the art of beautiful handwriting. The term may derive from the Greek words for “beauty” (kallos) and “to write” (graphein). It implies a sure knowledge of the correct form of letters—i.e., the conventional signs by which language can be communicated—and the skill to make them with such ordering of the various parts and harmony of proportions that the experienced, knowledgeable eye will recognize such composition as a work of art. Calligraphic work, as art, need not be legible in the usual sense of the word.

It has often been assumed that the printing process ended the manuscript tradition. This is not quite true: for example, most of the surviving books of hours (book of hours) (lavish private devotional manuscript books) date from the period after the introduction of printing. Furthermore, certain types of publications, such as musical scores, scientific notation, and other specialized or small-audience works, continued to be handwritten well into the 19th century. Thus, although handwritten books could not be reproduced in quantity or with complete uniformity, they did survive the introduction of printing. Printing and handwriting began to influence each other: for example, modern advertising continues to incorporate calligraphy, and many calligraphers have through the years designed typefaces for printing.

The traditional square Hebrew, or merubbaʿ, pen hand was developed in the centuries preceding the Common Era. This early script may be seen in the famed Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947. These scrolls are associated with a group of dissident Jews who founded a religious commune on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea about 180 BCE. The commune had an extensive library. Pens were the instruments of writing, and, as in earlier Aramaic documents, leather provided the surface. In these documents the lamed form remained visually prominent.

There are no Hebrew manuscripts from the first 500 years of the Common Era. Most of the development in the square Hebrew script occurred between 1000 and 1500 CE. The earliest script to emerge from the Dead Sea writing was the Early Sefardic (Spharadic), with examples dating between 600 and 1200 CE. The Classic Sefardic hand appears between 1100 and 1600 CE. The Ashkenazic style of Hebrew writing exhibits French and German Gothic overtones of the so-called black-letter styles (see below Latin-alphabet handwriting: The black-letter, or Gothic, style 【9th to 15th century】 (calligraphy)) developed to write western European languages in the late Middle Ages. German black letter, with its double-stroked heads and feet, was difficult for the scribe. Hebrew scripts from this period exhibit some of the same complicated pen stroking and change of pen slant within individual characters. Some decorative qualities of medieval French writing are seen in this Hebrew script.

Eastern Christendom was riddled with sects and heretical movements. After 431 the Syriac language and script split into eastern and western branches. The western branch was called Serta and developed into two varieties, Jacobite and Melchite. Vigorous in pen graphics, Serta writing shows that, unlike the early Aramaic and Hebrew scripts, characters are fastened to a bottom horizontal. Modern typefaces used to print Syriac, which has survived as a language, have the same characteristic. Eastern Syriac script was called Nestorian after Nestorius, who led a secession movement from the Orthodox Church of Byzantium that flourished in Persia and spread along trade routes deep into Asia.

Broadly speaking, there were two distinct scripts in the early centuries of Islam: cursive script and Kūfic script. For everyday purposes a cursive script was employed: typical examples may be seen in the Arabic papyri from Egypt. Rapidly executed, the script does not appear to have been subject to formal and rigorous rules, and not all the surviving examples are the work of professional scribes. Kūfic script, however, seems to have been developed for religious and official purposes. The name means “the script of Kūfah,” an Islamic city founded in Mesopotamia in 638 CE, but the actual connection between the city and the script is not clear. Kūfic is a more or less square and angular script. Professional copyists employed a particular form for reproducing the earliest copies of the Qurʾān that have survived. These are written on parchment and date from the 8th to the 10th century. They are mostly of an oblong as opposed to codex (i.e., manuscript book) format. The writing is frequently large, especially in the early examples, so that there may be as few as three lines to a single page. The script can hardly be described as stiff and angular; rather, the implied pace is majestic and measured.

Kūfic went out of general use about the 11th century, although it continued to be used as a decorative element contrasting with those scripts that superseded it. About 1000 a new script was established and came to be used for copying the Qurʾān. This is the so-called naskhī (naskhī script) script, which has remained perhaps the most popular script in the Arab world. It is a cursive script based on certain laws governing the proportions between the letters. The two names associated with its development are Ibn Muqlah and Ibn al-Bawwāb, both of whom lived and worked in Mesopotamia. Of the latter's work a single authentic example survives, a manuscript of the Qurʾān in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin.

Distinctive scripts were developed in particular regions. In Spain the maghribī (maghribi script) (“western”) script was evolved and became the standard script for Qurʾāns in North Africa. Derived ultimately from Kūfic, it is characterized by the exaggerated extension of horizontal elements and of the final open curves below the middle register.

A characteristic script developed in Ottoman (Ottoman Empire) Turkey was that used in the chancellery and known as divani (dīwānī script). This script is highly mannered and rather difficult to read. Peculiar to Turkish calligraphy is the tuğra (ṭughrā), a kind of royal cipher based on the names and titles of the reigning sultan and worked into a very intricate and beautiful design. A distinctive tuğra was created for each sultan and affixed to imperial decrees by a skilled calligrapher, the neshanı.

In its broadest sense, calligraphy also includes the Arabic scripts employed in materials other than parchment, papyrus, and paper. In religious buildings, verses from the Qurʾān were inscribed on the walls for the edification of the faithful, whether carved in stone or stucco or executed in faience tiles. Religious invocations, dedications, and benedictory phrases were also introduced into the decoration of portable objects. Generally speaking, there is a close relationship between these and the scripts properly used on the conventional writing materials. It was often the practice for a skilled penman to design monumental inscriptions.

The most important examples of calligraphy to develop from Aramaic writing in its dissemination through South and Central Asia were the scripts of India, especially of Sanskrit (Sanskrit language). Indic writing first appeared in the 3rd century BCE during the reign of Ashoka (c. 265–238 BCE). The leader of a great empire, Ashoka turned from military success to embrace the arts and religion. Ashoka's edicts were committed to stone. These inscriptions are stiff and angular in form. Following the Ashoka style of Indic writing, two new calligraphic types appear: Kharoshti (Kharoṣṭhī) and Brahmi. Kharoshti was used in the northwestern regions of India from the 3rd century BCE to the 4th century CE, and it was used in Central Asia until the 8th century. It is characterized by a vigorous pen letter, reflecting the influence of Middle Eastern calligraphy.

Visually, Sanskrit (Sanskrit language) is associated most closely with the alphabetic form named Devanagari (Devanāgarī). In a 15th-century pen-written manuscript in the Freer Gallery at Washington, D.C., it can be observed that the pen's nib is cut wide, giving a considerable difference in thick and thin strokes. The alphabetic signs hang down from a strong horizontal top line that may become connected. Through the years the strong horizontal and vertical emphasis of inscription writing has been preserved in the Devanagari script, and modern typefaces and teaching manuals stress this stiffness of execution. In informal documents this historical script can have more warmth and grace.

The oldest Greek writing, syllabic signs scratched with a stylus on sun-dried clay, is that of the Linear B (Linear A and Linear B) tablets found in Knossos, Pylos, and Mycenae (1400–1200 BCE). Alphabetic writing, in use before the end of the 8th century BCE, is first found in a scratched inscription on a jug awarded as a prize in Athens. The consensus is that the Homeric poems were written down not later than this time; certainly from the time of the first known lyric poet of ancient Greece, Archilochus (7th century BCE), individuals committed their works to writing. But the vehicles of literary writing have perished. Scratchings on pottery or metal and then texts deliberately cut in bronze or marble or painted on vases are, until about 350 BCE, the only immediate evidence for the way the Greeks wrote, and their study is normally treated as the province of epigraphy.

The early Christians deliberately chose the commercial vellum notebook (membranae) in which to circulate the Christian Gospels (New Testament) in preference to the traditional Jewish roll. Almost without exception the earliest texts of the New Testament are in codex form, even though written on papyrus, which is less able than vellum to bear repeated bending. In the 2nd century CE, pagan works of literature also appeared in this format. By the 4th century it became the predominant form, and codices with handsome margins, of dazzling white vellum, and of sufficient size to contain the whole Bible (e.g., the Codex Sinaiticus) were being produced.

Documentary hands show a considerable range: stylized official “chancery” hands, the workaday writing of government clerks or of the street scribes who drew up wills or wrote letters to order, the idiosyncratic or nearly illiterate writing of private individuals. The scribe's aim was to write quickly, lifting the pen very little and consequently often combining several letters in a continuous stroke (a ligature); from the running action of the pen, this writing is often termed cursive. Scribes also made frequent use of abbreviations. When the scribe was skillful in reconciling clarity and speed, such writing may have much character, even beauty; but it often degenerates into a formless, sometimes indecipherable, scrawl.

Characteristic of its period is the contrast of size between the long letters (e.g., ) and narrow letters . And characteristic forms are to be seen in the letters (with its long crossbar, often with initial stroke); (upsilon) with long shallow bowl; or in three or four strokes; in three strokes; (alpha) raised off the line and its last vertical not finished; small round (with internal dot or tiny stroke); and broad epigraphic and . In documentary cursive hands of this period, letters seem to hang from an upper line: (alpha) often turns into a mere wedge, and (nu) lifts its second vertical above the line.

In the 2nd century BCE the contrast between long letters and narrow letters disappears, the writing grows rounder, and letters are often linked by ligatures at the top of their last vertical (e.g., ). In a loan contract of 99 BCE (The John Rylands University Library of Manchester), in which capitals and cursive are mixed, this irregular roundness is clearly seen. Note the ε with detached crossbar and the exaggerated serifs which have been elevated by some paleographers into a criterion of a special style, though in fact they are always apt to occur.

Half a century or so passed after 30 BCE before a definitely Roman manner was established. In documentary hands the tendency to roundness continued. Documentary cursive may be influenced in various ways (e.g., by Latin forms such as those of e and d, or by the exaggeration of verticals practiced by chancery scribes); the script may lean over in either direction, or it may be reduced to tiny proportions. In the 2nd century the cursive hand tended to be round and sprawling, in the 3rd century to become more angular, and in the 4th century to become characterless and to combine letters into ligatures that distorted the forms of the letters concerned. The book hand of a manuscript of Plato's Phaedo (c. 100 CE; Egypt Exploration Society, London) shares the informality of cursive but regularizes the letter forms. Written on a larger scale and with more formality, this round hand can be very beautiful. In an example found at Hawara (2nd century CE), almost every letter (even ρ, τ, ι) would go into an identical square; only ϕ and ψ cross it above and below, μ, ω, and π horizontally.

If this writing is made to lean to the right and to revive the 3rd-century-BCE distinction between narrow and broad letters, it takes on the aspect of the “severe” style of the Bacchylides roll in the British Museum (2nd century CE). If, however, the scribe makes the verticals or obliques thicker and his horizontals thinner, the hand is called biblical uncial, so named because this type is used in the three great early vellum codices of the Bible: Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus of the 4th century and Codex Alexandrinus of the 5th century. It is now certain that this style goes back to the 2nd century CE. Heavy decoration is also a feature of the Coptic style, of which there are examples as early as the 2nd century CE. This hand may be thought of as constituting a special case of biblical uncial.

For the paleographer the significant division is not the founding of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Tur.) in 330 but the 5th century, from which a few firmly dated texts survive. At its close a large, exuberant, florid cursive was fully established for documents; in the 7th and 8th centuries it sloped to the right, became congested, and adopted some forms that anticipated the minuscule hand. A favourite informal type of the 6th century is shown in an acrostic poem by Dioscorus of Aphrodito; it bears a clear relationship to the Menander Dyskolos hand, which was probably written in the later 3rd century CE. Similar pairs could be found to illustrate the continuity in transformation of the biblical uncial and Coptic styles. The latest Greek papyrus from Egypt is not later than the 8th century. There was a considerable lapse of time before the history of Greek writing resumed at Byzantium.

During this time the evolution of writing in capitals (not very aptly named uncial) probably continued toward a greater formality and artificiality. But this natural tendency was hastened by the introduction and spread of minuscule as the normal way of writing, after which the purpose of uncial changed completely. From an everyday hand in which all books were naturally written, it became a ceremonial hand used only for special copies and therefore grew increasingly stylized and artificial. In the 9th century a still elegant style was used for both patristic and classical works in splendid volumes destined for the imperial library or for presentation copies, such as the copy of Gregory of Nazianzus (Gregory of Nazianzus, Saint) (Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris) made for the emperor Basil I between 879 and 883. By the 11th and 12th centuries, capitals were used only for liturgical books, mainly lectionaries, which had to be read in dimly lit churches; but the increasing tortuousness of the style must in the end have reduced its usefulness, and by about 1200 uncial was dead.

The earliest dated example of true minuscule (and it is probably one of the oldest extant examples altogether) is a Gospel written in 835 (Porfiry Gospel; National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg), probably in the monastery of the Stoudion. Here are found all the characteristics of the earliest minuscule, which is called pure minuscule because there is as yet no admixture of uncial forms, except occasionally at line ends. The letters are even and of a uniform size; letters are joined or not joined to each other according to strict rules, sometimes by ligatures in which part of each letter is merged in the other, but not to the extent of distorting the shape of either letter. There is no division between words, for the divisions are only those that arise from the rules for joining or otherwise of individual letters, and at this stage any letter that can be joined to the next one nearly always is joined to it. Breathings, which affect pronunciation, are square, either or , and accents are small and neat; abbreviations are very few, usually confined to the established contractions for nomina sacra (the names and descriptions of the Trinity and certain derivatives), omitted ν at line ends, a few of the conventional signs for omitted case endings, and sometimes a ligature for και (“and”). The writing stands on the ruled lines or is guided by them.

In spite of these developments—the gradual disappearance of pure minuscule and the other changes that accompanied it—the same general styles of writing persisted until about the end of the 10th century. Broadly considered, three styles can be distinguished during this period. There is a rather primitive-looking, angular, cramped style that may perhaps be associated with the Stoudion monastery, in which a certain number of mainly patristic texts were written c. 880–c. 980. Second, there is a plain, neat, workmanlike style (seen in a commentary on Gregory of Nazianzus copied in 986 that is preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris), which continued in use at least until the end of the 10th century. In it were written several of the important manuscripts that are now the oldest texts of some ancient Greek authors (for example, Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes) but are unfortunately not explicitly dated. Third, a consciously elegant, even mannered, style was used in books produced for the imperial library or for wealthy dignitaries, but it is not found before the early years of the 10th century. All of these styles, which have numerous variations and are by no means always distinct from one another, are found at least until the end of the 10th century. Their one common characteristic is a crispness and individuality that clearly distinguishes them from writing of the next period.

One of the earliest datable examples of these scholarly productions is the copy of his commentary on Homer's Odyssey (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice) written c. 1150–70 by Eustathius (Eustathius of Thessalonica), the scholar-archbishop of Thessalonica. In the 13th century the exaggeration of especially round features reached its height, while in the 14th century the tendency, as in the formal styles of writing, was toward less ebullience and exaggeration, and the writing of scholars such as Triclinius is compact and sober. For these hands the problem is not to discover centres of writing or styles for different uses but to identify the hands of individual scholars.

Before long, Greek scribes began to go to Italy, and both scholars and scribes arrived in increasing numbers as the Turks pressed in around the Byzantine capital until it finally fell in 1453. They brought with them, naturally, the two styles of writing that had persisted throughout the history of the empire. On the one hand, professional scribes such as Joannes Rhosus (died c. 1500), the majority of them from Crete, copied an astonishing number of manuscripts in the formal—and by this time glib and stereotyped—“liturgical” style of writing. On the other hand, scholars such as John (Janus) Lascaris (Lascaris, John) continued to write in a mannered personal style (e.g., a letter of Demetrius Chalcondyles of 1488 in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City).

The Latin and vernacular handwriting of western Europe descends in a nearly unbroken line to the present day from the 1st century AD. The script used throughout the Roman Empire (ancient Rome) for books and occasionally for formal documents is known as rustic capitals. The pen used to write this script was cut with a broad end and held so that its thickest strokes fell at an oblique, nearly perpendicular angle to the line of writing. As is the case for most formal alphabets, the pen was lifted from the writing surface to make the serifs and other strokes for each single letter. The rustic alphabet consists only of capital, or majuscule, letters, most of which are contained between a single pair of horizontal lines. The letters B, L, and F are sometimes taller than the other capitals to distinguish them from R, I, and E, which are similar in appearance.

The business hand of the 1st century, used for correspondence and for most documents, private and official alike, is known as cursive capitals. Here the pen, cut to a narrow point, was held at an oblique angle similar to that used for rustic capitals, but the pen was lifted less often (and the writing was faster). This cursive handling led to new and simpler letter forms such as (two strokes) for D (three strokes) and (two strokes) for E (four strokes). Some of these new forms are in effect minuscule, in that parts of them ascend or descend beyond a pair of lines that define the height of letters such as n or x (e.g., ascending letters such as d and descending letters such as p) instead of maintaining the uniformity in height of square capitals. Cursive capitals were also sometimes joined to following letters, further reducing the number of times the pen was lifted during the writing. This Roman style is hardly considered a calligraphic script, but it demonstrates how a formal alphabet was modified through rapid writing.

For the 4th and 5th centuries, the evidence is more abundant, and it is known that two new book hands and a new business hand came into use. The older of the book hands, called uncials (a name given this style by the 17th-century French paleographer Jean Mabillon (Mabillon, Jean)), was originally written with a square-edged pen, perhaps cut at an oblique angle; but, from the 6th century onward, a pen without an oblique cut seems to have been used, leading to a rounder-looking letter. Occasionally these letters were written with several lifts and manipulations of the pen, which led one paleographer to dub them “artificial” uncials. Although they incorporate several cursive letter forms (, , h) and introduce two forms peculiar to this type of alphabet (, ), uncials generally constitute a capital alphabet similar to Greek capitals of the 4th century, such as those seen in the Codex Sinaiticus. P and F are the only letters that consistently descend below the writing line.

The younger of the two new book hands is called half uncial. This script was less popular than uncials and never broke their monopoly on biblical and liturgical texts, although, like uncial script, half uncial was still being written in the 8th century and even, as a display script, in the 9th century. Half uncial differs from early uncial script in its minuscule appearance; only one letter (N) remained more or less unchanged from the capital form. The distinguishing letter forms in half uncial are a, b, d, g, h, l, m, r, and s. There was no attempt to confine letters between a single pair of lines, as they had gained distinctive ascenders and descenders.

The letter forms that distinguish cursive minuscule and half uncials from rustic and cursive capitals and from uncials were developed during the obscure period between the 1st and 4th centuries. The question of whether these forms developed in the sphere of the book hands or of the business hands is still undecided, but, whatever their origin, their importance for the subsequent history of European handwriting is paramount. They provided the material on which the Carolingian minuscule, which first appeared in the late 8th century, was based, and that script (including its modifications) dominated Europe until the end of the Middle Ages. Only in one other period were new letter forms evolved, between the 13th and the 15th centuries, in the group of scripts known as Gothic cursives; and the influence of these late innovations was ultimately canceled out, thanks to the revival of Carolingian minuscule in a pure form by the Italian humanists at the beginning of the 15th century.

For the fine books made in the Anglo-Celtic centres, the majuscular script called Insular half uncial was deemed suitable rather than the pointed, more cursive Irish minuscule used for documents and vernacular texts. There is a high degree of conformity, attesting to their stylistic maturity, among such manuscripts as the Book of Kells (Kells, Book of) (Trinity College, Dublin) and the Lindisfarne Gospels (British Museum, London), individual as they are in detail and ornament. After all, there is room for infinite variation where, in one-quarter of a square inch, 158 interlacements have been traced unerringly—by angels, it was said. The Book of Kells, Codex Cenannensis to paleographers, was probably produced at Iona around 800. It has 339 leaves, 13 by 10 inches (33 by 25 cm) of dignified script in single column, jet black on well-made parchment, through which runs the most spirited and colourful of ornamentation, ranging from the red-dotted outlining of letters, which is as much a feature of the style as the wedge-topped ascenders, to the extravagant full-page initials at the opening of Gospels. The other masterpiece of Anglo-Celtic calligraphy and illumination, the Codex Lindisfarnensis, was written in honour of St. Cuthbert (Cuthbert, Saint) shortly after his death in 687. It displays the same lively inventiveness, the love of fantastic animal and bird forms (zoomorphs), intricate interlacing, and even, rhythmic script, set off by generous margins.

Though the Insular minuscule was widely known, the majuscular half uncial was always given the place of honour and the preference for the fine Latin books of the Anglo-Celtic monasteries. Nevertheless, by the 8th century the minuscule was developing into a disciplined book hand, as seen in the copy of Bede's Historia ecclesiastica (c. 731). The spiky, ligatured, compactly written style migrated early to the Continent and, by the beginning of the 8th century, was at home in the Anglo-Saxon foundation of Echternach, in what is now Luxembourg. Fulda and Würzburg (Germany), were other important centres abroad of Insular culture and book production in this style.

The southern Italian script of the style called Beneventan (Beneventan script), nurtured in the motherhouse of the Benedictine Order at Monte Cassino, was the “national” hand that rose to the status of calligraphy and held its position well into the 13th century, an active literary life of more than 500 years. This type of script has a peculiar jerky rhythm and retains individual cursive forms, which, together with the abundance of abbreviations and ligatures, make reading quite difficult.

The literary and ecclesiastical reforms undertaken in the latter part of the 8th century and the early 9th century by order of the Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne set the highest of standards for the making of books throughout his Western empire. The extensive educational program and the production of new authorized versions of the Vulgate, the missal, and other liturgical works led Charlemagne to invite the English cleric Alcuin of York to come to France to oversee the making of these manuscripts. Alcuin first became master of the palace school at Aachen, Ger. (Aix-la-Chapelle), then went to Tours, France, to lead the Abbey of St. Martin.

Under Alcuin, work was carried forward in the scriptorium of St. Martin's abbey in the spirit of a true Classical renaissance. Each variety of traditional letter form was studied with a view to finding its norm by careful comparison with archetypes in ancient monuments and books. A hierarchy of scripts was established to distinguish different levels of text. At the top of the hierarchy were square capitals, which were used for book headings, and rustic capitals, used for the explicit (the last line of a book). Uncials signaled chapter headings, the table of contents, and the first line of text; half uncials were sometimes used for preface and the second text line; and Carolingian minuscules were used for the main text. Carefully drawn and coloured large Roman square capitals were used as major paragraph initials. This period marks the first time multiple writing styles were used both to decorate the text and to delineate categories of content.

Especially in northern Europe, a black-letter style of increasing density deepened the colour of the page and imparted to this formal book hand the appearance of woven fabric, giving rise to its generic name of textura. In some books the more formal black-letter looks stiff and narrow, and the lines forming the letters attain the perfect regularity of a picket fence; the rigidity is relieved only by hairlines made with the corner of the square-cut nib, which add a playful note to an otherwise sombre hand. During the 13th and 14th centuries the black-letter scripts became quite small in some manuscripts, especially Bibles, such that 10 or more lines of writing might fit in an inch (2.5 cm).

Paleographers have distinguished four types of black-letter (textualis) styles that were used in Germany, France, England, and Italy: prescissa, quadrata, semi-quadrata, and rotunda. Textualis precissa is identified by the way the bottoms (feet) of several of the minims end horizontally above the writing line. The feet of the minims of textualis quadrata are made up of diamond shapes, and they match the serifs found at their tops. Quadrata was used for early German printing types (e.g., the Gutenberg Bible) and became widely used in both type and calligraphy, although the precissa was an earlier and more elegant letter form. In Italy rotunda was the favoured book hand through the 15th century. It shares the dense colour of quadrata but not its angularity. Rotunda letters are condensed with sharp curves where the strokes change direction, and the feet of the minims end with an upward curve of the pen. Unlike quadrata, which spread throughout the printing community of northern Europe, rotunda had little influence on type design. Semi-quadrata, as the name implies, bears a close resemblance to quadrata but mixes that hand's diamond-shaped foot serifs with the upwardly curved bottom terminals of rotunda.

Later in the 15th century the rage for epigraphic (inscriptional) lettering brought into the field such enthusiasts as Cyriacus of Ancona, Felice Feliciano and Giovanni Giocondo (Giocondo, Fra Giovanni) of Verona, and Giovanni Marcanova, Bartolomeo Sanvito, and Andrea Mantegna (Mantegna, Andrea) from Padua; Mantegna, an engraver and painter, became one of the first Renaissance artists to incorporate classical lettering into his artwork. These men compiled their researches into sillogi (anthologies of texts from Roman inscriptions) that provided models for square capital letters.

By the early 16th century the versatile lettera da brevi (“brief script,” i.e., script used for papal briefs) or cancellaresca (“chancery”), had become the common hand of both book and letter writing among scribes, scholars, and savants throughout Europe. Several characteristics contributed to the popularity of the script: it was lively yet disciplined in appearance; it was responsive to a variety of pen nib styles and tolerant of different writing speeds; and it was attainable by the novice and gratifying to the adept. Even Queen Elizabeth I of England wrote what Shakespeare called the “sweet Roman hand.”

Sixteenth-century Italians were the first to publish books on the making of letters: Divina Proportione (“Divine Proportions”) by Luca Pacioli appeared in Venice in 1509, Sigismondo Fanti's Theorica et practica (1514; “Theory and Practice”) was also published in that city, and Francesco Torniello's Opera del modo de fare le littere maiuscole antique (“Work on the Way to Make Ancient Majuscule Letters”) came out in Milan in 1517. These books focus more on theory than on practice; Fanti's even shows how to construct gothic rotunda minuscules using geometry.

In Rome in 1540 Giovanni Battista Palatino published his Libro nuovo d'imparare a scrivere (“New Book for Learning to Write”), which proved to be, along with the manuals of Arrighi and Tagliente, one of the most influential books on writing cancelleresca issued in the first half of the 16th century. These three authors were frequently mentioned and imitated in later manuals, and their own manuals were often reprinted during and after their lifetimes.

Cresci published three writing books: Essemplare di piu sorti lettere (1560; “Model of all Sorts of Letters”), Il perfetto scrittore (1570; “The Perfect Writer”), and Il perfetto cancellaresco corsivo (1579; “The Perfect Cursive Chancery”). In relation to earlier works, these books show a chancery script written with a narrower pen, and as a result there was less contrast between the thick and thin letter strokes. Cresci's hand was further characterized by a steeper letter slope to the right (10 to 15 degrees rather than the earlier 5 to 8 degrees); more joins between letters; and alternate forms for o, h, p, r, and d. The most striking characteristics of Cresci's italic, however, are the pronounced, bulbous serifs on the ascenders, called testeggiata. Cresci's newly decorative minuscules and florid capitals were harbingers of the coming fashion in penmanship.

The Essemplare is finely printed from woodcut blocks, but seven years after its publication a new and better method of reproducing elaborate calligraphy appeared. In 1567 Pierre Hamon, secretary and royal writing master to Charles IX of France, published the first copybook printed from engraved (engraving) metal plates, Alphabet de plusiers sortes de lettres (“Alphabet of Several Sorts of Letters”). Although this title echoes the title of Cresci's 1560 book, the works are different. Hamon devotes the first part of his book to various forms of the French secretary hand, a style he writes adding such wild embellishments that they seem to take on an independent existence, in contrast to the relatively orderly flourishes found in contemporary Italian writing books. Hamon also takes advantage of the metal engraving process by presenting free-form letters drawn in thin outlines, something beyond the capabilities of the woodcut. The second part of his copybook is given over to formal and informal styles of chancery, following Palatino's models more than Cresci's.

Around the middle of the 16th century, cancelleresca, or Italian chancery italic, had become the preferred hand of English intelligentsia and the royal court, who had learned it either directly from Italian or French writing masters (such as Beauchesne) or from printed books. Roger Ascham (Ascham, Roger), a tutor to English nobility (including Queen Elizabeth I (Elizabeth I)), wrote and taught an exemplary cancellaresca based on the one shown in Arrighi's La operina, and the 16th-century scholar Bartholomew Dodington, a professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge, wrote a fluid italic that might have been the envy of any professional writing master.

In Jan van den Velde's Spieghel der Schrijfkonste (Rotterdam, 1605; “Mirror of the Art of Writing”), flourishing seems to be as important as the letters themselves. Made with the same pen as the writing and in a single uninterrupted line, the flourishes in Velde's Spieghel range from variations on spirals and figure-eights to representations of various birds, beasts, and even a ship under sail. The Dutch especially excelled in pen decorations, and few important writing books appear without some form of flourishing for the rest of the century. For example, T'magazin oft' pac-huys der loffelijcker pennconst (1616; “Stock of the Warehouse of Commendable Penmanship”), produced in Antwerp by David Roelands, includes calligraphic drawings of human and mythical figures, animals, ships, birds, monsters, and ornate initials; the book is more a display of what can be done with such penwork than it is a copybook.

Some sordid Sotts

Cry downe rare Knotts

Whose envy makes them currish

But Art shall shine

And Envie pine

And still my Pen shall flourish.

The revival of calligraphy in Great Britain at the end of the 19th century was part of a broader artistic reaction against the mechanization of manual crafts. About 1870 the English author, socialist, and artist William Morris (Morris, William) turned his attention to the ancient practices of scribes and began to experiment with writing. Using quills, he wrote out and illuminated several manuscripts on parchment and paper; he later became interested in printing, and he established the Kelmscott Press in 1891. His inquiries into calligraphy and his patronage of the book arts induced paper and parchment makers, among others, to revive forgotten manufacturing standards, and his study and collection of manuscripts inspired others to pursue calligraphy.

Among those who were indirectly inspired by Morris's activities was the British calligrapher Edward Johnston (Johnston, Edward), who explored medieval and Renaissance techniques and materials relating to manuscript preparation and writing. Starting with a version of half uncial, Johnston eventually settled on a 10th-century version of English Carolingian as a basic, or “foundational,” hand from which other calligraphic styles could be developed. He became an influential teacher of a generation of type designers and calligraphers; his Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (1906), was a landmark work for the modern revival of calligraphy.

italic script, based on the styles of Arrighi and Palatino, had already become quite popular in the United Kingdom; in 1952 the Society for Italic Handwriting was founded there by the English calligrapher Alfred Fairbank, a pupil of Graily Hewitt. Fairbank, who was undoubtedly the strongest advocate for the italic hand in the 20th century, published his first manual on learning italic handwriting in 1932, and he continued to publish books and articles on this topic for the rest of his life. In 1954, more than 400 years after its first appearance, Arrighi's La operina was translated by John Howard Benson as The First Writing Book. Benson wrote out his translation using both the layout and the writing style of the original; he included a facsimile of Arrighi's work as well as notes on writing Arrighi's italic.

Well-illustrated general references include Leila Avrin, Scribes, Script, and Books: The Book Arts from Antiquity to the Renaissance (1991), a comprehensive survey; and Stan Knight, Historical Scripts: From Classical Times to the Renaissance, 2nd rev. and expanded ed. (1998), with paleographic and practical information on the design and construction of formal book hands.

G.R. Driver, Semitic Writing from Pictograph to Alphabet, rev. ed. edited by S.A. Hopkins (1976), on the origins of Semitic writing; G.R. Driver (ed. and trans.), Aramaic Documents of the Fifth Century BC (1954, reprinted 1968); Eugène Tisserant (compiler), Specimina Codicum Orientalium (1914), with reproductions of Semitic pen hands; Carlo Bernheimer, Paleografia Ebraica (1924), with many Ashkenazic hands; Moses Gaster, Hebrew Illuminated Bibles of the IXth and Xth Centuries… (1901); Reuben Leaf, Hebrew Alphabets, 400 BC to Our Days (1950, reissued 1987), reproductions of manuscript styles; The Book of Jonah, woodcuts by Jacob Steinhardt, calligraphy by Franzisca Baruch (1953); Henri Friedlaender, Die Entstehung meiner Hadassah-Hebräisch (1967), on the relationship of Hebrew manuscript styles and types; and Leonard Singer Gold (ed.), A Sign and a Witness: 2,000 Years of Hebrew Books and Illuminated Manuscripts (1988), well-illustrated essays on a range of Hebrew writings.

Annemarie Schimmel, Islamic Calligraphy (1970), a stimulating introduction with illustrations, including calligraphy in architecture and the decorative arts, as well as a useful bibliography, and Calligraphy and Islamic Culture (1984); Yasin Hamid Safadi, Islamic Calligraphy (1978), on the development of Arabic writing from pre-Islamic times through the 20th century; Nabia Abbott, The Rise of the North Arabic Script and Its Kur'ānic Development (1939), a study of the origins of the Arabic script and its development in the early Islamic period; B. Moritz (ed.), Arabic Palaeography: A Collection of Arabic Texts from the First Century of the Hidjra till the Year 1000 (1905, reprinted 1986), a rich collection of texts on papyrus and paper; Anthony Welch, Calligraphy in the Arts of the Muslim World (1979), essays on aspects of calligraphy in Islam; Arthur Upham Pope and Phyllis Ackerman (eds.), A Survey of Persian Art from Prehistoric Times to the Present, vol. 4, The Ceramic Arts: Calligraphy and Epigraphy, 3rd ed. (1977), on Arabic calligraphy in the art and architecture of Persia; Basil Gray (ed.), The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, 14th–16th Centuries (1979), a work unique in both coverage and scholarship; and V. Minorsky (trans.), Calligraphers and Painters: A Treatise by Qādī Aḥmad… (1959), an important work (written in 1606) that illustrates the Islamic attitude toward calligraphy.

Dorothy E. Miner, Victor I. Carlson, and P.W. Filby (compilers), 2,000 Years of Calligraphy (1965, reissued 1980), a comprehensive and well-illustrated catalog of an exhibition devoted to regions using the Latin alphabet, with especially valuable notes and references from the 1st to the 19th century; Edward Johnston, Writing & Illuminating, & Lettering (1906, reissued 1995), the gospel of the modern revival by its chief apostle, and Formal Penmanship, and Other Papers, ed. by Heather Child (1971, reissued 1980); David Diringer, The Hand-Produced Book (1953, reprinted as The Book Before Printing: Ancient, Medieval, and Oriental, 1982), a storehouse of information; Jan Tschichold, An Illustrated History of Writing and Lettering (1946), a brief, perceptive, and personal account by an eminent designer; Hermann Degering (ed.), Lettering: A Series of 240 Plates Illustrating Modes of Writing in Western Europe from Antiquity to the End of the 18th Century (1954, reprinted 1965; originally published in German and English, 1929), a standard survey of scripts; Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (2007), a guide to the making, deciphering, and describing of medieval manuscripts, richly illustrated with examples from the Newberry Library, in Chicago; and B.L. Ullman, The Origin and Development of Humanistic Script (1960, reprinted 1974).Other useful books include Joyce Irene Whalley, The Pen's Excellencie: Calligraphy of Western Europe and America (1980); James Wardrop, The Script of Humanism: Some Aspects of Humanistic Script, 1460–1560 (1963); Alfred Fairbank and Berthold Wolpe, Renaissance Handwriting: An Anthology of Italic Scripts (1960); Oscar Ogg (ed.), Three Classics of Italian Calligraphy: An Unabridged Reissue of the Writing Books of Arrighi, Tagliente, Palatino (1953); Ambrose Heal, The English Writing-Masters and Their Copy-Books, 1570–1800 (1931, reprinted 1962), a fundamental biographical and bibliographical work, well illustrated and with an important essay by Stanley Morison; and Ray Nash, American Writing Masters and Copybooks: History and Bibliography Through Colonial Times (1959), and American Penmanship, 1800–1850: A History of Writing and a Bibliography of Copybooks from Jenkins to Spencer (1969), with small reproductions of title pages.David P. Becker, The Practice of Letters: The Hofer Collection of Writing Manuals, 1514–1800 (1997), an excellent and copiously illustrated bibliography of one of the major collections of European and American writing books; Michelle P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (1990), showing both book and document hands and valuable to the paleography student and the calligrapher; Heather Child (ed.), The Calligrapher's Handbook, 2nd ed. (1986), collected essays by modern scribes and illuminators on all aspects of the practice of calligraphy; Nicolete Gray, A History of Lettering (1986), for the calligrapher as well as the student of lettering (i.e., the careful construction or drawing of shapes); Donald Jackson, The Story of Writing (1981), profusely illustrated; Carla Marzoli (compiler), Calligraphy, 1535–1885 (1962), a catalog of 72 European writing books, including some published after 1800, with bibliographic descriptions; Stanley Morison, Early Italian Writing-Books: Renaissance to Baroque, ed. by Nicolas Barker (1990), tracing the development and decline of italic writing; and Politics and Script: Aspects of Authority and Freedom in the Development of Graeco-Latin Script from the Sixth Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D., ed. and completed by Nicolas Barker (1972), studying the social and political influences that affected the selection and development of Western scripts; A.S. Osley, Luminario: An Introduction to the Italian Writing-Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1972), the most complete survey available in English of Italian Renaissance and Baroque writing books, with biographies of their authors; and A.S. Osley (compiler and trans.), Scribes and Sources: Handbook of the Chancery Hand in the Sixteenth Century (1980), with valuable translations of selected writings from 18 writing masters of the 16th century, with emphasis on the Italian chancery hand and its offshoots.

E.G. Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd ed. (1987), the best general work and also very well illustrated; Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (1981); Franchi De'Cavalieri and Johannes Lietzmann, Specimina Codicum Graecorum Vaticanorum (1910, reissued 1929), 50 Greek manuscript specimens in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vatican City; The Codex Alexandrinus, 5 vol. (1909–57), a facsimile in reduced size, with introductions by F.G. Kenyon, H.J.M. Milne, and T.C. Skeat; The Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Alexandrinus, prepared by H.J.M. Milne and T.C. Skeat, 2nd ed. (1963), on the origins of the two great Greek uncial Bibles in the British Museum, London; Facsimile of the Washington Manuscript of Deuteronomy and Joshua in the Freer Collection (1910); and Ilias Ambrosiana (1953), a beautiful facsimile of the Homeric codex in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan (elegant uncial writing).

The best short accounts in English are in B.L. Ullman, Ancient Writing and Its Influence, new ed. (1969, reprinted 1980); and Edward Maunde Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (1912, reprinted 2002). All Roman books and documents are cataloged (in English) in, respectively, E.A. Lowe (ed.), Codices latini antiquiores: A Palaeographical Guide to Latin Manuscripts Prior to the Ninth Century, 12 vol. (1934–66, reprinted 1982); and Albert Bruckner and Robert Marichal (eds.), Chartae latinae antiquiores: Facsimile Edition of the Latin Charters Prior to the Ninth Century (1954– ), an ongoing work with more than 79 vol. already published. The most important monographs are Jean Mallon, Paléographie romaine (1952); E.A. Lowe, Palaeographical Papers, 1907–1965, 2 vol. (1972); Leonard E. Boyle, Medieval Latin Palaeography: A Bibliographical Introduction (1984), a guide to further study of Latin scripts; Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (1990; originally published in German, 1979), an essential monograph on medieval paleography by a major authority on the subject; and Arthur E. Gordon, Illustrated Introduction to Latin Epigraphy (1983), a paleographic work that contains 100 Latin inscriptions chronologically arranged and illustrated.

Yu-ho Ecke Tseng, Chinese Calligraphy (1971); Shen Fu, Traces of the Brush: Studies in Chinese Calligraphy (1977); Lucy Driscoll and Kenji Toda, Chinese Calligraphy, 2nd ed. (1964); Yee Chiang, Chinese Calligraphy: An Introduction to Its Aesthetic and Techniques, 3rd ed. rev. and enlarged (1973); William Willetts, Chinese Calligraphy: Its History and Aesthetic Motivation (1981), and Chinese Art, 2 vol. in 1 (1958); Chih-mai Ch'ên, Chinese Calligraphers and Their Art (1966); and Shen Fu, Glenn D. Lowry, and Ann Yonemura, From Concept to Context: Approaches to Asian and Islamic Calligraphy (1986).Jean François Billeter, The Chinese Art of Writing (1990; originally published in French, 1989), focuses on both the theory and practice of Chinese calligraphy and also draws parallels between traditional calligraphy and modern European art; Chang Ch'ung-ho (Ch'ung-ho Chang) and Hans H. Frankel (trans.), Two Chinese Treatises on Calligraphy (1995), includes translations of the 7th-century treatise Shupu by Sun Qianli and the 13th-century Xu shupu by Jiang Kui; and Frederick W. Mote and Hung-lam Chu, Calligraphy and the East Asian Book, ed. by Howard L. Goodman (1989), with studies of Chinese calligraphy and printing, as well as early forms of writing found on other objects, such as bronzes.

Eung-hyon Kim, “Sang-ko eui Sŏye,” “Koryŏ eui Sŏye,” “Yi-cho eui Sŏye,” and “Hyondae eui Soye,” all in Han'guk yesul ch'ongnam (1965), published by the Academy of Art, Seoul, South Korea, are the best surveys on Korean calligraphy, by a noted calligrapher. Ki-sung Kim, Han'guk Sŏye sa (1966), is a general survey of Korean calligraphy.

Yoshiaki Shimizu and John M. Rosenfield, Masters of Japanese Calligraphy 8th–19th Century (1984); Yujiro Nakata, The Art of Japanese Calligraphy (1973; originally published in Japanese, 1967); and Hisao Sugahara, Japanese Ink Painting and Calligraphy…, trans. from Japanese (1967).