HISTORY OF WRITING
Roman and italic: 15th century AD
Italian scholars of the 14th and 15th century, followers of Petrarch in their reverence for classical culture, search through libraries for ancient texts. Copying out their discoveries, they aspire also to an authentic script. They find their models in beautifully written manuscripts which they take to be Roman but which are in fact Carolingian.
The error is a fortunate one. The script devised for Charlemagne’s monastic workshops in the 8th century is a model of clarity and elegance. It is adapted for practical use, in slightly different ways, by two Florentine friends – Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Niccoli.
Bracciolini, employed as secretary at the papal court in Rome from 1403, uses the ancient script for important documents. To the rounded lower-case letters of the the Carolingian script he adds straight-edged capital letters which he copies from Roman monuments.
By contrast his friend Niccoli adapts the Carolingian script to the faster requirements of everyday writing. To this end he finds it more convenient to slope the letters a little (the result of holding the pen at a more comfortable angle), and to allow some of them to join up. Joining up is not in itself new. In several forms of medieval hand-writing the letters flow together to become what is known as a ‘cursive’ hand.
Printers in Venice later in the century, attempting to reflect the classical spirit of humanism, turn to the scripts of Bracciolini and Niccoli. The rounded but upright style of Bracciolini is first used by the French printer Nicolas Jenson shortly after his arrival in the city in 1470. This type face is given the name roman, reflecting its ancient origins.
In 1501 another great Venetian printer, Aldus Manutius, needs a contrasting and smaller type for a ‘pocket edition’ of Virgil. He turns to the script of Niccoli, in everyday use by fashionable Italians, and calls it accordingly italic. Roman and italic eventually become a standard part of every printer’s repertoire.
Copperplate: from the 16th century
For purposes of handwriting a version of the italic script eventually becomes the norm in most western societies. The reason is partly accidental. Flowing letters are easily engraved, as can be seen in the captions of any engraving. The natural movement of the burin through the metal is in elegant curves, ending in elongated points. A nib, filled with ink, can easily make the same flowing marks on paper.
As writing becomes a necessary accomplishment for the middle classes, a new profession is created – that of the writing master.
The writing master needs examples for his pupils to copy. The engraver provides these, as separate sheets or as plates bound into manuals, and the manuals soon have the effect of standardizing handwriting. The conventional form becomes known as copper-plate – imitating the letters which the engraver has cut in his copper plate.
Many such manuals are published, starting with the Essemplare (‘Examples’) of Gianfrancesco Cresci, a Vatican writer, in 1560. The most successful collection of copper-plate examples is the Universal Penman of George Bickham, first published in 1733 and still in use as a teaching aid in Britain in the early part of the 20th century.
The talking leaves of the Cherokee: AD 1821 – 1828
The magic of writing is encapsulated in an achievement of the Cherokee Indians of north America. In the early 19th century, recognizing the advantage that writing brings to the white Americans, they resolve to acquire the same benefit for their own people.
They analyze the spoken sounds of the Cherokee language and decide that it consists of eighty-six identifiable syllables. A symbol is selected for each syllable – by adapting letters in the English alphabet, and perhaps also by borrowing from fragments of Greek and Hebrew in the books distributed by missionaries.
Traditionally this exacting task has been said to be the work of Sequoyah (the illiterate son of a British trader and a Cherokee woman), helped only by his daughter. More recently it has been suggested that others invented the system and that Sequoyah’s main contribution was in popularizing it. Whatever the precise detail, the achievement is an even more striking example of what Ulfilas did for the Goths in the 4th century.
Written Cherokee, described as ‘talking leaves’, becomes accepted with a rapidity which testifies both to the magic of writing and to the persuasive powers of Sequoyah. The system is completed in 1821. The first issue of the Cherokee Phoenix, written in the syllables, is dated 21 February 1828.
