page_title: R
section_title: Cursive
hierarchical_section_title: R / History / Cursive
caption_attribution_description: English: Excerpt of a page from: William Caslon I (1692-1766), William Caslon &amp; Son's Specimen. Printed 1763 in London. Showing several specimens of the r rotunda. Information according to: Updike, Daniel Berkeley: Printing Type – their History, Forms, and Use. Boston (USA), 1922. Vol. II, p. 104/105. Scan taken from: ibid., insertion after p. 106.
context_page_description: R or r is the 18th letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is ar, plural ars, or in Ireland or.
context_section_description: The minuscule (lowercase) form (r) developed through several variations on the capital form. 
  Along with Latin minuscule writing in general, it developed  ultimately from Roman cursive via the uncial script of Late Antiquity into the Carolingian minuscule of the 9th century.
  In handwriting, it was common not to close the bottom of the loop but continue into the leg, saving an extra pen stroke. The loop-leg stroke shortened into the simple arc used in the Carolingian minuscule and until today.
  A calligraphic minuscule r, known as r rotunda (ꝛ), was used in the sequence or, bending the shape of the r to accommodate the bulge of the o (as in oꝛ as opposed to or). Later, the same variant was also used where r followed other lower case letters with a rounded loop towards the right (such as b, h, p) and to write the geminate rr (as ꝛꝛ). Use of r rotunda was mostly tied to blackletter typefaces, and the glyph fell out of use along with blackletter fonts in English language contexts mostly by the 18th century.
  Insular script used a minuscule which retained two downward strokes, but which did not close the loop ("Insular r", ꞃ); this variant survives in the Gaelic type popular in Ireland until the mid-20th century (but now mostly limited to decorative purposes).
caption: 18th-century example of use of r rotunda in English blackletter typography
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