Minim (palaeography)

Minim, a term for short, vertical strokes used in handwriting, comes from a group of scribes employed by the newly conquering Normans of the mid 11th century. The scribes themselves were referred to as minim, and in translating Anglo-Saxon (Old English) records to Norman French, they used a shorthand which came to be called by the same name.

|||||||||| This is a representation of what minim apparently looked like. As confusing and indiscernable as these lines may be, to a minim, the lines read "minim."

|\/| | |\| | |\/| The use of the forward and backward slashes fill in the spaces to assist the modern reader in translation.

Over time, scribes transcribing minim to Norman French requested the minims to provide punctuation and other indications as to where particular vowels and consonants were to appear in the text. Thus, the minims, highly influenced by Latin as well as French, began placing a tittle over "i's" and "j's" and began delineating between the vowel "u" and the consonant "v" by adding a stem to the right hand side of the "u."

These, among other Norman contributions, survive in Modern English.