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".