Унциальное письмо: История и особенности древней письменности.

Capital letter only writing system in Greek and Latin

Uncial is a majuscule script (written entirely in capital letters) commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for Coptic and Nobiin.

Early uncial script most likely developed from late rustic capitals. Early forms are characterized by broad single stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of the new parchment and vellum surfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus. In the oldest examples of uncial, such as the fragment of De bellis macedonicis in the British Library, of the late 1st–early 2nd centuries, all of the letters are disconnected from one another, and word separation is typically not used. Word separation, however, is characteristic of later uncial usage. As the script evolved over the centuries, the characters became more complex. Specifically, around AD 600, flourishes and exaggerations of the basic strokes began to appear in more manuscripts. Ascenders and descenders were the first major alterations, followed by twists of the tool in the basic stroke and overlapping. By the time the more compact minuscule scripts arose circa AD 800, some of the evolved uncial styles formed the basis for these simplified, smaller scripts. There are over 500 surviving copies of uncial script; by far the larger number of these predate the Carolingian Renaissance. Uncial was still used, particularly for copies of the Bible, until around the 10th century outside of Ireland. The insular variant of uncial remained the standard script used to write the Irish language until the middle of the 20th century.

There is some doubt about the original meaning of the word. Uncial itself probably comes from St. Jerome's preface to the Book of Job, where it is found in the form uncialibus, but it is possible that this is a misreading of inicialibus (though this makes little sense in the context), and Jerome may have been referring to the larger initial letters found at the beginning of paragraphs. Habeant qui volunt veteres libros, vel in membranis purpureis auro argentoque descriptos, vel uncialibus ut vulgo aiunt litteris onera magis exarata quam codices. "Let those who so desire have old books, or books written in gold and silver on purple parchment, or burdens {rather than books} written in uncial letters, as they are popularly called." In classical Latin uncialis could mean both "inch high" and "weighing an ounce", and it is possible that Jerome was punning on this; he may conceivably also have been playing with the other meaning of codex, "block of wood". he used it to distinguish what seemed like a cut down version of uncial in the famous Codex Basilicanus of Hilary, which contains sections in each of the two types of script. The terminology was continued in the mid 18th century by René Prosper Tassin and Charles François Toustain. Despite the common and well fixed usage, half uncial is a poor name to the extent that it suggests some organic debt to regular uncial, though both types share features inherited from their ancient source, capitalis rustica. It was first used around the 3rd century (if we don't consider its earliest example a transitional variant of the rustic script, as Leonard Boyle did) and remained in use until the end of the 8th century. The early forms of half uncial were used for pagan authors and Roman legal writing, while in the 6th century the script came to be used in Africa and Europe (but not as often in insular centres) to transcribe Christian texts.