When badly done, the hairline joining of letters in Copperplate writing can sometimes look as though they are stuck on. When they merge smoothly, the writing flows effortlessly from one letter to the next. This small example may illustrate the point.

Most people now use their computer keyboard for personal correspondence. This makes perfect sense for speed and clarity. However, it is nice to retain some of the personal touch of handwriting.

A letterheading produced from an enlargement of a signature, is one way of achieving this. It can be very effective even when the signature isn’t very ‘calligraphic’. The four fictitious examples which follow, were done at normal writing speed. The last two are difficult to decipher, so I’ve added the names to the address lines below.

If you want to have a go, but don’t have access to a computer printer to produce them yourself, choose a good version of your signature and have it enlarged on a good photocopier. Write or type in your address line and pass it to your local copyshop. This is now a simple and relatively inexpensive undertaking.

In the interest of variety, I wrote the first two address lines below, and typed in the second two, with complementary fonts.

Calligraphic quality isn’t the name of the game, here - it’s more a case of expressing your personality through your signature.

Gothic Blackletter : Italic : Copperplate

The English writing masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, wrote with an edged quill, producing the script known as “English Roundhand”, hence the name on Mitchell’s square-edged nibs, to this day.

The following extracts are from “Penmanship made easy” by George Bickham (calligrapher & engraver) London 1733.

“Make all your body strokes with the full & all hair strokes with the corner of your pen”.
“Make the nib of your pen for the Round & Round-Text and the breadth of the full stroke and that part lying next ye hand something shorter and narrower”.

In other words, in the downstroke of the small letter “t” for example, the stroke was even from top to bottom, determined by the width of the edged nib, until narrowing at the foot when the nib was turned upwards onto the left corner to form the hairline stroke.

For the production of copy books for teaching writing, the writing masters passed their work to engravers who were able, with the engraving burin, to clean up any irregularities. These engraved “Copper plates” were used to produce the copy books which showed lettering which had been drawn (by the engraver) and not handwritten.

In a sense, Bickham’s instructions, as above, were rather unfair, as they applied to the method of his original hand lettering which he had subsequently engraved in preparation for printing. These instructions do not apply to his improved, engraved lettering which appeared in the printed copy book!

With an edged pen, it would have been extremely difficult to replicate the twists and turns and accuracy of the engraver’s work, so sharpened, pointed quills were developed in an attempt to emulate the swelled strokes of the burin, opening the tines under control by applying varying degrees of pressure to downstrokes.

As they were more consistent and durable, metal nibs were developed and are still used to this day. The handwritten lettering thus produced, has become known as “Copperplate” in reference to its origin, but strictly speaking, it is handwriting based on the engraver’s copy of original English Roundhand text.

This is esentially different from the version known as Engraver’s or Engrosser’s script, as exemplified by Dr Vitolo on the Zanerian site. Using the same flexible, pointed nibs, his drawn lettering is very beautiful and is probably as close as possible to the original engraved exemplars of the past.