Script Analysis - The Ductus on Graph Paper II

I'm gradually proceeding.

It's actually quite hard to do this.

I'm learning a lot about the letters as I go along.

For instance

• the F and long S are composed of an L, with a quadrant attached to the top (and here I thought it was a 45 degree slope - it's not - it's the rounded shape of the top of the L joining to the side of the quadrant)

• the S is actually 8 mm tall! (not 7 mm the x-height of all the other letters. I've checked on all the pages I've got. It's just that little bit taller!

• I really can't do Half R's.

Choices on Variants of basic letter shapes

I'm having to make some choices as I go along to provide some sort of standardisation.

• The quadrant shapes are either straight or slightly bowed. I'm going with the slightly bowed shape (I went back and adjusted some of the quadrants on the earlier letters I'd done - more white out!~)

a straight (ish) quadrant (right hand side, top)









a bowed, or curved, quadrant

• I've noticed that the descender of the P is slightly pulled to the left in some cases. I'm going with a straight descender.

and are both examples of pulling to the left.

The pulling on the example on the right is more due to the thickening of the vertical. I'll dissect the anatomy of the thickened verticals in a later post.

• The shape of the ascender varies - either a split ascender or a split ascender with a horizontal line going across it's base. I like the second option

Split ascender








split, but more horizontal serif on the ascender.

• The descenders do the same thing - they have more or less splitting. That can be seen in the images of the two Ps above. It's really only the descenders of the Ps and Qs that this applies to - they are the only ones that finish in a non-diamond or non-flourished vertical descender.

• I realised that the long S has the 'drip' that fills the vacant space to it's right

(shown here with a wobble on it's drip). Therefore it wouldn't also need the curved serif that I was talking about in a recent post that the script seems to have to fill the vacant space on other letters (ie
I wonder if the F should have a drip as well, instead of a serif like the one shown above. I'm a bit low on examples of F's.