Editing Palaeography (section)

=== Byzantine period ===
{{See also|Byzantine text-type}}
[[File:Codex Alexandrinus 1 Tim 3,16.jpg|thumb|left|Section of the [[Codex Alexandrinus]], the oldest Greek witness of the Byzantine text in the [[Gospel]]s]]
The cursive hand of the 4th century shows some uncertainty of character. Side by side with the style founded on the [[Chancery hand]], regular in formation and with tall and narrow letters, which characterised the period of [[Diocletian]], and lasted well into the century, we find many other types mostly marked by a certain looseness and irregularity. A general progress towards a florid and sprawling hand is easily recognisable, but a consistent and deliberate style was hardly evolved before the 5th century, from which unfortunately few dated documents have survived. [[Byzantine text-type|Byzantine]] cursive tends to an exuberant hand, in which the long strokes are excessively extended and individual letters often much enlarged. But not a few hands of the 5th and 6th centuries are truly handsome and show considerable technical accomplishment. Both an upright and a sloping type occur and there are many less ornamental hands, but there gradually emerged towards the 7th century two general types, one (especially used in letters and contracts) a current hand, sloping to the right, with long strokes in such characters at {{angbr|τ}}, {{angbr|ρ}}, {{angbr|ξ}}, {{angbr|η}} (which has the <big>h</big> shape), {{angbr|ι}}, and {{angbr|κ}}, and with much linking of letters, and another (frequent in accounts), which shows, at least in essence, most of the forms of the later minuscule. (cf. [[#Minuscule Hand|below]].) This is often upright, though a slope to the right is quite common, and sometimes, especially in one or two documents of the early [[Arabic alphabet|Arabic]] period, it has an almost [[calligraphic]] effect.

In the Byzantine period, the book-hand, which in earlier times had more than once approximated to the contemporary cursive, diverged widely from it.<ref name="Bell" />