Chinese characters have undergone changes for more than 6,000 years. The evolution process is:
Oracle bone script → Bronze script → Xiaozhuan → Official script → Regular script → Running script
(Shang) ( Zhou) (Qin) (Han) (Wei and Jin) Cursive Script
The above seven fonts of "Jiajin Seal, Li, Cao Kaixing" are called "Seven Chinese Characters"
Chinese characters ——The emergence of Chinese characters is well-documented in the late Yin and Shang Dynasties around the 14th century BC. At this time, the initial stereotyped writing, namely oracle bone inscriptions, was formed. Oracle bone inscriptions are both pictographs and phonetic characters, and there are still some pictographs in Chinese characters that are the same as pictures, which are very vivid.
In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters developed into large seal scripts. The development of large seal script resulted in two characteristics: first, linearization. The uneven thickness of the lines in the early days became even and soft, and the lines they drew with the actual objects were very concise and vivid; second, standardization, the glyph structure tended to be neat, and gradually left the The original form of the picture laid the foundation for the square characters.
Later, Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Dynasty, simplified the large seal script and changed it to small seal script. In addition to simplifying the shape of the large seal script, the small seal script also perfected the lines and standardization. It was almost completely separated from the pictorial characters and became a neat, harmonious and very beautiful basically rectangular block font. However, Xiaozhuan also has its own fundamental shortcomings, that is, its lines are very inconvenient to write with a pen, so almost at the same time, the shape of the official script was stretched to both sides to become a flat square.
By the Han Dynasty, official script had developed to a mature stage, and the legibility and writing speed of Chinese characters had greatly improved. Later, official script evolved into Zhangcao, and then Jincao. In the Tang Dynasty, there was Kuangcao, which expresses the writer's thoughts and expresses his feelings on the pen. Subsequently, regular script (also known as real script), which was a blend of official script and cursive script, became popular in the Tang Dynasty. The printing style we use today evolved from regular script. Between regular script and cursive script is running script, which is smooth in writing and flexible in use. It is said to have been made by Liu Desheng in the Han Dynasty. It has been passed down to this day and is still the font we are accustomed to using in daily writing.
In the Song Dynasty, with the development of printing, woodblock printing was widely used, and Chinese characters were further improved and developed, resulting in a new type of calligraphy - Song Dynasty printing font. After the invention of printing, the engraving knives used for lettering had a profound impact on the shape of Chinese characters, resulting in a printing font that was thin horizontally and thick vertically, eye-catching and easy to read, which was later called Song Dynasty. There were two types of fonts carved at that time: fat and thin, the fat ones imitating Yan style and Liu style, and the thin ones imitating European style and Yu style. Among them, Yan style and Liu style have tall and tall strokes, which already have some characteristics of thin horizontal and thick vertical lines. During the Longqing and Wanli years of the Ming Dynasty, it evolved from the Song style to the Ming style with thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes and square fonts. It turns out that at that time, a kind of Hongwu style with very thin horizontal strokes and particularly thick vertical strokes and flat fonts was popular among the people. This style was used for official title plaques, lanterns, notices, private boundary stones, and the gods and master plaques in ancestral halls. font. Later, some engravers imitated the Hongwu calligraphy process and created a skin outline that was neither beautiful nor European. Especially because the strokes of this font are horizontal and vertical, it is indeed easy to carve. It is different from the four styles of seal script, Li, Zhen and Cao. It is unique and fresh and pleasing to the eye, so it is increasingly used. It has become the main printing font that has been very popular since the 16th century and is still called Song font, also called lead font.
In Chinese characters, various fonts formed in various historical periods have their own distinctive artistic characteristics. For example, seal script is simple and elegant, official script is dynamic and decorative in its quietness, cursive script is fast-moving and compact in structure, regular script is neat and beautiful, running script is easy to read and write, has strong practicality, diverse styles and different personalities.
The evolution of Chinese characters is from pictographic pictures to line symbols, strokes adapted to writing with brushes, and printed fonts that are easy to engrave. Its evolutionary history provides us with rich inspiration for Chinese font design. In text design, if you can give full play to the characteristics and style of various Chinese character fonts, use them skillfully and have unique ideas, you will surely be able to design exquisite works.
Since the unification of Qin Shihuang, Chinese characters have gradually embarked on the path of development. Chinese characters in each era have unique national and folk connotations. The history of Chinese characters is deeply engraved everywhere. Showing the wisdom and diligence of the Chinese people. However, some people today know very little about their own languages, and they are still half-hearted about the languages ????and languages ??of other countries. Writing is the soul of the country. In order to understand the changes of the motherland’s writing, the history of the motherland, and the soul of the motherland, we chose this topic.
In the development of Chinese characters, after the Qin Dynasty unified China, Chinese characters were continuously simplified and organized, making Chinese characters gradually standardized. The development of Chinese characters can be roughly divided into four stages of evolution: ancient script, seal script, official script, and regular script. Among them, seal script can be divided into large seal script and small seal script; official script can be divided into Qin Li and Han Li. It can be seen that any new font in history was gradually formed after a long period of evolution. Generally speaking, after the formation of regular script, Chinese characters have basically been finalized (Table 1).
(Table 1: The evolution of Chinese character calligraphy)
1 Oracle bone inscriptions
Before the Qin Dynasty unified writing, Chinese Chinese characters, both from the perspective of font and application, , still confusing.
In a broad sense, ancient Chinese writing refers to the writing before the small seal script including the big seal script; in a narrow sense, it refers to the writing before the big seal script in the history of Chinese writing. The concept of classical Chinese in a narrow sense is adopted here. Ancient writing includes oracle bone inscriptions and bronze inscriptions; among them, the former is regarded as the earliest stereotyped writing in China.
Oracle bone writing: written or carved in the late Shang Dynasty. The writings left on tortoise shells and animal bones are mostly "divination words" and a few are "notes of events". Most of the oracle bone inscriptions conform to the principles of pictographic and meaning-making characters, with picophonetic characters accounting for only 20%. Some of the characters are carved with knives, some are filled with cinnabar, and some are written directly with vermilion and ink. Because the characters are mostly evolved from pictorial characters, they are highly pictographic, with multiple characters per character and uncertain strokes. This shows that Chinese characters were not yet unified during the Yin and Shang Dynasties.
Image bronze inscriptions of the Yin Dynasty: In the pre-Qin Dynasty, copper was called gold, so the characters engraved on bronze vessels were called bronze inscriptions, also called bells and tripods, and Yi ware inscriptions. Compared with oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions are more pictographic and show an older writing style. The writing method of filling in the gold inscriptions makes the image vivid, lifelike, rich and natural.
Oracle bone inscriptions were written in the secular style of the Shang Dynasty, while bronze inscriptions were the formal style, which shows the imprint of the complexity of the formal style and the simplicity of the popular style (see Table 2).
(Table 2: Comparison table of oracle bones and bronze inscriptions)
Oracle bone inscriptions are mostly carved on tortoise shells and animal bones with knives, so the characters have hard brushwork (Figure 3) . This kind of knife-carving brushwork is also used in modern graphic design (Figure 4).
(Picture 3) (Picture 4)
2 Large Seal Scripts
In the history of Chinese writing, the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, in terms of their contribution to philology In general, Shi Zhen is the most important. Shi Zhou was the historian of King Xuan of Zhou Dynasty. He created new styles for simplicity. Dazhuan is also known as Zhouwen, Zhouzhuan, Zhoushu and Shishu. Because it was written by Shi Zhou, it was later called "Zhou Wen". The large seal script can be found scattered in "Shuowen Jiezi" and various bells, tripods and Yi vessels collected by later generations. Among them, the stone drum inscriptions written during the reign of King Xuan of Zhou Dynasty are the most famous.
3 Xiaozhuan
Xiaozhuan, also known as Qinzhuan, is the standard font compiled by the Prime Minister Li Si and others of the Qin Dynasty. It is simplified from the big seal script. It is also known as jade tendon seal script because it has the meaning of strong and vigorous writing. The shape and structure of Xiaozhuan are regular and coordinated, the strokes are round and neat, and the radicals are also changed and merged. Compared with large seal script, it has no pictographic character. The transformation of writing from large seal script to small seal script is of great significance in the history of Chinese writing (Figure 5).
(Picture 5)
4 Official Script
The first step in the evolution from Xiaozhuan to Official Script, the most significant change is from the graceful money strip to the official script Straight strokes, changing from angular to angular. Most people think that official script refers to official script that has ripples and a long tail like a carving knife. This is just one of them. There are mainly Qin Li and Han Li in official script. Qin Li is the early form of official script; Han Li is the mature font of official script. The official script usually refers to the "eight points" in the Han official script (Figure 6). "Eight points" gradually developed after the Qin Dynasty. When the official script has developed to eight points, it is already mature. Because the characters in official script are relatively square and thick, they have a sense of uprightness and seriousness (Figure 7). Although Figure 8 shows English letters, it has rhombus and angular fonts and has the "flavor" of official script.
(Picture 6) (Picture 7) (Picture 8)
5 Regular Script
"Kaishu" is also known as Zhenshu, Zhengshu, and Jinli. Such as Ouyang Xun, Liu Gongquan and other inscriptions on the inscriptions belong to this type. It includes the squareness of the ancient official script, the elegance of the eight points, and the simplicity of the chapters. This font is still in use today and is considered a standard font and is loved by the world. Regular script has a sense of stability and tranquility; characters have the same font in different styles due to differences in personal writing methods and personalities (Figures 9 and 10). Figure 11 also uses thin lines to outline the text as in Song Huizong's Thin Gold Typeface, but because the turning points are expressed in a smooth way, it presents a completely different visual sense from the Thin Gold Typeface.
(Picture 9) (Picture 10) (Picture 11)
6 Running Script
"Ring Script" is between regular script and cursive script, which is used in writing. A free calligraphy (font) font. Running script is different from official script and regular script in that its degree of flow can be freely used by the writer. The running script shows a romantic and aesthetic atmosphere (Figure 12).
(Picture 12)
7 Cursive Script
"Cursive script", also known as Pocao and Jincao, is composed of seal script, Bafen script and Zhangcao script. It is formed from changes in ancient characters. Cursive script is based on Zhangcao, and Zhangcao has a strong flavor of official script, so it is named after it is mostly used for memorials. Zhangcao further developed into "jincao", which is commonly known as "one stroke of writing". Most of today's cursive scripts tend to be simpler than Zhang cursive scripts and running scripts. Cursive script gives viewers a sense of boldness and smoothness (Figures 13, 14, and 15).
(Figure 13)
(Figure 14) (Figure 15)
8 printing fonts
After the invention of printing, in order to adapt to Due to the needs of printing, especially the printing of books and periodicals, characters gradually developed in a direction suitable for printing, and the horizontal, vertical, and square printing fonts - Song Dynasty - appeared. It originated in the Song Dynasty, the golden age of woodblock printing, and was finalized in the Ming Dynasty, so the Japanese call it "Ming Dynasty style". Because Song font is suitable for printing and engraving, and also suits people's visual requirements when reading, it is the main font used in publishing and printing.
9 Computer fonts
With the development of cultural undertakings and science and technology, under the influence of Western fonts, various new fonts such as boldface and art fonts have appeared. Such as poster (POP) style, variety show style, Kanting style, girl font, etc., and more deformations of Song style, such as imitation Song style, flat Song style, etc. And all kinds of Chinese characters are computerized, and the scope of application is wider.
As shown below (from left to right, in order: overlapping round style, variety show style, ancient seal style, Kanting style and poster style)
The origin of Chinese characters is an unsolved problem puzzle. Speaking of Chinese characters, we have to mention oracle bone inscriptions. The oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty, which are supported by archaeology, first appeared 3,300 years ago, which is nearly 2,000 years later than the ancient Egyptian writing and the Sumerian writing in the Mesopotamia. So far, *** have discovered more than 5,000 oracle bones characters, of which about 1,700 are recognisable. To a certain extent, China, also one of the four ancient civilizations, has no reason to lag behind others! While thinking about it, we found that the earliest oracle bone inscriptions already had a certain degree of understanding and pictophonetic components. In these oracle bone inscriptions, less than 80% were "ideological characters" and more than 20% were pictophonetic characters. This is very different from other early hieroglyphics such as those of the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians.
Some people think that the level of science and technology in ancient China was far inferior to the civilizations of ancient Egypt and ancient Greece. While the ancient Egyptians had already used huge stones to build huge pyramids, China only had rammed earth buildings. While the ancient Egyptians had carved exquisite hieroglyphic patterns on hard stones, the Chinese could only carve rough scratches on animal bones or tortoise shells. But looking at the level of abstraction of Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, they are much higher than those of ancient Egyptian concrete figures. It seems that Chinese characters jumped directly over the early stages of early hieroglyphics and entered a more abstract and advanced stage. The pictographic stage of the development of Chinese characters: In the ideographic-phonetic path, there is almost no pictographic stage. The so-called pictographic characters have been highly abstracted in the oracle bone inscription stage. Later, with the evolution of Chinese characters, Chinese characters were no longer purely ideographic. When the Greeks built the exquisite sculptures of the Parthenon and the Romans built the huge dome of the Pantheon, China only had rammed earth from the Qin and Han Dynasties. The Great Wall, and the ceramic terracotta warriors and horses, but the Xiaozhuan of the Qin Dynasty has become a unified standard script across the country, and the official script of the Han Dynasty is very close to today's Chinese characters.
Whether it’s text jumping forward?