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1 History

At different times of Europe's history the quality of penmanship has varied considerably. Ancient Roman handwriting styles included Roman cursive, and the more calligraphic rustic capitals and square capitals, the latter of which forms the basis for modern capital letters and was used in stone inscriptions. Writing implements and materials were easy to come by. With the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages, new scripts developed from the old Roman ones, such as uncial and later Gothic. The Carolingian period saw the development Carolingian minuscule, the basis for modern lower case letters, and the era saw a vast improvement in the quality of penmanship. Carolingian script was more easily readable and led to the creation of many new manuscripts, and the period is often described as a Carolingian RenaissanceThe Carolingian Renaissance refers to the often-rejected but just as frequently resuscitated idea that a flowering of literature, the arts, architecture, jurisprudence, liturgical and scriptural studies occurred during and shortly after the reign of Charl. The actual 15th century RenaissanceLeonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, an example of the blend of art and science during the Renaissance The Renaissance was a great cultural movement which brought about a period of scientific revolution and artistic transformation, at the dawn of modern Eur saw a return to the square capitals of the classical period and the minuscule of the Carolingian period, from which modern scripts developed.

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in part because printingPrinting is an industrial process for reproducing copies of texts and images, typically with ink on paper using a printing press. It is an important part of publishing. Printing using a printing press dates back to the 15th century in Europe (invented by replaced most formal communications, handwriting became extremely cramped, small, and difficult to read. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw another revival of clean formalized handwriting. In the early twenty-first century, with the increasing popularity of electronic communication , some note a decline in the quality of penmanship similar to that brought on by the advent of printing. And when handwriting does exist, it tends to be a mixture of cursive and printing; some consider this as evidence of the decline of handwriting instruction.

Illegal simulation of handwriting is a frequent occurrence and commonly appears in the legal court system. Extended handwriting and signatures are repeated vicitms of forgery, and are analyzed by a questioned document examinerQuestioned document examination is known by many names including forensic document examination document examination handwriting examination and sometime handwriting analysis although that name is not considered appropriate since it might be confused with.