English round hand

English round hand is the clear, rounded, moderately slanted writing hand of English clerks and merchants from the 1660s onward, and the parent of Copperplate.

Letterforms

The ovals are round and open, the slant is moderate, and the loops are full without being ornate. Entry strokes begin at the baseline; downstrokes are heavier than upstrokes when the hand is written with a flexible pen, and even when it is written with a pencil. Capitals are large and rounded, with restrained flourish. The hand was designed to be read easily in ledgers and letters, and it still is.

Joins and lifts

The lowercase is joined through its upstrokes, with the pen lifting for dots, crossbars and most capitals. Written quickly it flows; written slowly with a pointed pen and shading it becomes Copperplate. The difference between the two is speed and pressure rather than letterform.

Where it comes from

English writing masters adapted the French ronde and the Italian italic in the second half of the seventeenth century into a hand for trade, and it became the standard commercial script of the English-speaking world for two centuries. Engraved copybooks spread it as Copperplate; the American business hands of the nineteenth century, Spencerian among them, descend from it. It survives as a calligraphy hand and in the many script fonts that imitate it.

Practising it

Begin with the oval and the straight downstroke, then the lowercase letters built on them, then joined words on a moderate slant. A pencil or a fine fountain pen suits the writing hand; a pointed flexible nib is needed only for the shaded version. The Copperplate page covers that version, and the elegant fonts list the faces that follow the round hand.