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Old English
This page covers utilities and codes for Old English characters. See the Scandinavian page
for Old Norse and the Dutch page for information on modern Frisian.

Thanks to Maurice Reed for techincal and testing assistance.

This Page
1. Old English Orthography
2. Browser and Font Recommendations
3. Windows Accent Codes
a. Windows International Keyboard
b. Windows Word 2003/2007 Alt Codes
c. Windows Character Map (Platform Tab)
4. Macintosh OS X Extended Keyboard Codes
5. HTML Accent Codes and Language Codes
a. Language Codes - ang (Old English), enm (Middle English), sco (Scots/Lallans)

Old English Orthography

Old English and Unicode

Old English, like most medieval languages, shows a wide range of diacritic marks and
unusual characters, not all of which may be represented in Unicode. However, most of the
more commonly encountered issues such as long ash, wynn can be displayed within
Unicode.

Scots/Lallans

The language of Scottish poets like Robert Burns (Auld Lang Syne) is called Scots or
Lallans. It is a descendant of Old English and a close relative of Modern English. Scots
preserves some archaic features of Old English including some consonants "ch" /x/ and some
pre vowel shift pronunciations.

Note: Modern Scots uses English spelling, but older texts may use Old English letters.

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Browser and Font Recommendations

Recommended Browsers

Click link in list to view configuration instructions. You will be asked to match a script with a
font.

Firefox
Mozilla
Opera
Safari (Macintosh)

Note on Internet Explorer: Users who prefer Internet Explorer for Windows should set the
Latin font to Arial Unicode MS. Otherwise, some characters may not be displayed properly.

Note on System 9: Because Unicode support is incomplete in System 9, it may be beneficial

to upgrade to OS X if you need to work with Unicode.

Recommended Fonts

Arial Unicode MS (Win)

Lucida Grande (OS X)
TITUS Cyberbit - includes many anciant scripts such as Armenian, Greek, Coptic, Runes,
Ogam and others
Junicode - for medieval scholars, includes Runes and Greek and specialty medieval
characters
Cardo - For classicists
Gentium
Doulos SIL - Includes Greek, Cyrillic

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Windows International Keyboard Codes

In order to use these codes you must activate the international keyboard. Instructions are
listed in the Keyboards section of this Web site.

Note: Some characters like wynn, yogh, and the long vowels must be inserted with the
Character Map utility. or Word 2003 Alt codes.

Character Code
æ, Æ RightAlt+Z, Shift+RightAlt+Z (You must use the Alt key on the right)
ð,Ð RightAlt+D, Shift+RightAlt+D
þ, Þ RightAlt+T, Shift+RightAlt+T

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Windows Word 2003/2007 Alt Codes

If you are using Word 2003 or Word 2007 , you can use the following ALT key plus a
numeric code can be used to type a Latin character (accented letter or punctuation symbol)
in any Windows application. If this is not available, you can use the Character Map to insert
the characters in a master document, then cut and paste as needed.

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Notes on the Codes

These work only in Word 2003 or 2007

You must use the numeric keypad. More detailed instructions about typing accents with ALT
keys are available.
The font in your document must be set to one that includes these characters.

Some recommended fonts include Arial Unicode MS (Win), TITUS Cyberbit, Junicode and
Gentium

Long vowels and y, ash

Word 2003 (Win XP) ALT Codes
Capital Vowels Lower Vowels Consonants
ALT+0256 Cap ALT+0257 Lower ALT+0208 Cap
Ā ā Ð
long A long A eth
ALT+0274 Cap ALT+0275 Lower ALT+0240 Lower
Ē ē ð
long E long E eth
ALT+0298 Cap ALT+0299 Lower ALT+0222 Cap
Ī ī Þ
long I long I Thorn
ALT+0332 Cap ALT+0333 Lower ALT+0254 Lower
Ō ō þ
long O long O Thorn
ALT+0362 Cap ALT+0363 Lower ALT+0503 Cap
Ū ū Ƿ
long U long U Wynn
ALT+0562 Cap ALT+0563 Lower ALT+0447 Lower
Ȳ long Y ȳ ƿ
long Y Wynn
ALT+0198 Cap ALT+0230 Lower ALT+0540 Cap
Æ æ Ȝ
short ash short ash Yogh
ALT+0482 Cap ALT+0483 Lower ALT+0541 Lower
Ǣ long ash ǣ long ash ȝ
Yogh
ALT+0508 Cap ALT+0509 Lower ALT+0266 Cap C
Ǽ ǽ Ċ
ash acute ash acute Dot
ALT+0267 Lower
ċ
C Dot
ALT+0288 Cap G
Ġ
Dot
ALT+0289 Lower
ġ
G Dot

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Macintosh OS X Extended Keyboard Accent Codes

Apple has provided additional keyboards which allow you to enter Old English characters via
Unicode. If you are working with a Unicode aware application such as Microsoft Office 2004,
Text Edit (free with OS X ), Dreamweaver or Netscape 7 Composer /Mozilla Composer you

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can one of several keyboards to input the characters.

For vowels, thorns, eths and superscript dots

You can switch to or the U.S. Extended keyboard or the Extended Roman keyboard (10.2)
and use these additional accent codes.

Codes are listed for the lower case letter, then the capital letter
Character Name Character Code

Option+' (singequote) = lowercase aesc

Ash æ, Æ
Shift+Option+' = capital aesc

Option+T = lowercase thorn

Thorn þ,Þ
Shift+Option+T = capital thorn

Option+D = lowercase eth

Eth ð,Ð
Shift+Option+D = capital thorn

Option+A, V
Macron (Long
Vowel)
ǣ For instance ǣ (long ash), would be Option+A, then
Option+'

Option+W,C
For instance ā (lower g dot), would be Option+W, then
Superscript Dot ċ,ġ
G
Ā (cap g dot), would be Option+W, then Shift+G

For yogh and wynn

You can switch to the Unicode Hex Input keyboard and use these Option numeric codes.
Once entered, these letters can be cut and pasted as needed.

Consonants
Ƿ Option+01F7 Cap Wynn
ƿ Option+01F7 Lower Wynn
Ȝ Option+021C Cap Yogh
ȝ Option+021D Lower Yogh

System 9

For print work, there are a number of freeware and shareware phonetics and classics
fonts. You can check the Summer Institute for Linguistics Fonts in Cyberspace for more
details.

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For the Web, you can use the Unicode numeric codes listed below.

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HTML Accent Codes

Encoding and Language Codes

Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure the proper encoding is specified
in the header tags. Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen
readers parse the language of a page.

Encoding: utf-8 (Unicode)

Language Codes: ang (Old English/Anglo-Saxon), enm (Middle English), sco
(Scots/Lallans)

See Using Encoding and Language Codes for more information on the meaning and
implementation of these codes.

The HTML Entity Codes

Use these codes to input accented letters in HTML. For instance, if you want to type
ġeþwǣre, you would type ġeþǣre. These numbers are also used
with the Word 2003/2007 Alt codes listed above.

NOTE: Your page should declare utf-8 encoding or else the characters may not display in
older browsers. Because these are Unicode characters, the formatting may not exactly
match that of the surrounding text depending on the browser.

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HTML Entity Codes for Old English

Capital Vowels Lower Vowels Consonants
Ā Cap long ā Lower Ð (208) Cap
Ā ā Ð
A long A eth
Ē Cap long ē Lower ð (240)
Ē ē ð
E long E Lower eth
Ī Ī Cap long I
ī
ī Lower
Þ
Þ (222)
long I Cap thorn
Ō Cap long
Ō ō Lower þ (254)
O
ō þ
long O Lower thorn
Ū Cap long
Ū ū Lower Ƿ Cap
U
ū Ƿ
long U Wynn
Ȳ Cap long
Ȳ ȳ Lower ƿ Lower
Y
ȳ long Y ƿ
Wynn
Æ(198) Cap
Æ
short ash
æ
æ(230) Ȝ &#540 Cap Yogh
Lower short ash
Ǣ Cap long ȝ Lower
Ǣ ash ǣ Lower ȝ
Yogh
ǣ long ash
Ċ Cap C
Ċ
Dot
ċ Lower C
ċ
Dot
Ġ Cap G
Ġ
Dot
ġ Lower G
ġ
Dot

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PDF and Image Files

In some cases, your best options may be to use PDF files or image files. See the Web
Development Tips section for more details.

Using Encoding and Language Codes

Computers process text by assuming a certain encoding or a system of matching electronic

data with visual text characters. Whenever you develop a Web site you need to make sure
the proper encoding is specified in the header tags; otherwise the browser may default to
U.S. settings and not display the text properly.

To declare an encoding, insert or inspect the following meta-tag at the top of your HTML file,
then replace "???" with one of the encoding codes listed above. If you are not sure, use utf-8
as the encoding.

Generic Encoding Template

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=??? ">
...
<head>

Declare Unicode

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=utf-8 ">
...
<head>

XHTML

The final close slash must be included after the final quote mark in the encoding header tag
if you are using XHTML

Declare Unicode in XHTML

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=utf-8" />
...
<head>

No Encoding Declared

If no encoding is declared, then the browser uses the default setting, which in the U.S. is
typically Latin-1. In that case many Unicode characters could be displayed incorrectly. Also,
older browsers such as Netscape 4.7 may not be able to process the entity codes correctly
without the "utf-8" declaration.

Language Tags

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Language tags are also suggested so that search engines and screen readers parse the
language of a page. These are metadata tags which indicate the language of a page, not
devices to trigger translation. Visit the Language Tag page to view information on where to
insert it.

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Links

Freeware Fonts

Both Microsoft and Apple provide fonts with Old English support, but they are sans-serif
fonts. These fonts include the characters and are serif fonts, which tend to be more
readable for medieval languages.

TITUS Cyberbit - Includes ancient Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit, Runes and other scripts
Junicode - Includes Runes, Old English characters and medieval characters
Cardo - For classicists
Gentium
Doulos SIL - Includes Greek, Cyrillic

Additional Information

Old English and Middle English Scripts in Unicode - Phologica Net

Representing Middle English Manuscripts on the Web with UTF-8
Working with Old English Text on the Web - From Catherine Ball of Georgetown.
Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI) - Includes Old Norse

©Penn State University, 2000-2009.

This Web page maintained by Teaching and Learning with Technology, a unit of Information Technology
Services. For questions or comments on this Web page, please contact Elizabeth J. Pyatt
([email protected]).

Unicode character names and hexadecimal entity codes are taken from the public Unicode Character
Charts.

Last Modified: Friday, 07-May-2010 17:10:56 EDT

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