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.