HISTORY OF WESTERN HANDWRITING

The Romans in Southern Italy eventually adopted the Greek alphabet as modified by the Etruscans, Ancient Italians, to develop Latin writing. Like the Greeks, the Romans employed stone, metal, clay, and papyrus as writing surfaces. 

Handwriting styles which were used to produce manuscripts included square capitals, rustic capitals, uncials, and half-uncials.

SQUARE CAPITALS

Roman square capitals, also called inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and quadrata, are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters. Square Capitals were employed for more formal texts based on stone inscriptional letters while rustic capitals are more free, compressed, and efficient.

RUSTIC CAPITALS

Rustic capitals (in Latin capitalis rustica) is an ancient Roman calligraphic script. As the term is negatively connotated supposing an opposition to the more 'civilized' form of the Roman square capitals. Rustic capitals are similar to Roman square capitals, but are less rigid, influenced more by pen and ink writing on papyrus or parchment than the writing used for inscriptions. The letters are thinner and more compressed, use many more curved lines than do square capitals, and have descenders extending below the baseline.

UNCIALS

Uncials were rounded capitals (majuscules) that originally were developed by the Greeks in the third century BC, but became popular in Latin manuscripts by the fourth century AD.

Early forms are characterized by broad single stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of the new parchment and vellum surfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus. All of the letters are disconnected from one another, and word separation is typically not used. Word separation, however, is characteristic of later uncial usage.

Roman cursive or informal handwriting started out as a derivative of the capital letters, though the tendency to write quickly and efficiently made the letters less precise.

Half-uncials (minuscules) were lower case letters, which eventually became the national hand of Ireland. Other combinations of half-uncial and cursive handwriting developed throughout Europe.

Like uncial, half-uncial derived from Roman cursive. It was first used around the 3rd century and remained in use until the end of the 8th century. Half-uncial was brought to Ireland in the 5th century, and was then carried to England. There, it was used up to the 8th century, and developed into the detatched script to the island after the 8th century.

The history of handwriting in western civilisation shows a dramatic development from what we would see as an ancient script, outdated by thousands of years, to writing that wouldn't necessarily be too far off of a typical style of handwriting.

It is this Gaelic writing, of Uncials and Half-uncials that became the modern style when Christianity travelled to Ireland, and Britain. Scribes eventually stopped writing in Uncial, however, Uncial has remained popular for headlines, titles, certificates, and display usage ever since. Whereas Uncial-looking typefaces are still widely used in Ireland, especially when dealing with the Irish language.

There is no doubt that how everyone writes, and how everyone is taught to write is a direct correlation from the development and history of writing from Roman times all the way to today, Gaelic of Gothic. In western civilisation, it has effected modern handwriting. But it isn't just this that has had an impact on how people write today, the freedom people have shows inspiration from all areas.