The aura of romance which has surrounded the tools, the methods, and the products of the scribe has tended, we believe, to place them in the eyes of practicing letter artists somewhat higher in the scale of the arts than those of the letterer. Hence the "lettering man" likes to call himself a "calligrapher." This same snobbishness is often evident between easel painters and illustrators, between book illustrators and magazine illustrators, between book designers and advertising typographers. And all of it is false. By simple definition lettering and writing are related but certainly not competitive arts.
Calligraphy is "beautiful writing."
Lettering, in modern usage, refers to built-up, designed forms.
Stanley Morison, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, says: "Calligraphy is the art of fine writing. Writing is a means of communication by agreed signs; if these signs or symbols are painted or engraved on stone or wood [or paper] we have that extension and application of writing known as lettering, i.e. a script generally formed with mechanical aids such as the rule, compass, and square. But it is the essence of hand-writing that it be free from such, though not from all, government.... Calligraphy may be defined as freehand in which freedom is so nicely reconciled with order that the understanding eye is pleased to contemplate it."
The same nib was used for built-up and written forms in this freely rendered fragment of a ninth-century manuscript.
Built-up and written forms each have their place. One of the tenets of fine letter art is that the forms be in perfect taste; that is, that the letter and its method of production be in harmony with its use. A delicately drawn cursive is as out of place on a subway card advertising a cough remedy as is a poster egyptienne on the title page of a small volume of romantic poetry. To assume, however, that either the written or the drawn form is the more aristocratic is unsound. To attempt a representation of either by the other is likewise illogical. Written letters, based on traditional manuscript usage, are more serious in concept than their less restrained contemporary built-up characters and do not permit of the same unconcern with anatomical discrimination. Both, properly executed, can be superb examples of letter art—and both can be terrible.
