English terms with diacritical marks
The Old English Latin alphabet began to replace the Runic alphabet in the 9th century, due to the influence of Celtic Christian missionaries to the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The orthography of Old English – which was entirely handwritten in its own time – was not well standardized, though it did not use all the Latin letters, and included several letters not present in the modern alphabet. When reprinted (on a printing press or computer) in modern times, an overdot is occasionally used with two Latin letters to differentiate sounds for the reader:
English alphabet
The Latin script, introduced by Christian missionaries, began to replace the Anglo-Saxon futhorc from about the 7th century, although the two continued in parallel for some time. As such, the Old English alphabet began to employ parts of the Roman alphabet in its construction. Futhorc influenced the emerging English alphabet by providing it with the letters "thorn" (Þ þ) and "wynn" (Ƿ ƿ). The letter "eth" (Ð ð) was later devised as a modification of "dee" (D d), and finally "yogh" ( ) was created by Norman scribes from the insular "g" in Old English and Irish, and used alongside their Carolingian "g".