How a dot made medieval handwriting easier to read
In medieval manuscripts, letters were often written as a near-continuous row of narrow strokes. The upright marks in i, m, n, and u—called minims—could look much alike when crowded together. In a word such as minimum, a reader had to work out where one letter ended and the next began.
From around the 11th century, scribes began placing a small mark above the i. That mark gave the letter a visible cue, helping distinguish it from neighboring strokes. The mark is called a tittle: the dot over a lowercase i or j.
A tiny mark with a lasting job
The tittle did not change the sound of the letter; it made the writing easier to parse. As handwriting and printing developed, the dot became a standard part of lowercase i and later j. It remains useful even in modern type, where the letters are usually spaced clearly: the tiny mark lets the eye recognize each character at a glance.
That is why the word survives in the phrase “not a jot or tittle,” meaning not even the smallest detail. The tittle itself is small, but its original purpose was practical: to keep one letter from disappearing into a thicket of strokes.
