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Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called "hands" while an individual's style of penmanship is referred to as "handwriting".
The first known alphabetical system came from the Phoenicians, who developed a vowel-less system of 22 letters around the eleventh century BC.Robinson, Andrew (2007). The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 165. The Greeks eventually adapted the Phoenician alphabet around the eighth century BC. Adding vowels to the alphabet, dropping some consonants and altering the order, the Ancient Greeks developed a script which included only what we know of as capital Greek letters.Ullman, B. L. (1977). Ancient Writing and Its Influence. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. p. 31. The lowercase letters of Classical Greek were a later invention of the Middle Ages. The Phoenician alphabet also influenced the Hebrew language and Aramaic scripts, which follow a vowel-less system. One Hebrew script was only used for religious literature and by a small community of Samaritans up until the sixth century BC. Aramaic was the official script of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian empires and 'Square Hebrew' (the script now used in Israel) developed from Aramaic around the third century AD.Robinson, Andrew (2007). The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 171.
At the end of the eighth century, Charlemagne decreed that all writings in his empire were to be written in a standard handwriting, which came to be known as Carolingian minuscule.. Alcuin of York was commissioned by Charlemagne to create this new handwriting, which he did in collaboration with other scribes and based on the tradition of other Roman handwriting.Nickell, 2003, p. 119. Carolingian minuscule was used to produce many of the manuscripts from monasteries until the eleventh century and most lower-case letters of today's European scripts derive from it.Fairbank, 1977, p. 13.
Gothic or black-letter script, evolved from Carolingian, became the dominant handwriting from the twelfth century until the Italian Renaissance (1400–1600 AD). This script was not as clear as the Carolingian, but instead was narrower, darker, and denser. Because of this, the dot above the i was added in order to differentiate it from the similar pen strokes of the n, m, and u. Also, the letter u was created as separate from the v, which had previously been used for both sounds. Part of the reason for such compact handwriting was to save space, since parchment was expensive.Mary B. Woods, Michael Woods (2025). 9780761372660, Twenty-First Century Books. . ISBN 9780761372660 Gothic script, being the writing style of scribes in Germany when Gutenberg invented movable type, became the model for the first typeface. Another variation of Carolingian minuscule was created by the Italian humanists in the fifteenth century, called by them littera antiqua and now called humanist minuscule.Nickell, 2003, p. 123. This was a combination of Roman capitals and the rounded version of Carolingian minuscule. A cursive form eventually developed, and it became increasingly slanted due to the quickness with which it could be written. This manuscript handwriting, called cursive humanistic, became known as the typeface Italic type used throughout Europe.Ullman, B. L. (1977). Ancient Writing and Its Influence. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. p. 143.
Copperplate engraving influenced handwriting as it allowed penmanship copybooks to be more widely printed. Copybooks first appeared in Italy around the sixteenth century; the earliest writing manuals were published by Sigismondo Fanti and Ludovico degli Arrighi.Nickell, 2003, p. 131. Other manuals were produced by Dutch and French writing masters later in the century, including Pierre Hamon. However, copybooks only became commonplace in England with the invention of copperplate engraving. Engraving could better produce the flourishes in handwritten script, which helped penmanship masters to produce beautiful examples for students. Some of these early penmanship manuals included those of Edward Cocker, John Seddon, and John Ayer. By the eighteenth century, schools were established to teach penmanship techniques from master penmen, especially in England and the United States. Penmanship became part of the curriculum in American schools by the early 1900s, rather than just reserved for specialty schools teaching adults penmanship as a professional skill. Several different penmanship methods have been developed and published, including Spencerian, Getty-Dubay, Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting, Icelandic (Italic), Zaner-Bloser, and D’Nealian methods among others used in American education.
Chinese handwriting is considered an art, more so than illuminated manuscripts in Western culture. Calligraphy is widely practiced in China, which employs scripts such as Kaishu (standard), Xingshu (semi-cursive), and Caoshu (cursive).Robinson, Andrew. (2007) The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 194. Chinese calligraphy is meant to represent the artistic personality in a way western calligraphy cannot, and therefore penmanship is valued higher than in any other nation.Tschichold, Jan. (1948) An Illustrated History of Writing and Lettering. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 13. Standard Script (Kaishu) is main traditional script used today.
Japanese writing evolved from Chinese script and Chinese characters, called kanji, or ideograms, were adopted to represent Japanese words and grammar.Robinson, Andrew. (2007) The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 199. Kanji were simplified to create two other scripts, called hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is the more widely used script in Japan today, while katakana, meant for formal documents originally, is used similarly to italics in alphabetic scripts.Robinson, Andrew. (2007) The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 201.
George A. Gaskell (1845–1886), a student of Spencer, authored two popular books on penmanship, Gaskell's Complete Compendium of Elegant Writing and The Penman's Hand-Book (1883). Louis Henry Hausam published the "New Education in Penmanship" in 1908, called "the greatest work of the kind ever published.".
Many copybooks were produced in North America at the start of the 20th century, mostly for Business Style penmanship (a simplified form of Ornamental Style). These included those produced by A. N. Palmer, a student of Gaskell, who developed the Palmer Method, as reflected in his Palmer's Guide to Business Writing, published in 1894. Also popular was Zaner-Bloser Method, introduced by Charles Paxton Zaner (15 February 1864 – 1 December 1918) and Elmer Ward Bloser (6 November 1865 – 1929) of the Zanerian Business College. The A. N. Palmer Company folded in the early 1980s.
Modern Styles include more than 200 published textbook curricula including: D'Nealian Method (a derivative of the Palmer Method which uses a slanted, serifed manuscript form followed by an entirely joined and looped cursive), Modern Zaner-Bloser which accounts for the majority of handwriting textbook sales in the US, A Beka, Schaffer, Peterson, Loops and Groups, McDougal, Steck Vaughn, and many others.
Italic Styles include Getty-Dubay Italic (slightly slanted), Eager, Portland, Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting, Queensland, etc.
Other copybook styles that are unique and do not fall into any previous categories are Smithhand, Handwriting without Tears, Ausgangsschrift, Bob Jones, etc. These may differ greatly from each other in a variety of ways. The first made video for correcting messy handwriting especially for people with ADHD and or dysgraphia was "Anyone Can Improve Their Own Handwriting" by learning specialist Jason Mark Alster MSc.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there have been more efforts to simplify these systems and standardize handwriting. For example, in China in 1955, in order to respond to illiteracy among people, the government introduced a Romanized version of Chinese script, called Pinyin.Robinson, Andrew. (2007) The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 196. However, by the 1960s, people rebelled against the infringement upon traditional Chinese by foreign influences. This writing reform did not help illiteracy among peasants. Japanese also has simplified the Chinese characters it uses into scripts called kana. However kanji are still used in preference over kana in many contexts, and a large part of children's schooling is learning kanji.Robinson, Andrew. (2007) The Story of Writing. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. p. 208. Moreover, Japan has tried to hold on to handwriting as an art form while not compromising the more modern emphasis on speed and efficiency. In the early 1940s, handwriting was taught twice, once as calligraphy in the art section of school curricula, and then again as a functional skill in the language section.Adal, Raja. (2009). "Japan's Bifurcated Modernity: Writing and Calligraphy in Japanese Public Schools 1872-1943." Theory Culture Society. 26:233-248. p. 244. The practical function of penmanship in Japan did not start to be questioned until the end of the twentieth century; while typewriters proved more efficient than penmanship in the modern West, these technologies had a hard time transferring to Japan, since the thousands of characters involved in the language made typing unfeasible.
Research in individuals with complete Neuropathy with and without vision of their writing hand finds increase of number of pen touches, increase in number of inversions in velocity, decrease of mean stroke frequency and longer writing movement duration. The changes show that cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback play a critical role in updating the motor memories and internal models that underlie handwriting. In contrast, sight provides only a secondary role in adjusting motor commands.
Types of writing
Studies of writing and penmanship
Penmanship-related professions
Other penmanship-related topics
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