Writing innovations

IFITWERENOTFORMEDIEVALS
CRIBESWEMIGHTHAVETOREAD
SENTENCESLIKETHIS

During the late 700's and the 800's, medieval scribes in what are now France and western Germany made improvements on the ancient Greek and Roman styles of writing in use at that time. For example, while the Greeks and Romans ran words together, as in the example above, medieval scribes separated words with spaces. They also used capital and small letters and established a system of punctuation. These innovations made reading much easier.

Excerpt adapted from the "Manuscript" article, The World Book Encyclopedia © 1999