I think those swashes in “normal type” stem from positional variants (on the beginning of words). They got promoted to primary forms in some fonts.

aszszelp> Thank you for your reply. So these are swashed letters! I was trying to formulate the words to describe it to someone else and I failed.

You bring up a curious thing, tho. At what point was there a departure from specific rules. As in: the swash figures belong in the scripts but not in the text? When did typographers start mixing it up?

Many typefaces today like Miller, Hoefler Text, and Clifford are anthologies. Culled from many historical models—a picking and choosing at the buffet table of type. :-)

Interesting.

Thank you again.

Mikey :-)

Well, I have seen those “swashed” v-s and w-s in pretty old printed text already, in 16th century, if I recall correctly, but 17th the latest! in medial position, so actually this might have been the one and only sort in that type. What I meant that when designing that type they were inspired by initial forms of the letters from handwriting. — c.f. your examples are from italic and not from roman fonts!

I personally dislike having those “swash”-forms in italics (as the only ones). But that’s personal preference.