Be prepared for different forms of the same character within the same word: long and short s; long [not shown by B&B], short and Arabic 2 [not shown by B&B] r; forward and reverse e.

Note that some characters are interchangeable:c/t; i/j; u/v; uu for w.

Beauchesne and Baildon produced this alphabet of the Secretary Hand in the late sixteenth century, which is a useful starting point for comparison with characters in your texts. It is arranged with an intermixture of upper and lower case characters. It needs, nevertheless, to be used cautiously, since Beauchesne and Baildon were writing masters. Consequently, of the sample characters which they give, one or two forms were used predominantly, and, in some cases, the very cursive forms encountered more frequently, are not illustrated in their alphabet.