“[T]he medieval i originally had no dot but acquired one because the letter as a hatless stroke was hard to distinguish on a crowded page of handwriting. By about A.D. 1000 the custom had arisen of perhaps topping the minuscule letter with a slanted mark, at the writer’s discretion: ´. With the spread of printing in the late 1400s, the stroke was generally reduced to an economical dot i . . . although the stroke still shows up today in cursive-print wedding invitations and similar. The i’s dot, meanwhile, has become proverbial for any small detail. . . .”

—David Sacks, Letter Perfect, 2003.