The styles of calligraphy are divided into five categories: seal script, official script, grass script, true script, and xing script.
The seal script style is the oldest and is the collective name for the Chinese character fonts that were popular before the Qin Dynasty. Among them, Xiaozhuan of the Qin Dynasty is the representative one. Xiaozhuan, also known as "Iron Seal", was the standard Chinese character at that time that was promulgated on the basis of Qin Zhuan after the Qin Dynasty unified China, abolishing the scripts of the Six Kingdoms. Its calligraphy is characterized by uniform stroke thickness and rounded fonts. Before Xiaozhuan, the writing style popular in the Qin State was called Qin Dazhuan. Its characteristics were similar to Xiaozhuan, but more primitive. The typical copybook in existence is "Qin Shiguwen". There are also two types of calligraphy in seal script, one is the oracle bone inscriptions from the ancient period, and the other is the "golden inscriptions" inscribed on bronze bells and tripods since the Xia and Shang Dynasties, which are called "Zhenshu". In calligraphy, these calligraphy styles are generally called "seal script". The glyphs of seal scripts are very different from today's Chinese characters. Therefore, apart from professional fields such as archeology and philology, only calligraphy and seal cutting works can be seen.
The official script was first formed in the Qin Dynasty, and became the standard standard Chinese characters in the Han Dynasty. Starting from the official script, the shape of Chinese characters changed from oblong to flat. The most striking feature of official script is its strokes. It is known as "silkworm head and swallow tail".
With the official script came Zhangcao, which was a shorthand font at that time. Later Jincao and Kuangcao were developed on this basis. These calligraphy styles are collectively called cursive script. It can be said that the emergence of cursive script was to meet the needs of recording sketches, so the strokes of the calligraphy style are connected and more strokes and simple strokes are saved.
In the Jin Dynasty and the Southern and Northern Dynasties, regular script appeared again. The original upward strokes in official scripts were changed into downward strokes, and the fonts became more square. This style of calligraphy basically laid the foundation for today’s Chinese characters. Kaishu in regular script means model, and it used to be called Zhenshu. There is also a more typical calligraphy style in real books, which can be seen in the inscriptions of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Unlike the inscriptions of later generations, which were written by calligraphers and transferred to the stone, the inscriptions at this time were all written directly on the stone. It is chiseled, and although its font is written in regular script, it still retains a strong flavor of official script, so later generations called it the "Wei Stele" style.
Cursive script came into being with the emergence of regular script. It was first seen in Wang Xizhi's "Preface to the Lanting Collection". It is also a shorthand method based on regular script style. It is just more neat than cursive script and uses continuous script. The writing techniques are basically unnecessary and there is no need to use simple strokes or simple strokes. Cursive script can also be divided into two types: Xingkai script and Xingcao script. Xingkai script is closer to regular script and has less continuous strokes; while cursive script has more continuous strokes, and some of them use simple and sparse strokes in cursive script.
The above are the broad categories of calligraphy styles. As for the subdivisions, each style has its own style, such as Zhong, Wang, Ou, Yan, Liu, Zhao in regular script, Zhang, Huai in cursive script, etc. , countless.