A simple Roman, executed entirely with a broad nib.
Characteristic strokes employed in writing the above.
A similar letter designed and built up using a brush.
Characteristic outlines to be filled in for above.
The growing practice of calling all script-like letters "calligraphy" is unjust to writing and lettering alike. Particularly the practice of producing with a pointed pen or brush the built-up, tricked-out impersonations of broad nib writing must be abandoned if the art of making letters is to remain honorable.
Having defined, then, the general limitation of the terms, let us look at some of the principal differences in character between the two. Historically, we find them side by side. Since they were both produced by scribes and illuminators working in like tradition, there was no question of fitness one with the other. Both stemmed from the same source and were produced with the same type of tool. They were necessarily in harmony.
Contemporarily, however, much lettering is executed by craftsmen who neither know or care about the historical background of the alphabet. The responsibility for this lies, we believe, as much with the purchaser as with the producer of letters. The art director, working in a viciously competitive field, demands of the letterer something "different." The result is usually a built-up form which has little in common with its ancestors, either in shape or method of production. But, if it is handsome in itself, it may have a real affinity for a text of type. A written element may also serve beautifully as a foil for the rigidity of a type page.
These two treatments of a title are by no means the only likely ones by either method. The lower form was actually used. The letter was designed in the spirit of the type which was used in conjunction with it. Perhaps if a written title had been chosen, one based on an Italian rather than an English hand would have been more suitable. The great difference in these two treatments is that the written serves as a contrast, while the built-up harmonizes with the type on the page.