EASIER WRITING STYLES

Stonecutters carved the inscriptions on monuments using metal tools, after having
drawn the letters on the stone with a writing utensil. Scribes were specialists who wrote
by hand all manner of documents on papyrus or other, less durable writing surfaces, to
produce ephemeral graphic communication. Their handwriting tools gave them more
freedom and flexibility than cutting in stone, and new suites of letterforms began to
emerge. Today, scholars are still uncertain whether the scribes gradually adapted
inscriptional capitals to their needs or whether they created completely new writing
styles based on practical considerations. Over time, three distinct styles of handwriting
or hands as they are called emerged to replace formal capitals in everyday graphic
communication. These styles came to be known as square capitals, rustic capitals and
Roman cursive.

SQUARE CAPITALS
Square capitals are generally considered by typographic historians as attempts to
approximate inscriptional letters. This writing style was used almost exclusively to
produce the most formal books and documents. These letters definitely embody
gravitas: the precision and regularity of their form shows that they were drawn slowly
and carefully. Nonetheless, they were written more quickly, with a more flowing hand,
than was possible in stone. As a result, square capitals, although they were patterned
after the capital letterforms, differed from the inscriptional form on monuments.

E
xample of Square Capitals.

RUSTIC CAPITALS
Square capitals were wide, taking up a lot of space on a page or scroll. Patrons who
used scribes realized that they could appropriately reduce the cost of producing certain,
less important books and documents if the writing were done in a letterform that was
narrower (thus saving space) and simpler to draw (thus saving time). The ultimate result
was what has come to be known as rustic (or simple) capitals.

E
xample of Rustic Capitals.

ROMAN CURSIVE
The word cursive means running in Latin, and the Roman cursive form enabled the
writer to keep the pen running along the writing surface. This was ideal for recording
business transactions, bookkeeping, correspondence and similar uses. Roman cursive
was the ordinary business and correspondence hand of the Romans until approximately
AD 500. Since the writings were not usually intended to be permanent, the letters were
often scratched in tablets of wax, clay or masonry, or written on papyrus. Sometimes
they were so carelessly recorded that the result illegible to anyone other than the writer.
Still, the very speed and casual manner in which these letters were written led to the
present forms of many of our lowercase letters.

E
xample of Roman Cursive.

An important aspect of the Roman cursive hand was that evolved into the creation of
ascending and descending parts on some of the letters. This probably came about
because it is easier to make longer stems when writing quickly, than to draw the precise
short ones used in more slowly written formal documents. Although the scribes were
unaware of it at the time, the ascenders and descenders they incorporated into this
more casual writing style helped create a major differentiator from capital letterforms.

It is believed that Serif font history dates back to the times of Ancient Rome with the Roman
alphabet and inscriptional lettering. That is why serif fonts are also known as Roman fonts.
The most well-known representative of Serif font family is Times New Roman, which is
familiar to everyone, who has experience of using Microsoft Windows and Office
applications.
These days the range of Serif fonts applications is impressive: traditionally used for body
text, serif fonts are commonly used in printed media, such as books, magazines, and
newspapers. It is interesting to note that while Serif font texts are believed to be easier to
read on paper, they are not always comfortable to read from the computer screen,
especially if it is a small size font. People say that sans serif fonts (those without serifs) are
better for onscreen presentations.
Typography experts define 4 subtypes in the Serif font family. They are old style,
transitional, modern, and slab serif fonts. Old style fonts have the most traditional look,
featuring low line contrast and diagonal stress. Serif fonts of modern style are
characterized with extremely high contrast and vertical rather than diagonal stress. The
characteristics of the transitional fonts with serifs are those in between the old and modern
font styles. Finally, slab serif fonts are distinguished by their bold and square appearance.

Edward Catich
Edward M. Catich (19061979) was an American Roman Catholic priest, teacher,
and calligrapher. He is noted for the fullest development of the thesis that the inscribed Imperial
Roman capitals of the Augustan age and afterward owed their form (and their
characteristic serifs) wholly to the use of the flat brush, rather than to the exigencies of the
chisel or other stone cutting tools.
Studying in Rome as a seminarian in the late 1930s, he made a thorough study of the letter
forms of the epigraphy on Trajan's Column.
While the brushed-origin thesis had been proposed in the nineteenth century, Catich, having
worked as a union sign painter, made a complete study and proposed a convincing ductus by
which the forms were created, using a flat brush and then chisel. He promulgated his views in
two works, Letters Redrawn from the Trajan Inscription in Rome and The Origin of the Serif:
Brush Writing and Roman Letters.
While the thesis is not universally accepted, electioneering posters excavated in Pompeii show
unincised Imperial Roman capital titles (followed by body text in rustic capitals) brush-painted on
certain walls
Serifs originated in the Latin alphabet with inscriptional letteringwords carved into stone in
Roman antiquity. The explanation proposed by Father Edward Catich in his 1968 book The
Origin of the Serif is now broadly but not universally accepted: the Roman letter outlines were
first painted onto stone, and the stone carvers followed the brush marks which flared at stroke
ends and corners, creating serifs. Another theory is that serifs were devised to neaten the ends
of lines as they were chiseled into stone.