With the lecture on Writing to Typography, we were brought throughout history to see how type developed and evolved. One phenomenon that left a deep impression on me was the way civilisations have tended to use type politically and socially. The two examples that were brought up during the lecture was the Caroline minuscule in Europe and the regular script in China. I thought it was interesting how rulers of empires in two very different continents both recognised the importance of standardising script and this prompted me to do more research about this particular topic.
The Caroline minuscule
The Caroline minuscule script has influences of Roman cursive and half uncial script. The main attributes of this script is its easily distinguishable letters and the roundedness of shape. The prevalence of the Caroline miniscule in Europe is largely attributed to Emperor Charlemagne, who preferred the balance and readability of minuscule script as compared to other cursives being used throughout France and Lombardy.
While Charlemagne preferred minuscule script, there were still many regional variants and ligatures used throughout the empire, which he wanted to address by implementing a unified script. The standardisation of script was brought about by a set of universal educational reforms that he implemented to counter the loss of literacy in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century. Using a unified minuscule script was thought to aid in making texts easier to read for the masses, and in addition, the efficiency of writing minuscule script could also help the Empire amass more documents and literature in a shorter period of time to disseminate information.
Chinese regular script
Similarly, the Chinese regular script also evolved from other scripts before it, with influences from the clerical script. In the clerical script, the characteristic stroke is famously called ‘silkworm head and wild goose tail’ due to its distinctive shape. In the regular script, this stroke is developed into a flat and straight form, which makes it easier to read and quicker to write as compared to the clerical. As compared to the 4 other scripts (seal, clerical, cursive and running) that came before the regular script, it is the most structured, with easily identifiable characters. This bears similarity to the reasons for the choice of the Caroline minuscule to be the unified script in Charlemagne’s empire. The regular script became popular in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and matured during the Tang Dynasty. It is still widely used today in China as the standardised type for textbooks.
When script was first developed in civilisations, its function was primarily to record information for education and it is no surprise that societies tended towards scripts that were highly efficient – in terms of how they were written, and how they were read. I think this is fascinating to look back upon and see how our perspectives on type have changed. It is now difficult for us to see type as mere vessels of information (although it can still act as such). As type today is being used so commonly for design and aesthetic purposes, manipulation and distortion of type is pervasive now. With the evolvement of agendas behind using type, we have come a long way from picking the most efficient script to convey information, and there is now much greater creative liberty in creating script.