There were two leading figures in the Ming Dynasty, one was Dong Qichang and the other was Zhao Mengfu. Dong Zhao's calligraphy style enveloped the calligraphy world. The emperors in the court all like calligraphy. Scholars in the ruling and opposition circles attach great importance to calligraphy, and they all like elegant regular script and running script, which almost completely inherited Zhao Mengfu's style. Therefore, the characters of the whole Ming Dynasty were mostly in the form of running script, which could not be traced back to the Qin, Han and Northern Dynasties. The works of seal script, official script, Bafen and Wei Ti almost disappeared, and the regular script was beautiful and delicate. During the Yongle and Orthodox Dynasties, Yang Shiqi, Yang Rong and Yang Pu successively entered imperial academy and Wen Yuan Pavilion and wrote a large number of inscriptions, which were called Guangchang Style, or Taige Style. Scholars compete to imitate calligraphy in order to make a fortune, which makes calligraphy lose its artistic interest and personal style.
In the nearly 300 years of Ming dynasty, although there were some successful people, there was no great breakthrough and innovation in the whole dynasty. Therefore, in modern times, Ding concluded in "The Essence of Calligraphy": "All those who talked about art in the Ming Dynasty copied and imitated, and there was nothing to create." Representative calligraphers are: Dong Qichang, Wen Zhiming, Zhu Yunming, Tang Bohu, Wang Chong, Zhang Ruitu and Song Ke.