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Clerical Script - Chinese Art Web |
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 The clerical script or chancery script is an archaic style of Chinese calligraphy which, due to its high legibility to modern readers, is still used for artistic flavor in a variety of functional applications such as headlines, signboards and advertisements.
Highly angular, it was developed from the small seal script and is the precursor to the regular script that Chinese is usually written in today. In summary, it is considered the prototype of various Chinese scripts used for 2000 years to the present. The script was adopted to facilitate the drafting of multitude of prisoners at the time. A character written in clerical script is often wider than it is tall.
Small Seal Script
Lesser or Small Seal Script (Xiaozhuan), or Hsiao-chuan is associated with the work on Chinese characters compiled by Li Si during the Qin Dynasty under the First Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang.
Before the Qin conquest of the other regions of China, regional characters were used. Under unification of China, currency, laws, weights, measures and writing was to be systematised. Thus, the characters which were different to those found in Qin were discarded, and Li Si's xiaozhuan character became the standard.
The systemizing came at about 220 BC, and was introduced by Li Si and two ministers. The small cursive form clerical script came after this script form.
Li Si's compilation is known only through Chinese commentaries through the centuries. It is purported to contain 3,000 characters.
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