Calligraphy

Calligraphy (from Ancient Greek καλλιγραφία (kalligraphía) 'beautiful writing') is a visual art related to writing. It involves the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice is often defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner".

In East Asia and the Islamic world calligraphy is a highly respected art form. Its visual form is often influenced by the meaning of the text or the individual words.^{[citation needed]}

Modern Western calligraphy encompasses a wide range of styles, from functional inscriptions and designs, to fine-art pieces where the legibility of letters varies.^{[page needed]} Classical calligraphy differs from type design and non-classical hand-lettering, though some calligraphers may practice both.

Western calligraphy continues to flourish in the forms of wedding invitations and other announcements, font design and typography, hand-lettered logo design, religious art, graphic design and commissioned calligraphic art, carved stone inscriptions, and memorial documents. It is also used for props, moving images for film and television, testimonials, birth and death certificates, maps, and other written works.

The principal tools for a calligrapher are the pen and the brush. The pens used in calligraphy can have nibs that may be flat, round, or pointed. For decorative purposes, multi-nib pens (steel brushes) can be used. Works have also been created with felt-tip and ballpoint pens; however, these do not produce angled lines. There are certain styles of calligraphy, such as Gothic script, that require a stub nib pen.

Common calligraphy pens and brushes include:

The ink used for writing is usually water-based and is much less viscous than the oil-based ink used in printing. Certain specialty paper with high ink absorption and constant texture enables cleaner lines, although parchment or vellum is often used, as a knife can be used to erase imperfections and a light-box is not needed to allow lines to be visible through it. Normally, light boxes and templates are used to achieve straight lines without pencil markings detracting from the work. Ruled paper, either for a light box or direct use, is most often ruled every quarter or half an inch, although inch spaces are occasionally used. This is the case with Uncial script (hence the name "litterea unciales", which roughly translates to 'inch high letters'), and college-ruled paper often acts as a guideline as well.

Chinese calligraphy is locally known as shūfǎ or fǎshū (書法 or 法書 in traditional Chinese, literally "the method or law of writing"); Japanese calligraphy is called shodō (書道, literally "the way or principle of writing"); and Korean calligraphy is referred to as seoye (Korean: 서예; Hanja: 書藝; literally "the art of writing"); The calligraphy of East Asian characters remains an important and highly regarded aspect of contemporary traditional East Asian culture.^{[examples needed][citation needed]}