Handwriting



The earliest form of handwriting was a pictographic system developed by the Sumerians. The pictographs were carved into clay tablets and evolved into a somewhat standardized system referred to as cuneiform around 3200 B.C. Around the same time Egyptians developed a pictographic system of hieroglyphics and during the 11th century B.C. the Phoenicians developed an alphabetical system of writing. The Greeks adapted the Phoenician alphabet, adding vowels and creating a script of capital letters, which influenced the development of the Roman alphabet.




The Roman alphabet was modified by the Etruscans to become Latin. There were a variety of materials and styles of handwriting employed for use with the Latin alphabet. The Romans used stone, papyrus, clay and metal as writing surfaces onto which they scribed square capitals, rustic capitals, uncials and half-uncials. At the end of the 8th century A.D. Charlemagne commissioned Alcuin of York to develop the Carolingian Minuscule, which was a standardized form of writing which he decreed must be used for all Roman writings. The Carolingian Minuscule became the basis for most lowercase letters as we know them today.




While the Roman style of handwriting was the basis for much of the western world, eastern countries like China and Japan were developing a form of handwriting as an art which developed into a practice of calligraphy that is still held in very high regard in eastern culture today. They practiced calligraphy on a variety of materials including bronze, stone, jade, pottery, and clay. Western calligraphy developed out of several styles of script handwriting including Antiqua script, Batarde script and English script. Calligraphy is widely practiced as an art form as well as used in many modern typographic applications for communication in cultures around the world.