Scripts & Cursives

Carl Shank • July 30, 2026

Scripts & Cursives. In typography and calligraphy, the terms script and cursive are related but not synonymous. They are often used interchangeably in popular usage, but type historians and calligraphers generally distinguish them by purpose, construction, and historical origin. While all cursive-inspired fonts are script typefaces, not all script faces are cursives. Thus, a calligraphic font with disconnected capitals and lowercase letters is a script font, but not truly cursive.


Background. Two previous posts are a good place to start this discussion — See "Calligraphy & Typography" at https://www.caretypography.com/calligraphy-typography. Also, see "Pen-Lettering History" at https://www.caretypography.com/pen-lettering-history. In typographic terminology, script refers to a class of typefaces designed to emulate handwriting or calligraphy, regardless of whether letters are connected. Cursive, by contrast, refers to a style of handwriting characterized by connected, flowing letterforms developed for efficient writing. Consequently, cursive writing is one important source of script typefaces, but script typography also includes many designs that are not truly cursive.


Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic Style (Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2012) classifies script as a category of typefaces derived from handwriting and distinguishes formal and informal script traditions. He notes that "there are thousands of typefaces that stand outside the conservative and tradition-bound world of text type, and that look as if they might have been handwritten rather than drawn, carved or inscribed. Some are formal, some informal, some connected and some made of separate letters. Typographers often lump them together unscientifically as script types." (p. 193, 1992 Edition).


Bringhurst says that "in general, scripts are also more closely tied to particular moods, places and times than text types are, and types that pass quickly in and out of fashion are extraneous to the subject of this book." (p. 193) He notes that scripts are important only as "setting off" a single word or line of normal text copy. He then discusses the typefaces Beowolf, Carolina, Legende, Ondine, Present and Salto.

Highlighting Scripts. There are "formal" scripts, "casual" scripts, "brush" scripts, "calligraphic" scripts, "Copperplate-inspired" scripts, and "Spencerian-inspired" scripts.


Formal scripts exhibit a high contrast between thick and thin strokes, long, graceful swashes, connected letters, and formal rhythm and symmetry. Samples include Bickham Script Pro, Edwardian script and Palace script. Such scripts showcase fine handwriting and extravagant flair.


Together, Edward Cocker, John Ayres, Thomas More William Smith, Thomas Seddon and Charles Snell preserved and refined England's major script traditions through engraved copybooks. They standardized handwriting used in commerce, education, and government. They created engraved letterforms that served as prototypes for script typefaces, Bridging the worlds of calligraphy, engraving, and typography during a period before script could be easily reproduced with movable type. They laid the aesthetic foundation for many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century script fonts, especially those based on Round Hand and Copperplate traditions.


More on Bickham script can be found at the post "English Penman Calligraphic Fonts" at https://www.caretypography.com/english-penman-calligraphic-fonts.


Successful Layout & Design

Linotype's Party Emblems in 1920

By Carl Shank • July 29, 2026
Linotype's Party Emblems in 1920 . Type follows and often mimics cultural fashions and ideas. Consequently, Victorian type flowed with the ornamentation of that period. Punk and Grunge type traced with a rebellious period in American culture. The political landscape of the 1920s was shaped by the aftermath of World War I, economic prosperity, social change, and debates over the role of government. While the specific parties differed by country, the decade is most often discussed in terms of the United States, where the Republican Party dominated national politics. Being a major typesetter for the period, Linotype issued characters that reflected the political parties and feelings of the times. Such type emblems showed up in their 1920 publication of One Line Specimens .

The Legibility Group

By Carl Shank • July 29, 2026
The Legibility Group . This group of typefaces comes from the the Mergenthaler Linotype Company, a company founded in the United States in 1886 to market the Linotype machine, a system to cast metal type in lines (linecaster) invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler. The company became the world's leading manufacturer of newspaper and book typesetting equipment. The Legibility Group is a series of serif typefaces intended for use in newspapers on Linotype's hot metal typesetting system. They were developed in-house by Linotype's design team, led by Chauncey H. Griffith and released from 1925, when the first member, Ionic No. 5, appeared. The family became a large group due to the creation of slightly different designs for different printing conditions, such as levels of inking used in different newspaper production processes and versions with different x-heights. It consisted of Ionic No. 5, Textype, Excelsior, Opticon, Paragon and Corona. Although not part of the family, Linotype marketed its sans-serif family Metro and slab serif face Memphis as effective complements for headings.
Show More