R rotunda

This symbol came in several different shapes, all of which were of x-height. The shape of the letter used in blackletter scripts Textualis as well as Rotunda is reminiscent of "half an r", namely, the right side of the Roman capital ; it also looks similar to an Arabic numeral . Like minuscules in general, this shape for r originated in the style of cursive writing that was common during the medieval period, which ultimately derived from scribal practice during Late Antiquity. The r rotunda shape of cursive resembling the numeral is also found in a number of medieval scribal abbreviations containing , for example in the signs for the Latin word-final syllables ram, -orum and -arum. There are several variant forms for the r rotunda glyph. A very narrow second variant is found in some Textura manuscripts, in the form of one solid diamond atop another atop a vertical stroke. Another form found in German typefaces is a variant of that previous, with something like part of an resembling an integral sign atop something rather like a . It can be found used as the second of a pair and after . A fifth form, used in the 18th century in some French italic typefaces, was a derivative either of the Schrift form of the minuscule or of similar typefaces used elsewhere. Its form was of a backwards set just after the same shape rotated 180 degrees. They were separated by a space smaller than their stroke width, and the whole character was slanted as though it were cursive. As this typeface has the whose ascender curves to the left (giving it a rounded right side), it was used after that character as well. By then, though, the character was the same width as a regular , so it was maintained because it appeared to its users to have some elegance or to remind them of prestigious old calligraphy. ==Substitute for Tironian et==

typeface|class=skin-invert-image The abbreviation etc. was typeset using the Tironian et , as in early incunables. Later, when typesets no longer contained a sort for the Tironian et, it became common practice to use a r rotunda sort instead, setting for etc. == Demise ==

Use of this form of r was never widespread except in blackletter scripts, so it fell out of use in English in the 16th century as roman scripts became predominant. Some modern cursive scripts use a letter that has a resemblance to the r rotunda. ==Encoding==

In Unicode, the character is encoded as and The letter was added to Unicode in 2005, in the Latin Extended-D block. It is included in Unicode 5.1 in both lower case and upper case forms, although there seems to be no real evidence for the historical existence of a capital version and a normal capital R seems to have been used instead. Before that, the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI) had allocated it in the Private Use Area (PUA) of medievalist fonts at U+F20E and U+F22D. Since the characters are now available in Unicode, MUFI recommends that the Unicode code points be used, not the PUA code points. Some fonts treat the glyph as a mere stylistic variant of and may make it available by smart font features, e.g. Open Type 'hist', 'hlig', 'calt', 'salt' or 'ss**'. Latin Extended-D also has characters for medieval scribal abbreviations. Among them is the abbreviation for the syllable rum, consisting of a r rotunda with a cut, resulting in a shape very similar to the astrological symbol for Jupiter . These symbols are encoded as and . ==Gallery==