1, Oracle Bone Inscriptions.
2. Bronze inscription, seal script and official script.
3. Regular script, running script, cursive script and standard song style.
We start with Oracle Bone Inscriptions, the ancestor of Chinese characters. The word "de" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions is manifested externally as the word "row", which is a hieroglyph and refers to a road crossing, just like we are crossing the road now. In the middle of Oracle Bone Inscriptions's word "virtue" is the image of eyes, and a straight line is drawn above the eyes, indicating that people should see the direction clearly when walking, and walk in the middle of the road to avoid encountering sundries or wrestling.
In the bronze inscriptions of the Zhou Dynasty, the word "heart" was added under the eyes, which also had obvious meaning, that is, not only the eyes should be straight, but also the heart should be straight. Although the eyes are looking straight ahead, it is easy to have an accident mentally. As can be seen from the writing of the word "De", the word "Xing" other than the word "De" has changed from completely left and right to only one side, and from complexity to simplicity.
The writing method before Qin Dynasty belongs to the category of big seal script, and the writing method of seal script from Qin Dynasty to Qing Dynasty has been relatively neat. There is a horizontal line in the middle of the handwriting of "De" seal script. One way to write the word "de" in official script is silk script, which is also the handwriting of official script in Han Dynasty. The last exaggeration of the word "Xin" shows that the aesthetic consciousness of calligraphy has been greatly improved.
The word "de" is sometimes written on one side and two sides, and a horizontal picture is added in the middle of the official script. There is a horizontal painting between seal script and official script in Qing Dynasty. Weibei is the font of the Southern and Northern Dynasties. Since the Northern and Southern Dynasties, there has been a horizontal painting in the middle of the word "de". There is also a horizontal picture in the middle of the word "de" in Xi Zhi's "Filial Piety Monument". Therefore, from the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the word "de" gradually evolved into an additional horizontal painting, which should be out of the need to supplement the blank.
The cursive script of the word "de" is symbolic and needs to be recited separately. When you recite, you should think of the writing methods of various scripts in front of you. Don't memorize them by rote, or you will make mistakes easily. From the analysis of different writing methods of different fonts, the word "de" was not drawn horizontally at first, but was later added to the standardized Chinese characters.
Therefore, horizontal lines should be written in daily standard writing, but in the study and creation of calligraphy, we can follow the ancient writing methods. In other words, the word "de" is correct in principle whether it is written or not. Just like dialects, a word has different pronunciations, but for the convenience of communication, it is the same meaning to use Mandarin as the standard pronunciation.