A minuscule bookhand of the 4th-6th centuries, developed from the documentary cursives of Late Antiquity. Half-uncial is the ancestor of all the later minuscule scripts of the Middle Ages, as well as of the script of luxury Insular Bible manuscripts. It uses minuscule forms of a, b and d, and g, but retains a "majuscule" form of N. Its name is a misnomer, as it is not derived from Uncial.