I’m slowly making my way through The Book: The Life Story of a Technology and I am enjoying it very much. It is a slim book and so nothing goes very deeply but there is a bibliography at the end of the book I am certain will yield riches. In spite of the book not being an in depth history there are still plenty of tidbits that are new to me. One of those tidbits got my attention last night.
Did you know that for a long time the history of handwriting was tied up with the history of the book? It makes sense but it never crossed my mind that the two were connected. When books were predominantly written on papyrus, Roman letters were the preferred script. But when parchment began to be the preferred writing surface and quill pens the writing instrument of choice, the uncial script emerged. Scribes liked the uncial script much better because the rounded letters made writing quicker and easier.
Then in the eighth century Charlemagne ordered an English scholar to create a new script. The result was the Carolingian script also known as Caroline minuscule. It was quickly adopted by scribes across Europe and remained in use for centuries until the Gothic script took over.
Gothic was more rigid and was developed to save space because the letters could be placed closer together. And then the Renaissance came along and the gothic script went out of use except in parts of northern Europe, particularly Germany where it hung around well into the eighteenth century.
The Renaissance Humanists valued a clear hand and developed a new script, the humanistic script based on the Caroline minuscule.
When the printing press finally arrived on the scene, the pieces of type used in the press were carved in an attempt to mimic the humanistic script of Renaissance scholars. The type was only considered successful if it could not be distinguished from a handwritten script.
Isn’t that interesting? I think it is. The links, in case you haven’t figured it out, will take you to examples of the different scripts. Oh and one more tidbit. Because there might be several different scribes working on the same book, they were all trained to write so precisely that you weren’t supposed to be able to tell that the book was written by more than one hand. A far cry from how we have come to think of handwriting as an expression of the person.
Wow — type was supposed to look like handwriting? That seems odd! Those examples of script are fascinating. And yes, it’s really interesting that scribes tried to write in exactly the same way — that’s a really telling insight into their culture and how we have changed from that time.
I think of how much labor it must have taken for those books to be handwritten- and how much skill, for several scribes to have precisely the same handwriting. Makes them a real labor of love. No wonder ancient books were so valuable (they used to be chained to the library shelves so they couldn’t be stolen).
Not so long ago, when penmanship classes were still taught, we were also trained to write in a certain way – all in the same way. Remember the script examples on (ususally) green cardboard and displayed on the blackboard? Personal flourishes would give you a bad grade. And remember the lined paper that defined the height of the capital letter and the height of the lower case letter? If you are nearing the age of social security, you probably do.
Grad, I remember that too! That’s how I learned to write. Less than 30 years ago, but don’t ask “how much less” please!
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My husband rarely ever handwrites, so he resorts to capital letters for clarity. Now that I have seen your examples, Stefanie, I can tell him that he, in fact, has a much purer handwriting than my scribbles: his script looks very Roman!
Ooo, I love all this stuff. I especially love how early books were made to resemble open scrolls—they started out with 6 narrow columns of text per opening, then 4 wider columns, and finally the two page-wide columns we’re used to today.
Also, as you say, Gothic hung on in northern Europe—that is what the Gutenberg Bible is printed in. Imagine if books were still printed in drastically different typefaces in different countries?
And now we have come to the personalised twenty-first century, with its infinite number of styles. We have my son’s script ‘cat tangles yarn’, and my husband’s script ‘repressed midget print’ and my own ‘lecture hall scrawl’. Bring back Gothic, is all I can say!
Actually in France, children are still more or less taught to write a certain way. There are small variations, but I can certainly spot a French person from their handwriting!
Dorothy, can you imagine your students turning in typed papers in a font that looked like handwriting? I’ll bet the scribes found cunning ways to leave their mark in the books though.
Jeane, it is hard to imagine the time and skill but their work was so gorgeous. Artists in their own rights.
Grad, oh you bring back memories of learning how to write in school. We weren’t allowed to learn script until 3rd grade. I felt so grown up! My teachers weren’t as strict as yours, they just seemed happy if the letters were anywhere like the examples!
Charlotte, my husband does the same thing. His handwriting is atrocious so when he is really working at being neat he writes in all caps. His dad does the same thing. I wonder if it is a guy thing?
Sylvia, I didn’t know about the scroll thing. And now here we are doing something similar again. E-books are trying very hard to look like printed books. And it would be terrible if there was such huge font variation in books. It would make reading do much more difficult.
Litlove, oh how you made me laugh! For a very brief time I had a pen pal in France when I was a kid and her writing was beautiful. Our correspondence didn’t last long though because she kept writing me in French. My Spanish teacher also knew French and I’d have to ask her to translate for me. I never got another pretty letter again after I asked her if she would please write in English.
I took a design class and I was just fascinated by early types! Thanks for this post. Lots of fun to remember that semester.
This is really fascinating. I’ve always been fond of uncial scripts; wonder if I was a scribe in a past life?
I know that I can easily recognize certain stylistic tics in people who learned their handwriting style in Eastern Europe — at least from a certain number of years ago. It’s so interesting to see the variations.