Chinese script styles

The traditional model of scripts appearing suddenly in a well-defined order has been discredited by modern comparative study, which clearly indicates the gradual evolution and coexistence of styles.

When used in decorative ornamentation, such as book covers, movie posters, and wall hangings, characters are often written in ancient variations or simplifications that deviate from the modern standards used in Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese or Korean.

Though East Asian seals—or name chops—are carved in materials like wood and jade, the forms themselves were originally written with brush and ink on bamboo slips and other media.

In general, an educated person in China or Japan can read characters written in the semi-cursive script with relative ease, but may have occasional difficulties with certain idiosyncratic shapes.

Due to the drastic simplification and ligature involved, this script is not considered particularly legible to the average person, and thus has never achieved widespread use beyond the realm of literati calligraphers.

Regular script is the most widely recognized style, and is the form taught to children in East Asian countries and others first learning to write characters.

A Vietnamese calligraphic script known as Lệnh thư (令書), as its name suggests, is mainly found in imperial edicts starting from the Revival Lê dynasty.

Munjado is a Korean decorative style of rendering Chinese characters in which brush strokes are replaced with representational paintings that provide commentary on the meaning.

[2] The characters thus rendered are traditionally those for the eight Confucian virtues of humility, honor, duty, propriety, trust, loyalty, brotherly love, and filial piety.