Chinese characters have undergone changes for more than 6,000 years. The evolution process is: Chinese characters are divided into ancient characters and modern characters. Oracle bone inscriptions, bronze inscriptions, large seal scripts, and small seal characters are called ancient characters; official script, cursive script, regular script, and running script are called modern characters. Text. There have been three major changes in the evolution of Chinese character fonts: oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty - small seal script of the Qin Dynasty; small seal script of the Qin Dynasty - official script of the Han Dynasty; official script of the Han Dynasty - cursive script, regular script and running script after the Wei and Jin Dynasties.

The above seven fonts of "Jiajin Seal Script, Li Cao Kai Xing" are called "Seven Chinese Characters"

The emergence of Chinese characters - Chinese characters, is well documented, around AD In the late Yin and Shang Dynasties of the 14th century BC, the initial stereotyped writing, namely oracle bone inscriptions, was formed. Oracle bone inscriptions are both pictographic characters and phonetic characters. To this day, there are still some pictographic characters in Chinese characters that are the same as pictures, which are very vivid.

< p>In the late Western Zhou Dynasty, Chinese characters developed into large seal scripts. The development of large seal scripts resulted in two characteristics: first, linearization. The uneven thickness lines in the early days became uniform and soft, and the lines they drew with the actual objects were very concise and vivid; The second is standardization. The glyph structure tends to be neat, gradually leaving the original shape of the picture, laying the foundation for the square characters.

Later, the Prime Minister Li Si of the Qin Dynasty simplified the large seal script and changed it into a small seal script. In addition to the large seal script, the small seal script In addition to simplifying the shape, the lines and standardization have been perfected, almost completely breaking away from pictorial characters, and becoming a neat, harmonious and very beautiful basically rectangular block font. However, Xiaozhuan also has its own fundamental shortcomings. That is, it is very inconvenient to write its lines with a pen, so almost at the same time, the official script was developed into a flat square shape.

By the Han Dynasty, official script had developed to a mature stage. The readability and writing speed of Chinese characters have been greatly improved. Later, official script evolved into Zhangcao, and then Jincao. In the Tang Dynasty, there was Kuangcao, which expressed the writer's mind and expressed his feelings on the pen. Later, it merged official script and cursive script and became The integrated regular script (also known as real script) became popular in the Tang Dynasty. The printing style we use today is derived from regular script. Between regular script and cursive script is running script, which has smooth writing and flexible pen. It is said to have been made by Liu Desheng in the Han Dynasty. It has been passed down to this day and is still the font we are accustomed to using in daily writing.

In the Song Dynasty, with the development of printing technology, block printing was widely used, and Chinese characters were further improved and developed. , resulting in a new type of calligraphy - Song Dynasty printing font. After the invention of printing, the engraving knife used for lettering had a profound impact on the shape of Chinese characters, resulting in a printing font that is thin horizontally and thick vertically, eye-catching and easy to read. Later generations called it Song style. There were two types of fonts engraved at that time: fat and thin, the fat ones imitating Yan style and Liu style, and the thin ones imitating European style and Yu style. Among them, Yan style and Liu style had tall and tall strokes, which were already slightly thicker horizontally and thicker vertically. Some characteristics. During the Longqing and Wanli years of the Ming Dynasty, it evolved from the Song style to the Ming style with thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes and square fonts. It turned out that at that time, a Hongwu style with very thin horizontal strokes and particularly thick vertical strokes and flat fonts was popular among the people. , such as official title plaques, lanterns, notices, private boundary stones, gods and masters in ancestral halls, etc. all use this font. Later, some book engravers created a non-yanfei style in the process of imitating the Hongwu style of engraving. European outline style. Especially because the strokes of this font are horizontal and vertical, it is really easy to carve. It is different from the four styles of seal, official, zhen and cao. It creates a unique style and is fresh and pleasant to read. Therefore It has been increasingly widely used and has become a very popular main printing font since the 16th century until today. It is still called Song font, also called lead font.