As in Chinese calligraphy, regular, running, cursive and seal scripts were used in Tangut writing.

According to the History of Song (1346), the script was designed by the high-ranking official Yeli Renrong in 1036.

[3][4] The script was invented in a short period of time, and was put into use quickly.

A great number of Buddhist scriptures were translated from Tibetan and Chinese, and block printed in the script.

The last known example of the script occurs on a pair of Tangut dharani pillars found at Baoding in present-day Hebei province, which were erected in 1502.

[6] [Tangut] is remarkable for being written in one of the most inconvenient of all scripts, a collection of nearly 5,800 characters of the same kind as Chinese characters but rather more complicated; very few are made up of as few as four strokes and most are made up of a good many more, in some cases nearly twenty...

There are few recognizable indications of sound and meaning in the constituent parts of a character, and in some cases characters which differ from one another only in minor details of shape or by one or two strokes have completely different sounds and meanings.

For example, the component 𘤊 can have the meaning of "bird" (𗿼 *dźjwow, of which it is the left side), as in 𗿝 *dze "wild goose" = 𗿼 *dźjwow "bird" + 𗨜 *dze "longevity".