Title: Ancient Chinese Writing History: Facts, Characters & Styles | Learn Chinese History
Headings: Ancient Chinese Writing History: Facts, Characters & Styles
Ancient Chinese Writing History: Facts, Characters & Styles
Ancient Chinese Writing: History of How It Began
Ancient Chinese Writing History: Characters and Symbols
History of Ancient Chinese Writing Styles
Oracle Bone
Great Seal
Small Seal
Cursive Style
Clerical Style
Regular Style
Running Style

Content: History of Ancient Chinese Writing Styles
Chinese writing has changed from ancient times until modern times with seven different styles of writing: Oracle Bone, Great Seal, Small Seal, Clerical, Cursive, Regular, and Running. The last two styles, Regular and Running, are still in use in modern China. Oracle Bone
The Oracle Bone (Jiaguwen) style used written characters that were simple in form. The early written characters resembled the actual object they were representing, such as a horizontal line with three vertical lines coming down and then three more vertical lines inscribed below was the written character for rain. When you think of rain, it often looks just like the character. The drops of water are not one continuous line, but have gaps between them. Great Seal
The Great Seal (Dazhuan) style used different stroke thicknesses to form characters and the corners of the characters were rounded rather than coming to a “squared-off” point. The characters remained representations of objects and although the thickness of the lines blurs the picture representation, when looking at the Great Seal character style, it is still clear that a character was the object it represented. This style of forming characters became popular in the Chou or Zhou dynasty from 1122-221 BCE.