The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language and its extensions used to write modern languages.
Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic handwriting. It is concerned with the forms and processes of writing; not the textual content of documents. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria.
Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner".
Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called "hands" while an individual's style of penmanship is referred to as "handwriting".
The Palmer Method of penmanship instruction was developed and promoted by Austin Palmer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was largely created as a simplified style of the "Spencerian Method", which had been the major standardized system of handwriting since the 1840s. The Palmer Method soon became the most popular handwriting system in the United States.
Sütterlinschrift is the last widely used form of Kurrent, the historical form of German handwriting that evolved alongside German blackletter typefaces. Graphic artist Ludwig Sütterlin was commissioned by the Prussian Ministry of Science, Art and Culture to create a modern handwriting script in 1911. His handwriting scheme gradually replaced the older cursive scripts that had developed in the 16th century at the same time that letters in books had developed into Fraktur. The name Sütterlin is nowadays often used to refer to all varieties of old German handwriting, although only this specific script was taught in all German schools from 1915 to 1941.
Cursive is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and modern-day usage across languages and regions; being used both publicly in artistic and formal documents as well as in private communication. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins and pen lifts. The writing style can be further divided as "looped", "italic" or "connected".
The Ol Chiki script, also known as Ol Chemetʼ, Ol Ciki, Ol, and sometimes as the Santali alphabet invented by Pandit Raghunath Murmu in the year 1925, is the official writing system for Santali, an Austroasiatic language recognized as an official regional language in India. It has 30 letters, the forms of which are intended to evoke natural shapes. The script is written from left to right, and has two forms ; the latter form is not Unicoded. In both forms, this alphabet was invented as a unicameral script.
The shapes of the letters are not arbitrary, but reflect the names for the letters, which are words, usually the names of objects or actions representing conventionalized form in the pictorial shape of the characters.
Roman cursive is a form of handwriting used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old cursive and new cursive.
Italic script, also known as chancery cursive and Italic hand, is a semi-cursive, slightly sloped style of handwriting and calligraphy that was developed during the Renaissance in Italy. It is one of the most popular styles used in contemporary Western calligraphy.
The D'Nealian Method, is a style of writing and teaching handwriting based on Latin script which was developed between 1965 and 1978 by Donald N. Thurber (1927–2020) in Michigan, United States. Building on his experience as a primary school teacher, Thurber aimed to make the transition from print writing to cursive easier for learners.
Kurrent is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift, deutsche Schrift and German cursive. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms.
Spencerian script is a script style based on Copperplate script that was used in the United States from approximately 1850 to 1925, and was considered the American de facto standard writing style for business correspondence prior to the widespread adoption of the typewriter. Spencerian Script, an American form of cursive handwriting, was also widely integrated into the school system as an instructional method until the "simpler" Palmer Method replaced its predecessor. President James A. Garfield called the Spencerian Script, "the pride of our country and the model of our schools."
Cursive Hebrew is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is handwritten with the Ashkenazi cursive script that had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century. This is also a mainstay of handwritten Yiddish. It was preceded by a Sephardi cursive script, known as Solitreo, that is still used for Ladino.
The Latin script is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the standard script of the English language and is often referred to simply as "the alphabet" in English. It is a true alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2,500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan. The phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles ("hands") developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters. Modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts, and there are few regional variants.
Stiefografie, also called Stiefo or Rationelle Stenografie, is a German shorthand system. It was invented by Helmut Stief (1906–1977), a German press and parliamentary stenographer, and first published in 1966.
Radical 120 or radical silk (糸部) meaning "silk" is one of the 29 Kangxi radicals composed of 6 strokes.
A teaching script is a sample script that serves as a visual orientation for learning to write by hand. In the sense of a guideline or a prototype, it supports the demanding process of developing handwriting skills and abilities in a visual and illustrative way.
The Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift is a simplified form of handwriting primarily based on the Lateinische Ausgangsschrift. It was developed in 1969 and tested since 1972. The letters have been simplified and the shapes approximated the block letters. In 10 of the 16 German federal states, it is available for schools to choose from, among other cursives.
The Zaner-Bloser is a teaching script for handwriting based on Latin script as well as a system of penmanship instruction, which originated around 1904 at the Zanerian College of Penmanship in Columbus, Ohio. Charles P. Zaner (1864–1918) and Elmer W. Bloser (1865–1929), originally a Spencerian Method instructor, developed their teaching script with the aim of allowing learners an easier transition from print writing to cursive. The Zaner-Bloser Method first teaches block letters and then cursive in order to enable written expression as quickly as possible and thus develop the ability to write. Material relating to the method of instruction practised by Zaner and Bloser is still being published by the Zaner-Bloser Company.
