Today they can be substituted for g and w in modern writing of Old English.

The alternate forms of g and w (yogh and wynn/wen) were based on the letters used at the time of writing Old English.

These were not originally used in Old English, but are a more modern invention to distinguish between long and short vowels.

Long vowels can be marked with macrons.

Their use ceased not long after the Norman conquest. They started to be replaced by the Latin alphabet from the 7th century, and after the 9th century the runes were used mainly in manuscripts and were mainly of interest to antiquarians. Anglo-Saxon runes were used probably from the 5th century AD until about the 10th century. This alphabet was an extended version of Elder Futhark with between 26 and 33 letters. Old English / Anglo-Saxon was first written with a version of the Runic alphabet known as Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Frisian runes, or futhorc/fuþorc. Thereafter Old English script was increasingly influenced by Caroline Minuscule even though it retained a number of distinctive Insular letter-forms.

From the 10th century Anglo-Saxon scribes began to use Caroline Minuscule for Latin while continuing to write Old English in Insular minuscule. A less formal version of minuscule was used for to write both Latin and Old English.

The Anglo-Saxons adopted the styles of script used by Irish missionaries, such as Insular half-uncial, which was used for books in Latin. The other dialects were Mercian, Northumbrian and Kentish. Most texts were written in West Saxon, one of the four main dialects. Old English began to appear in writing during the early 8th century. Speakers of Old English called their language Englisc, themselves Angle, Angelcynn or Angelfolc and their home Angelcynn or Englaland. Old English was the West Germanic language spoken in the area now known as England between the 5th and 11th centuries.

Old english letters fonts