Formal Script Font Examples

[Shanta Plansinis]

Scripttypefaces are based on the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting.[1][2] They are generally used for display or trade printing, rather than for extended body text in the Latin alphabet. Some Greek alphabet typefaces, especially historically, have been a closer simulation of handwriting.

A majority of formal scripts are based upon the letterforms of seventeenth and eighteenth century writing-masters like George Bickham, George Shelley and George Snell. The letters in their original form are generated by a quill or metal nib of a pen. Both are able to create fine and thick strokes. Typefaces based upon their style of writing appear late in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Contemporary revivals of formal script faces can be seen in Kuenstler Script and Matthew Carter's typeface Snell Roundhand. These typefaces are frequently used for invitations and diplomas to effect an elevated and elegant feeling. They may use typographic ligatures to have letters connect.

Casual scripts show a less formal, more active hand. The strokes may vary in width but often appear to have been created by wet brush rather than a pen nib. They appeared in the early twentieth century, and with the advent of photocomposition in the early 1950s, their number rapidly increased. They were popularly used in advertising in Europe and North America into the 1970s. Examples of casual script types include Brush Script, Kaufmann and Mistral. Some may be non-connecting like Freestyle Script.

Script typefaces place particular demands on printing technology if the letters are intended to join up and vary like handwriting. A typeface intended to mimic handwriting, such as Claude Garamond's grecs du roi typeface, will require many alternate characters. In digital type these (once drawn) can be substituted seamlessly through contextual ligature insertion in applications like InDesign, but this was complicated in metal. Another complexity in metal type was that sorts had to have delicate overhanging parts to interlock. This required careful design and casting for the sorts to fit together without gaps or the sorts breaking, or leaving gaps to be filled in by the natural spread of ink on paper.[4][5]

Script typefaces have evolved rapidly in the second half of the 20th century due to developments in technology and the end of widespread use of metal type. Historically, most signwriting on logos, displays and shop frontages did not use fonts but was rather custom-designed lettering created by signpainters and engravers.[6][7][8][9] As phototypesetting and then computers have made printing text at a range of sizes far easier than in the metal type period, it has become increasingly common for businesses to use type for logos and signs rather than hand-drawn lettering. In addition, phototypesetting made overlap of characters relatively simple, something very complicated to achieve in metal type. Matthew Carter has cited his 1966 Snell Roundhand typeface as deliberately designed to replicate a style of calligraphy hard to simulate in metal.[10][11] An additional development enabling more sophisticated script fonts has been the release of the OpenType format, which most fonts are now released in. This allows fonts to have a large character set, increasing the sophistication of design possible, and contextual insertion, in which characters that match one another are inserted into a document automatically, so fonts can convincingly mimic handwriting without the user having to choose the correct substitute characters manually.[12] Many modern script typefaces emulate the styles of hand-drawn lettering from different historical periods.

In Unicode there is a script Latin alphabet for mathematical use, with both capital and small letters. Few fonts provide support for all 52 characters, and their presentations vary in style from roundhand to chancery hand and others.

ScriptFonts, also known as cursive fonts, are those typefaces that mimic the appearance of handwritten or calligraphic writing. You can also find such terms as writing fonts or letter fonts. They have flowing and connected letterforms, often embellished with elegant and decorative elements. These fonts vary in style from formal and traditional to more casual and playful scripts.

Fonts of script type are commonly used in various design applications such as invitations, greeting cards, logos, and branding materials, where a personalized or artistic touch is desired.These fonts will help you evoke a sense of elegance, sophistication, style and creativity to your design project.

These script fonts have an elegant and traditional appearance. They often copy the handwriting styles found in formal documents, invitations, and certificates. Such scripts are flowing, and have connected letterforms with fancy swashes and flourishes. Here are a few representatives of formal script fonts:

These scripts have a more relaxed and informal feel. They copy the look of everyday handwriting and are often used in projects that aim to convey a friendly, approachable, or playful tone. These fonts often have varying degrees of connectedness between letters and are not much about ornate flourishes. Here are some examples of casual script fonts:

These ones are inspired by calligraphy, the art of decorative writing. Calligraphic scripts copy the brush or pen strokes of traditional calligraphy. They have exaggerated loops, swashes, and thick-to-thin strokes with a sense of dynamic movement. Here are some examples of calligraphic script fonts:

These fonts imitate the look of handwritten text created with a brush or marker. They look more casual and spontaneous, and slightly rough or textured. They give a modern, artistic, or urban feel to designs. Here are just a few examples of popular brush script fonts:

These scripts are inspired by the medieval calligraphic styles used in European manuscripts. They have a bold and angular appearance, with sharp serifs and intricate details. When users see such fonts they feel the vibe of tradition, history, or gothic aesthetics. Some examples of blackletter script fonts are listed below:

Some cursive fonts come with additional stylistic elements such as swashes are decorative flourishes that can be added to the beginning or end of glyphs to increase the beauty of the text. Ligatures are unique character combinations to replace individual letters for better flow. Alternate letterforms provide different variations of certain characters, so they could be further customized and varied.

These classifications are not total, as script/writing fonts really vary one from another with their unique styles and peculiarities so much that some of them are just hard to group. Some fonts can be distinguished as members of a few groups at the same time like you may have noticed Lobster or Copperplate placed in two groups. Anyway, it is useful to know the classification when you need to have a set of fallback fonts so that in case one does not work your project will not lose its style and vibe.

Mostly script fonts work well for headings, titles, or accents while combining them with sans-serif or serif fonts for body text increases the text readability. Testing and proofreading are important steps in dealing with script fonts. So, go ahead and unleash your creativity with them, and enjoy all the possibilities offered!

I'm not interested in a reproduction of the picture, which can be found at What type of font is this?; the picture is for illustration purposes only. Furthermore, this is supposed to become a one-catches-all question for questions like the beforementioned. If I actually were looking for these fonts, I wouldn't just lazily ask here but look e.g. at The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e, tables 3.14 and 6.4 first.)

Oh and needless to say but if you were asking this question because you need more mathematical symbols, the Comprehensive List is just your document. Greek variants, Hebrew, Tables 139 to 147 are letter-like symbols ... you'll probably never run out of symbols again.

Edit 2: This answer seems so popular that I decided to include the mathalfa table as an image as well. This is taken from the mathalfa documentation and some of the fonts are commercial or need to be installed from external sources. See the documentation for more information if you consider using any of these fonts. Warning, very long table ahead (stitched together from a multi-page table).

Edit 3: With this thread being so popular for reasons I don't entirely understand, I feel compelled to say that there is rarely a point in using more styles than regular, bold, italic, script/calligraphic (I wouldn't even mix those) and blackboard bold. What these tables really show are typefaces you can use for these styles, not a huge number of styles (which would be pointless and ugly anyway). If, however, you are just searching for math fonts to go with your main font, the overview you probably actually want before even consulting these tables is the list of math fonts on the LaTeX Font Catalogue.

One should notice that the argument to each of those commands is typeset in math mode, so spaces are ignored and hyphens become minus signs. Using those commands with arguments not consisting only of normal letters can give unexpected (and sometimes bizarre) results.

The package mathrsfs makes available the "Ralph Smith's Formal Script" font as a math alphabet, with the command \mathrsfs, while calrsfs will do the same but also turning \mathcal to choose the RSFS font (only uppercase letters).

The package euscript will load a different calligraphic alphabet, Euler Script, designed by Hermann Zapf. Depending on the options, it will provide \mathscr (to go along with the original \mathcal) or change \mathcal to use Zapf's font:

I believe your question is of a (deliberately) introductory or basic nature. Apologies if this is not your intention. A preliminary remark: Most of the text snippet you show is actually set in text mode (italics and bold-upright, resp.), and I won't have anything to say about text-mode alphabets.

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