kells, here is the back cover to the book of Kells this is the
initial letter "P" o.k. we could conceivably call this a versal. Look at the unbelievable
elaboration of this, I can't even begin to tell you how long this must have taken and
how many people must have worked on this. There's the design, there's the first you
have to you have to get the sheep or the goat and kill them and and fix the skins and then
you have to make all the paints and then you have to have all the very special tools and
you have to design this thing and then you have to paint it in. It's just an extraordinary
piece and way down here is some little tiny lettering and this is the lettering that I
want to show you now. It's quite wonderful but keep in mind once again right what I'm
going to show you is a very generic idea of what the Insular half Uncial character is
so you mustn't, I guess what I mean to say is you mustn't take me too literally. The
there's an interesting thing that's happening with the "A" and that is that is has what
is called a "pulled curve" so that's the first stroke of the "A" maybe it goes around to
about there and then it goes like this. It's basically and then it comes around like this
and then it comes off like that so it's a bit odd looking. It's basically you can consider
this well it's still pretty much considered capitals even though it's starting to look
more like small letters, now. It's sort of half way in between.