capitals used in architecture, in the Roman empire and in the Middle Ages for rapidly written vernacular documents roman cursive or even a form of shorthand, called tironian notes, were used. Secretary hand Whereas the meticulously drawn textualis quadrata was the most common script for religious works, starting from the 13th century a common style of handwriting for vernacular work, which were written at speed, was Secretary hand, a cursive script, which features amongst several ligatures and contraction distinctive strong "elephant's ear" ascenders and descenders Italic script In the 16th–17th century secretary hand was slowly replaced by italic scripts, a semi-cursive group of scripts. Early italic hand, dating from the 15th century, was based on humanist minuscule with pronounced serifs, a single story a, open tailed g, slight forward slope and in the late renaissance could have been written with flourishes and swashes. Italic hand developed into Cancelleresca (chancery) corsiva (also an italic script) used for Vatican documents from the middle of the 16th century, which featured a more prominent slope and lavish swashes (often curled) on capitals. Additionally this script led to the italic type in typography, which could be used within a text written in Roman type (e.g. "The taxonomic name of the red fox is Vulpes vulpes") and thanks to Edward Johnston this script has enjoyed a revival in the 20th century. Note: "Italic hand" (a semi-cursive script), "Italian hand" (a copperplate cursive script) and "Italic type" (a typeface) are different concepts. Copperplate and cursive From the italic scripts after the 16th century, more cursive forms evolved and were known as Copperplate script due to way the calligraphy books were printed and reached their height in the 18–19th century. The main examples were the Italian hand and the English round-hand, which in Britain were taught to men and women respectively, these scripts feature flowing letters which could be written with a single pen lift (with the exception of x and the marks added after writing the word which were dots on i and j and the bar of the ascender of t) with straight or looped ascenders and descenders. In Italy Italian hand is instead known as "posata" (posed). Several national styles of cursive were developed, such as Spencerian Script in the US. Despite the recent decline, in several countries cursive scripts are still taught in schools today, often modified to be more similar to roman type