From late in the thirteenth century scribes were trying to find a book hand that was not difficult to write on a small scale. At this time the tightly woven Gothic textualis was still the only alternative to a documentary hand, but English scribes seem to have happened upon a way of writing that soon became their ordinary book hand. Late in the twelfth century a semicursive Protogothic had been developing in England into a full-blown cursiva script, with its letters linked, loops, and other decorative embellishments, as a business hand (Gothic littera cursiva anglicana documentaria). From it emerges Anglicana, first in England, but later as a script local to Britain and extending also into northern France. Yet it was known as a distinctively English script and indeed a Joan Walkyngham, who died in 1346, was aware of its Englishness, for her will notes ‘quemdam librum scriptum littera Anglicana’. The dates for usage are from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth century, and even into the eighteenth century for some specialized purposes. About 1375 a new script, termed Secretary and originating in Italy, came from France into use in England, providing competition for Anglicana. Like Anglicana, this too was at first a documentary script (Gothic littera cursiva Secretary documentaria). Anglicana, like the incoming competing Secretary script, arises from within the Gothic system of scripts. Given their common ultimate origins, the two scripts share many letter-forms. A small number of features is particularly helpful for distinguishing an Anglicana from a Secretary hand: the two-compartment Anglicana a; both the pointed e and the cursive variety with reversed ductus; the tight g, sometimes described as shaped like the numeral 8, which looks rather like a pair of spectacles seen sideways on; the long r, descending below the line; the sigma-shaped s that looks a little like the numeral 6; w with its two long initial strokes completed by bows; and x made with two separate strokes. Also, the Tironian sign continued in use in Anglicana.

The grading terms, introduced already in Section VI, are those put forward by Julian Brown. They are best applied to cursiva scripts in relation to the treatment of minims. In both media and currens scripts minims are linked (the pen is not lifted), but currens is below average in both accuracy and style.