SPencerian, Part II - Basic strokes and Minuscules

Spencerian books used to be very exacting in the sense that nothing was left to the freedom of the writer. Main slants, connecting slants, proportion of the letters and letter spacings were often stated numerically. This approach seems to be ill suited for today. After all, calligraphy is about beautiful writing, not turning oneself into a typewriter. Therefore only the finer points will be specifically addressed in this series.

Proportions and Basic Strokes
Spencerian is written with a main slant of 52 degrees to the horizontal. The letters d and t are twice as high as the rest (x-height). The loops of r and s also reach above the x-height a little bit. b, l, f, h, k reach up further than d and t, about 3 x-heights, while g, j, p, q, y and z drop down twice the x-height.

Spencerian minuscules are made from combinations of 7 basic strokes. Amongst them the familiar straight curve and round point which Italic writers will be familiar with. The big O is easy to understand. The remaining 3 have the unique "Spencerian look" and are unique to this script.



Note that the straight parts of the letters b, f, h, k, l are never truly straight. The reason being that if they were, the rounded ends would produce the illusion of them being curved to the right. Therefore the pen is actually pulled back a bit to the left and pressed down a bit to give a thicker line (known as shading) after crossing to correct for this optical illusion.

Letter Variations
Spencerian is also known for it's letter variations. To make starting letters the upstroke of each letter is dropped with the exception of e, u m, n, b, d, p, l , k , h and s since dropping the initial upstroke would make the letter look a bit funny. Sometimes the English r is used to start an r-word instead of the French r. To make ending letters the bottom loop letters (j, y, g, f, z) would lose their loops and the letter t turns into a funny zigzag (bottom row, fifth letter from the right). There are multiple ways to end with an f as shown in the above sample where the last 2 letters are both ending f's.

The old Masters sometimes varied letters for double letters, such as the two t's in the word letter.

The only real rule to flourishes and letter variations is "whatever looks good".

Spencerian, Part I - History

Cursive refers to letters that are joined as different from the separated letters of print. The scribbles of most people's handwriting might be called a form of cursive Italic, which basically describes most semi-joined scripts with some degree of slant. Some of us were fortunate, or unfortunate, enough to be taught English Round Hand in primary school which we automatically refer to as cursive handwriting. In fact, cursive can be further divided into many types.

Amongst these, Spencerian is, in the opinion of the author, the most distinctively beautiful type.

Invention
Invented by the American Platt Rogers Spencer in 1840, the Spencerian script was designed to be written rapidly and legibly. The script was widely taught during the late 1800's in Business Schools which were schools that taught people how to write letters and how to write them beautifully. Spencer never lived to see the script become popular but his sons did and published their father's works which in turn made Spencerian "the" way to right in America. Of course, nobody ever wrote a business letter again in the 1900's. Remnants of this script can still be found in American company logos such as those of Ford Motors and Coca-Cola. The script was once taught in American schools but was finally replaced by Palmer's cursive, which the author thinks is ugly.

Evolution
Spencerian was designed to be written fast with a somewhat rigid pen (a semi-flex according to current standards). Many successful penman drew inspiration from the flowing lines of Spencerian and started using increasingly flexible pens to write with more and more line variation, ultimately producing what we now refer to as Ornamental Penmanship. The original version of Spencerian which has minimal line variation became known as Business Script.

While the author's skill cannot match the master penman who once made wonders, this series of posts will try to provide a very superficial introduction on Ornamental Penmanship.

Back from a long break

Time to sweep away the dust and start some new posts.

We will be taking a short break from Italic to talk about a "modern" script, the Spencerian.