E caudata

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Part of a Latin book published in Rome in 1632. E caudata is used in the words Sacrę, propagandę,prædictę, and grammaticę. Note that the spelling grammaticæ, with æ, is also used.

The e caudata ("tailed e", from Latin cauda "tail") is a modified form of the letter E that can be graphically represented as E with ogonek (ę) but which has a distinct history of usage. It was used in Latin from as early as the twelfth century to represent the vowel also written ae or æ.

In Middle and Early Modern Irish manuscripts, and in unnormalised transcriptions of them, e caudata is used for e, ae and ea.

In Old Norse manuscripts, e caudata was used for both short and long versions of /æ/. In a few texts on Old Norse, it, like German ä, represents short /æ/, the result of i-mutation of Proto-Germanic */a/, and contrasts with e, which represents Proto-Germanic */e/. However, due to the fact that these two vowels merged to /e/ by the end of Old Norse, they are commonly both written as e.^{[citation needed]}