Oracle Bone Inscriptions → Jinwen → Xiaozhuan → Lishu → Regular script → Running script
(Shang) (Zhou) (Qin) (Han) (Wei and Jin Dynasties) cursive script
The above seven fonts are called "Jia Jin Zhuan Li Cao Kai Xing". Oracle Bone Inscriptions is both an pictograph and a phonetic character. Up to now, there are still some pictographs in Chinese characters, which are very vivid.
in the late western Zhou dynasty, Chinese characters developed into big seal script. The development of the seal script has produced two characteristics: first, the lines with uneven thickness in the early days have become uniform and soft, and the lines they draw with the objects are very concise and vivid; The second is standardization, and the glyph structure tends to be neat, gradually leaving the original shape of the picture and laying the foundation for the square characters.
Later, Li Si, the prime minister of the Qin Dynasty, simplified Da Zhuan and changed it to Xiao Zhuan. In addition to simplifying the shape of the big seal, the small seal has reached a perfect level of lineation and standardization, almost completely divorced from pictures and characters, and has become a neat, harmonious and very beautiful basically rectangular square font. However, Xiao Zhuan also has its own fundamental shortcoming, that is, its lines are very inconvenient to write with a pen, so almost at the same time, it also produces an official script with a flat shape on both sides.
by the Han dynasty, the official script had developed to a mature stage, and the readability and writing speed of Chinese characters were greatly improved. After Li Shu, it evolved into Zhang Cao, and now it is grass. By the Tang Dynasty, there was a wild grass that expressed the writer's thoughts and feelings in the pen. Subsequently, regular script (also known as real script), which was a combination of official script and cursive script, became popular in Tang Dynasty. The print we use today is a change from regular script. Between regular script and cursive script is running script, which is fluent in writing and flexible in pen. It is said that it was made by Liu Desheng in Han Dynasty, and it is still the font we are used to in our daily writing today.