Function: The unification of characters makes it easier for people in different regions to communicate, and the simplification of characters makes it easier for people to use characters, which plays a huge role in promoting social civilization. It is conducive to the spread of culture, economic and cultural exchanges among various ethnic groups, and conducive to the unification of the country.
The evolution trend of writing:
Oracle bone inscriptions → bronze inscriptions → seal script (divided into large seal script and small seal script) → official script → regular script.
The general trend is from traditional to simple, and Chinese character fonts are gradually standardized and stabilized. The evolution process of Chinese character form can be divided into two stages: ancient characters and official regular script. In the ancient writing stage, the sequence of the evolution of Chinese character forms was oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, seal scripts, and Qinli. In the official script stage, the evolution sequence of Chinese character forms is official script and regular script.
Official script became popular in the Han Dynasty. The Wei and Jin Dynasties were the transitional stage from official script to regular script. Regular script became popular in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Official script and regular script are official scripts. In the official regular script stage, auxiliary calligraphy styles - cursive script and running script - also appeared.
The small seal script fixed the number of strokes of each character; official script formed a new stroke system, and the character shape gradually became a flat square;
After the birth of regular script, the shape and font of Chinese characters became stable The basic strokes of "horizontal, vertical, left, dot, hold, pick, hook, and fold" were determined, the stroke shape was further standardized, and the number and order of strokes of each character were also fixed; the strokes produced by multi-line writing were The requirement of neat arrangement constrains the changes in glyphs, the length and thickness of the strokes to stretch within the box, and the location and density of the distribution of strokes are also restricted. The glyph structure pays attention to balance and symmetry.
The appearance of regular script has finalized the square shape of Chinese characters, and the fonts of Chinese characters have matured. For more than a thousand years, regular script has been the standard font of Chinese characters. This is the mainstream of the evolution of Chinese character fonts. The development process of auxiliary fonts cursive and running script is a tributary of the evolution of Chinese character fonts.