ABSTRACT
A brief overview of some of the scholarship on pen grips precedes a look at the available evidence, its range and limitations, before presenting a typology of late-antique and medieval pen grips constructed to reflect that range. There are four variously indirect sources of evidence for late-antique and medieval pen grips. Of the indirect sources, the literary (textual) and visual (pictorial) descriptions of pen grips are difficult to interpret, but not intractable. The typology of pen grips is a purely descriptive typology. It could be used to construct a formal frequency seriation, but does not of itself convey chronological information. The most immediately striking aspect of the typology is the large geographic and temporal overlap of the types. The full array of possible and documented pen grips should, at least, figure in attempts to explain the 'mechanics' of the production of surviving scripts.
