The evolution of Chinese character writing style

The earliest was a pictorial text, and sometimes it is not considered to be a Chinese character.

The real Chinese characters began with the appearance of the oracle bone inscription, and the evolution process is as follows:

Oracle bone inscription - golden text - big seal - small seal - official script - cursive script - regular script - line script This is based on high school history textbooks, maybe there are different opinions in academics, forgive me.

Several major features. First, from simple to complex and from complex to simple.

2. "Libian" is the fundamental change of Chinese characters.

3. Cursive script is the key to the evolution of Chinese characters.

Fourth, the coexistence and interaction of fonts and book styles.

Upstairs is wrong, at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty or the beginning of the Three Kingdoms Jin Dynasty, there has been a grass, but there has not yet been a regular script, so the cursive script is before the regular script.

Oracle bone inscription, golden inscription, large seal, small seal, official script, regular script The general trend is from complex to simple.

Oracle bone inscriptions, inscriptions, large seals, small seals, official scripts, regular scripts, line scripts, cursive scripts!

The evolution of Chinese characters is as follows:

1. Oracle bone inscription: It is engraved on the tortoiseshell animal bones (mainly the text on the shoulder blades of the cow). It is the driest system of fairly mature Chinese character material that we can see today.

This kind of writing was discovered in the late Qing Dynasty during the Guangxu period (1889 AD) in the north of Xiaotun Village, Wuli Road, northwest of Anyang County, Henan Province, and south of the Huanshui Buried Cave.

2. Jin Wen: Jin Wen is a text engraved on bronze. The so-called bronze ware is a vessel made of copper and tin alloy.

This alloy is stronger and is called bronze because of its blue color. There are mainly musical instruments "bell", food utensils "Yi, Zun, Jue", washing utensils "plate", weapons "Ge, halberd" and so on.

3. Big Seal: The big seal is for the small seal that later trembled. The broad sense of the Great Seal includes the Small Seal Cha Defeat, the former Oracle Bone Inscription, the Jin Inscription and the Six Kingdoms Script.

The big seal here refers to the Qin script that was used in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. As King Ping of Zhou moved east to Luoyang, Qin occupied the homeland of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and at the same time inherited the writing of the Western Zhou Dynasty, that is, it inherited the development of Jin Wen. Because of their regional nature, some are difficult to identify.

4. Small seal: Small seal is the first standardized font of Chinese characters. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, after the unification of Qin Shi Huang, he implemented the reform of "writing with the same script" and unified the text according to the opinion of Prime Minister Li Si. This is the first major reform of the written word in the history of our country.

5. Lishu: Lishu is a common font in the Han Dynasty, so it is also called "Han Li". Lishu was produced in the Qin Dynasty, and at the beginning it was only used among apprentices, because of the name Lishu. The earliest official script is very close to the small seal, but in fact it is just a scribbled way of writing the small seal.

The more sloppy inscriptions in the Qin Quanliang inscriptions (edicts under the 26th year of the first emperor and the first year of the 2nd emperor) belong to this category of early official scripts, so they also have the name of "Qin Li".

The evolution of Chinese calligraphy is as follows:

From Cangjie characters to oracle bone inscriptions, inscriptions on bronzes (Jin Wen), stone drum inscriptions (Qin Guozhou script), Shu Tongwen (Qin Dynasty small seal), empty acres of 600 years of official writing (Lishu), 700 years of writing Jianghu (cursive Xingshu Kaishu), Jin Qi Tang Xing (regular script debut). At this point, marked by the maturity of regular script, the shape and structure of Chinese characters have basically evolved. In later dynasties, except for the lost oracle bone inscriptions, the rest of the books did not withdraw from the historical stage, but appeared in various forms.

The simple writing has been sublimated into a professional art - the art of calligraphy.

Evolution:The small seal fixed the number of strokes of each character, and the Lishu constituted a new pen shape system, and the glyph gradually became a flat square; After the birth of regular script, the glyph font of Chinese characters stabilized, and the basic search and loss ode strokes of "horizontal, vertical, sprinkled, pointed, pinched, picked, and folded" were determined, and the shape of the strokes was further standardized, and the number of strokes and stroke order of each character gradually stabilized.

For more than a thousand years, regular script has been the standard character for Chinese characters. Chinese characters are ideographic writing systems based on pictographs and with morphophonetic characters as the main body, with a total of about 10,000, of which about 3,000 are the most commonly used. The earliest writing appeared in the late Shang dynasty around the 14th century BC, when a rudimentary stereotyped script, known as oracle bone inscriptions, was formed.

The oracle bone inscription is both a pictogram and a phonetic character, and there are still some pictographs in Chinese characters that are the same as pictures, which are very vivid.

The evolution process of ancient Chinese calligraphy fonts is roughly the evolution process of oracle bone script, golden script, small seal, official script, regular script, cursive script, line script and other fonts.

1. Oracle.

It has a symmetrical and stable pattern. The three elements of calligraphy are the use of the pen, the knot, and the chapter. Judging from the number of fonts and the way they are structured, oracle bone inscriptions have developed to a more rigorous and systematic script.

The principle of "six books" of Chinese characters is reflected in the oracle bone inscriptions. However, the traces of the original pictorial text are still relatively obvious.

2. Jin Wen. Jin Wen is the name of a type of writing in ancient Chinese characters. The general name of the inscription font on bronze ware in the Shang, Western Zhou, Spring and Autumn Period, and Warring States Period.

Jin Wen can be roughly divided into four types, namely Shang Dynasty Jin Wen (around 1300 BC to about 1046 BC), Western Zhou Jin Wen (about 1046 BC to 771 BC), Eastern Zhou Jin Wen (770 BC to 222 BC), and Qin and Han Jin Wen (221 BC 219 BC).

3. Small seal. The development of Chinese characters to the stage of small seals, and gradually began to be stereotyped (outline, strokes, structure stereotyped), the pictographic meaning was weakened, making the text more symbolic, reducing the confusion and difficulties in writing and reading, which was also the first time in the history of our country to use administrative means to standardize the product of writing on a large scale.

4. Lishu. According to the unearthed slips, the official book was founded in the Qin Dynasty, the legend is that Cheng Miao was subordinate, the Han Dynasty reached its peak in the Eastern Han Dynasty, the upper inheritance of the seal book tradition, the lower opening of the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the Northern and Southern Dynasties, the calligraphy of later generations has a non-negligible influence, the calligraphy industry has the "Han Li Tang Kai" said.

5. Regular script. Regular script is also called regular script, true book, and regular book. It gradually evolved from the official book, which became more simplified, horizontal and vertical.

Cihai explains that it has "a square shape, straight strokes, and can be used as a model". This kind of Chinese character font is upright, and it is the handwritten orthographic character of modern Chinese characters.

6. Cursive. Because the glyphs are too simple and easy to confuse with each other, cursive script cannot replace Lishu as the main font in the same way that Lishu replaced Seal Script.

7. Writing books. Xingshu is a kind of calligraphy, which is divided into two types: Xingkai and Xingcao. It developed and originated on the basis of regular script, which is a font between regular script and cursive script, which was produced to make up for the slow writing speed of regular script and the difficulty of cursive script to read.

The evolution of Chinese character fonts is as follows:

1. Oracle bone inscription (Shang Dynasty).

The oracle bone inscription has been in use since the Shang Dynasty, and it has a history of more than 3,000 years. Oracle is also a script that has a font. At first, oracle bone inscriptions were used by the nobles of the Shang Dynasty for divination, and half of them were written on turtle shells or animal bones, and now people study the history of the Shang Dynasty through oracle bone inscriptions.

2, Peisun stool Jin Wen (Shang Dynasty).

This is a more figurative script than the oracle bone inscription, mainly used from the late Shang Dynasty to the Zhou Dynasty, around 800 years, and finally abolished after Qin Shi Huang unified the Six Kingdoms. There are still 3,722 complete gold scripts and 2,420 recognizable characters.

3. Great Seal (late Western Zhou Dynasty).

It is a font that was commonly used in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and is said to have been created by Boyi of the Xia Dynasty. The big seal is generally engraved on the stone, so the big seal also has the title of the ancestor of stone carving.

4. Small seal (Qin Dynasty).

This is a script simplified by Qin Shi Huang on the basis of the Great Seal after the unification of the Six Kingdoms. It is mainly in charge of Prime Minister Li Si. The small seal was popular from the Qin Dynasty until the end of the Western Han Dynasty (about 8 AD), when it began to be replaced by Lishu.

5. Lishu (Qin Dynasty).

There are mainly Qin Li, Han Li, which are generally believed to have developed from seal scripts. It is said to have been invented by Cheng Miao during the Qin Dynasty, and by the Eastern Han Dynasty, Lishu had become very common. The historical inheritance of Lishu is also very long, from the beginning of the Qin Dynasty to the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, it is a large-scale use of Lishu.

6. Cursive (Han Dynasty).

Cursive is Kaitong has no age, as long as it is a more scribbled font all cursive. However, this is not to say that the scribbled font is the real cursive, because the real cursive is artistic, for example, Zhang Xu's cursive has been imitated by later generations.

7. Regular script (late Eastern Han Dynasty).

This is a font that has been passed down to the present day and is still in use, and it should have originated in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. Most of the fonts we write now are also in italics, and the italic characters pay attention to neatness, so the italics are still the official fonts.

8. Xingshu (late Eastern Han Dynasty).

Xingshu is a type of font between regular script and cursive script. On the whole, it is more free than regular script, but it is neater than cursive script. Xingshu is also a popular font nowadays, and many people are also trying to practice Xingshu.

However, it is more difficult to write a book than a regular book, so it is recommended that you practice regular script first.

The evolution of Chinese character fonts can be traced back to the ancient oracle bone and Jin periods.

Appearing between the 14th and 11th centuries BC during the Shang Dynasty, oracle bone inscriptions are a form of writing engraved on tortoise shells and animal bones, with pictographic, signifying, and epistemic characteristics. Over time, the oracle bone inscription evolved into a golden script, with more neat shapes and glyphs similar to modern Chinese characters. During the Qin Dynasty, the unified small seal script was officially adopted.

The small seal font is more simplified, and the shape is more standardized and unified. It is called the small seal because it has smaller glyphs and more detailed lines compared to the previous large seal. With the fall of the Qin Dynasty and the advent of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Chinese character fonts began to diverge.

During the Eastern Han Dynasty, Lishu was widely adopted, and its glyphs became slightly more inclined and the strokes were more fluid, but the basic structure of the small seal was still maintained.

In the subsequent Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, Xingshu gradually became popular. Xingshu fonts are characterized by smoother strokes and faster writing speeds, but also more varied glyphs. By the Tang Dynasty, regular script gradually became the mainstream font.

The regular script glyphs are standardized and regular, and the strokes are rounded, which is regarded as a model of calligraphy.

With the advent of the Song Dynasty, the delicate and elegant regular script gradually evolved into Song style characters, which became the standard printing font. In modern times, with the advancement of technology, the evolution of Chinese character fonts has become more diverse. From the new italics, imitation Song style, black script, line script to official script, cursive script, etc., all reflect the characteristics of different periods and regions.

Characteristics of the evolution of Chinese character fonts:

1. Evolution of Lishu: Lishu is a font of ancient Chinese characters, which originated in the Han Dynasty and developed in the Sui and Tang dynasties. Lishu font has simple lines, regular structure, and beautiful strokes, so it is widely used in calligraphy art and printing.

With the passage of time, Lishu gradually evolved into regular script, line script and other forms of Li Sou fonts.

2. The development of regular script: regular script is a Chinese character font, characterized by straight lines, square structure, and standardized writing, which is suitable for writing and printing. The development of regular script has gone through different stages such as cursive, hard and soft regular script, and each stage has different characteristics and forms of expression.

3. The integration of Kaili fonts: In the Song Dynasty, regular script and official script gradually merged into one to form a Kaili font. The Kaili font not only retains the structural norms and calligraphic beauty of the official script, but also draws on the flat straight lines of the regular script, which has become one of the main foundations of the later Chinese character fonts.

4. The emergence of imitation Song style: With the development of printing technology, people need a font suitable for printing, so imitation Song style came into being. Imitation Song style is an imitation of the Song Dynasty font, with smooth and stable lines, suitable for printing, and has become the main font in China's printing industry.

5. The creation of pre-fresh fonts: With the development of modern science and technology, new Chinese fonts are constantly emerging, mainly handwritten fonts and electronic fonts. The creation of handwriting fonts includes brush fonts, pen fonts, etc., which are designed to mimic the style of human handwriting.

Electronic fonts are designed for screen display, focusing on clarity, readability, and aesthetics.