The stone measures roughly 1.15 metres in height and 1.58 metres in length, and its western surface carries both an ogham inscription and two cross motifs. Ogham is an early medieval script in which letters are encoded as a series of notches and strokes cut along a stem line, typically along the edge of a stone; here, unusually, the stem line runs up the left side of the face and across the top, framing the crosses rather than running along an edge. The scores themselves are clearly legible, yet the inscription as a whole is confused and internally contradictory.

The scholar R. A. S. Macalister, writing in 1945, proposed an ingenious solution to the puzzle. He argued that the carver made errors during execution and then attempted to correct them, and that the intended reading was ANM COLMAN AILITHIR, a phrase meaning roughly "the name of Colman the Pilgrim". Whether or not his interpretation is fully correct, it ties the stone to the site's dedication: the church here at Kilcolman, or Cill na gColmán, sits on the southern slopes of a spur of Lateevemore and its name invokes the same saint. The cross imagery on the stone is equally layered. The main motif is a deeply carved cross of arcs set within a circle, its lower arm connected to the circle by a short stem that continues downward below the present ground surface, where it widens into a triangular expansion at roughly its midpoint. A second, equal-armed cross with what have been described as fishtail-like terminals occupies the upper right portion of the same face. The stone has since been examined as part of the "Ogham in 3D" project run by the School of Celtic Studies at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, and a three-dimensional digital model is accessible online.