During part 3 of “The History of the Alphabet”, I was surprised to learn that there are modern scribes. Initially it came as a shock that there are people today who would chose to participate in such tedious work. However, it later made sense when considering that, like many other obsolete technologies, it has survived due to transitioning into an art form. Arguably, modern scribes have it tougher than those who lived during the Middle Ages. As the video says, they often now work independently on all of their projects, unlike the scribes of the Middle Ages who worked in larger teams. Other interesting facts included the concept of using a knife to “erase” ink off of a piece of parchment.

Other than that, the video was great for reinforcing the topics discussed in class and the readings. Several main points in the video, such as the part discussing the different route that Italian fonts took from north German fonts, were also heavily discussed in The Book. So, this video essentially summarized what we have been doing these past few weeks.