Calligraphy alphabets

Samples of various calligraphy alphabets are shown below to help your calligraphy.
These are all written by me as an interested amateur. Feel free to copy or print them for
personal use. Note they are copyrighted; please don't use them for profit.
You'll also find links below to some free tutorial pages and useful books.
Have fun with the

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Roman rustic capitals

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Rustic Capitals are a robust, dynamic calligraphy alphabet, good for titles when you want
formality and impact without rigidity. They are basically a nib- or brush-written
alternative version of the grand, stone-chiselled, square capitals you can still see all over
Roman monuments. Living in ancient Rome, you would have seen announcements,
information or even rude messages written in Rustic Capitals on the walls of the city, like
advertising posters or graffiti today.
I love this alphabet, and so have written a free Roman Rustic Capitals tutorial to
encourage others to use it more, too.
Two calligraphy books stand out for teaching how to write Rustic Capitals:

The Historical Sourcebook for Scribes, by Michelle Brown and Patricia Lovett,
provides analysis of the script and a calligrapher's expert breakdown of the penstrokes involved.

Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy also offers useful diagrams and Drogin uses
Rustic Caps throughout his excellent book for section titles. His is the version I've
based my own tutorial on.

Uncial

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Uncial's rounded form owes something to the Greek alphabet, and historically it's
associated with the early Christian Church. It superficially resembles traditional Irish
scripts (Irish/Insular Majuscule). In one form or another, it was used in handwritten

books for nearly a millennium. For much of that time it was strictly a calligraphy
alphabet (rather than a historical script) in that it was written out slowly and
painstakingly to look as impressive as possible.
Uncial is easy to read, with serene overtones, and lends itself to short poems,
quotations, and titles. But it takes up quite a lot of space. Recommended tutorial books:

For learning Uncial without historical reference, I recommend Anne

Trudgill's Traditional Penmanship, which offers a straightforward, no-frills approach
to producing a display version of the script.

The Historical Sourcebook for Scribes, by Michelle Brown and Patricia Lovett contains
two Uncial alphabets: the earlier, angled-nib version and what they call the flat-pen
version.

Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy also includes two varieties of Uncial a plainer
version and the later, calligraphic, Artifical Uncial pictured above.

Gothic, textura quadrata

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I have a particular soft spot for Gothic calligraphy alphabets. The above is a version of
Gothic textura quadrata (which means 'woven-looking', because it's carefully done, and
'four-cornered', because the letters have a rectangular, blocky shape). This was the
script of choice for centuries of book production in medieval Europe.
I offer several good, free pages on Gothic, including a nice intro, a three-page tutorial on
the minuscule (small) letters starting here, and another tutorial page for writing Gothic
majuscules (capitals).
Anne Trudgill gives clear instructions on how to produce a handsome Gothic alphabet,
and, for beginners, I also recommend George Thomson's How to Master Broad Pen Script
(his examples are huge and easy to copy, with helpful instructions).
For historical versions of Gothic scripts, as always, Marc Drogin's Medieval Calligraphy or
Michelle Brown's and Patricia Lovett's Historical Source Book for Scribes will see you
right.
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Roundhand (Foundation hand)

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Roundhand is a modern, twentieth-century calligraphy alphabet based on the scripts of
the Italian Renaissance, which themselves were invented because Italian scholars (in

particular) had got heartily fed up of trying to read long texts written in tiny, cramped
Gothic.
The great virtue of Roundhand is its simplicity. It may seem like a humble virtue but it is
not therefore to be disregarded. Any Roundhand lends itself to circumstances in which
you want to communicate sincerely and without pretension: poems by Robert Frost,
instructions in case of zombie attack, children's alphabet posters, letters of advice to
your younger self, diaries for publication, etc.
I recommend George Thomson's How to Master Broad Pen Script: it's as simple and
unpretentious as Roundhand itself, and the examples are beautifully clear. Trudgill is also
very good.
For a historical version of the script, see (again, always; it's a wonderful book) Michelle
Brown and Patricia Lovett's The Historical Sourcebook for Scribes, pp. 111-120.
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Italic, slanted

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Italic is a beautifully legible calligraphy alphabet, elegant without being fussy, and has
been taught for generations as the foundation of good cursive handwriting. It's not as
simple as it looks to dash it off at speed! However, learning this script is well worth the
effort. I offer a couple of pages to help one on specific Italic letterforms, and one of
more general Italic tips on issues like spacing, and I also recommend:

Lloyd J. Reynolds, Italic Calligraphy and Handwriting. It's bossy, short, inexpensive,
ancient (1969), and it works.

The Historical Sourcebook for Scribes, by Michelle Brown and Patricia Lovett, which is
very good for historical Italic (or Cancellaresca as it's more accurately known).

The excellent, thorough treatment of Italic forms and how to write them in Eleanor
Winters' Italic and Copperplate Calligraphy: The Basics and Beyond.

Copperplate style

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Copperplate is written with a finely pointed, very flexible steel nib which opens and
closes with pressure to produce thick and thin lines. It's called Copperplate because it
imitates the very fine, heavily slanted scripts of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
engravings on copper plates (which themselves were based on beautifully hand-drawn
letters). There are other names: English Roundhand (do not confuse with other
Roundhands written with a broad nib), Engrosser's Hand, etc.

Copperplate-type calligraphy alphabets have an old-fashioned flavour but not too distant
in time: think Interview with the Vampire, Dickensian clerks scratching away, or, in the
US, the copy of the Declaration of Independence held in the National Archives.
The example above is more rounded than a true Copperplate, with less thin-and-thick
contrast than you'd ideally find. Any amount of practice on these graceful, flourished
scripts is well repaid and they are suitable for a huge range of uses, from display pieces
to certificates to wedding invitations.
For me, the doyenne of Copperplate tutorial is Eleanor Winters, and I refer continually to
her step-by-step manual Mastering Copperplate Calligraphy. There is more on
Copperplate in her follow-up on cursive calligraphic alphabets, Italic and Copperplate
Calligraphy.