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.

How to practice.

Some suggestions for practicing calligraphy.

1. Don't try to write the same letter over and over. It's tempting but instead of improving, you will remember you mistakes.
2. Practice letters in groups. Letters with similar strokes or proportions should be practiced in groups.
3. Once it's on the paper, it's too late anyway. Fill a page and then go back and look at it, think about it and try to do better the next time. It's more important to get the feel of writing (esp. when practicing with the pen) than to stop after every letter and worry about whether its perfect.
4. Don't over-do it. There's only that many sheets you can fill before you feel tired, physically and mentally. Stop, relax and come back tomorrow.
   

Italic, Part II - The minuscules

Because metal broad edge pens cannot be pushed, the strokes must differ from the accepted stroke order of the English alphabet. Strokes are often broken into two part to allow pulling of the pen. Strokes directions are indicated in the diagram below with red arrows, the red lines indicate where a stroke starts when there is ambiguity. The number of arrows correspond to the number of strokes.

The basic strokes of Italic are the straight curve and the rounded point. (This is full of Zen.) The straight curve starts at 45 degrees and flattens out toward the top. The rounded point is the other part of the straight curve which starts out at 45 degrees and goes down and up. The rounded point can also be written upside down as is in the letters b, p, h, m n and k.

For starters, ascenders and descenders both have the same height as the x height. Although this is often changed to suit the mood of each piece.

The slant (indicated by the dotted lines) should be consistent throughout the whole piece. For letters with straight portions the slant is easy to determine. For letters without straight lines running along the slant, the slant is the optical bisector of the letter (e.g. o, x, v ,w) or the bounding box of the letter (e.g. z, e, c, s). Although the proportions of the letters are not as strict as in Roman, Italic minuscules should occupy a parallelogram that has a width smaller than the height and that parallelogram should be of the same size throughout a piece.

Notice that q's should look like turned over b's and n's like upside down u's. Try to make them as similar to each other as possible. Consistency is more important than form. Two consecutive letters (e.g. those two t's in "letters") really do have to look the same to "make it work".

Italic, Part I - History

Before the invention of printing, manuscripts had to be copied by scribes. Italic was the result of lazy scribes but then replaced the unwieldy Uncial. The name results from the country which most books were written, and hence had the most book writing scribes, at the time. The word Italic should be pronounced "It-tal-lic" in honour of its origins and not "I-tal-lic" as it is sometimes heard. Italic is not a single kind of script. Any script that has a slant angle and is written with a broad edge pen can be considered Italic. This series will use the most clearly formed type of Italic, Chancery Italic, as an example to illustrate the basic construction of Italic letters.

A script to meet the needs
Italic was a result of the Renaissance. Before that, the only thing that needed to be written belonged to the church and there was no great rush to publish many copies. Hence booked were decorated (illuminated) with drawings and gilded. The speed at which the script could be written was of no great importance. It was probably during the renaissance that the word "sold out" was first related to books. Suddenly, being able to write fast was a useful skill. At that time, the official "book hand" (script used to write books) was Uncial, which was slow to write since it required multiple strokes for each letter. Scribes started seeking "short hand versions" of the letters which meant that they would write each letter with one stroke. Writing with quills, they were able to push their pens; something that modern calligraphers with crisp Italic nibs cannot, which explains why we need more than one stroke for most Italic letters nowadays. The writing slant was also a result of speeding up since the natural movement of the (right) hand is from bottom left to top right.

Evolution under constraints of the tool
The flag top (i.e. upward motion before verticals in letters d, b, p, h, m, etc.) and the ligature (i.e. the final upward stroke of the letters a, d, h ,m, n, etc.) was part a solution to a technical problem and a result of speedy writing. Quills don't always start on the first touch or they may put down too much ink at the first touch (which incidentally is sometimes a problem with dip pens too), the flag top allowed the ink flow to become consistent before writing the letter, it was also allowed the writer to have a second chance on the letter spacing - imagine starting straight down and finding that the letters were too close together. The ligature was most probably the result of lifting the pen too slowly when moving to the next letter. In Chancery Italic the letters are not linked, but Italic in which letters are linked (cursive Italic) do exist.

Roman, Part IIa - Writing Roman, basics

Roman letters convey a sense of order and balance. This perhaps has something to do with their strict proportions. Roman letters occupy either a square, a half square or 4/5's of a square.

I find it easiest to practice the proportions writing with a sharpie marker.Once you're confident that you've got your proportions right and your strokes going straight up and down. You might want to switch to a broad edged pen and practice Roman pen letters.

The normal pen angle is around 30 degress, a bit less that the 45 degrees used for Italic. Since dip pens cannot be pushed (only pulled), you will have to learn to draw the letters in a different stroke order. The round letters such as O, C, G and Q are drawn in 2 strokes starting from the thinnest point of the letter (11 o'clock). The letter U is also done in 2 strokes, again meeting at the thinnest point (4 o'clock) coming down from the top. The letter S is done in 3 strokes.

You might want to increase the pen angle to 45 degrees for M's and N's and decrease it to 0 for the diagonal stroke of the letter Z to give it more weight. Note also that the letter M looks better when made a bit narrower than a W
Some faults. The letters C and G are slanted to the right. The top lobe of the letter B is larger than the bottom lobe. If anything, the bottom lobe should be equal in size or slightly bigger than the top such that the letter does not look top heavy. The lobes of the letters D, B, P and R should look like a train tunnel turned on its side, i.e. coming out straight and then curving down rather than a semicircle. The lobe of the P is a nice example while the lower lobe of the B is not.

Just to get ahead of myself a bit, I have included two variations on the last line which correspond to a W and two O's. The thickest part of the one O should intersect with the thinnest part of the other (easier said than done). These are used to improve spacing when needed. More on that in the article on spacing.