Copperplate: the engraved roundhand, 1700s–1800s

The steep, shaded hand of engraved English copybooks, written by clerks and merchants and used for legal forms and official copies.

Taught
English copybooks, imported before the 1790s
Pen
Goose quill cut to a fine point; later steel
Look
Right slope near 60°, fine upstrokes, full downstrokes
Where you meet it
Bonds, bills, indentures, wills; official copies

No specimen yet. A plate from a period copybook, or an openly licensed face that matches the hand, appears here once it passes our checks.

How to read it: the tells

  • ſ fThe long s looks like an f, and a double s can look like a p. Read it as s.
  • inst. ult.Dates by reference: inst. is this month, ult. is last month. Shortened words end in raised letters, sometimes underlined.
  • K P RCapital K, P and R can look alike, and so can J and T. Settle the rest of the word first.
  • AaCapitals begin nouns as well as sentences, so a capital in mid-line is not always a name.

History

Round hand reached America in English copybooks. Their models were usually illustrated with costly copperplate engravings, and before the 1790s almost all of them were imported.[^1] By 1766 an English writing master could note that round hands had been adopted by the schools and counting-houses,[^2] and although the style was sold to merchants and tradesmen, most writers took it up.[^3] George Bickham engraved the work of eminent masters for The Universal Penman, issued in parts in London from 1733 to 1741.[^4] Page 194 of the Dover edition[^5] reproduces his round hand[^6] in a letter dated 30 August 1740.[^7]

In the colonies it was the hand advised for the clerk's desk and the merchant's counting house.[^8] A writing manual printed in Philadelphia[^9] set out the forms for bonds, bills, indentures and wills,[^10] and the engrossed Declaration of Independence was written in English round hand, or copperplate.[^11]

The pen was a goose quill,[^12] brought to a fine point,[^13] and the breadth of its nib set the weight of the downstrokes.[^14] Upstrokes stay fine and downstrokes full,[^15] on a slope one master put at anywhere from 58 to 62 degrees.[^16] In the first half of the 1800s, steel pens superseded the quill.[^17]

Sources

  1. [1] Writing in the 18th Century (George Washington's Mount Vernon)
  2. [2] Serle, A Treatise on the Art of Writing (London, 1766), p. xii, full text
  3. [3] Technologies of Writing in the Age of Print (Folger Shakespeare Library)
  4. [4] Day, Penmanship of the XVI, XVII & XVIIIth Centuries (1911), full text
  5. [5] Bickham, The Universal Penman, p. 194 (Dover edition), via Wikimedia Commons
  6. [6] Bickham, The Universal Penman, p. 194 (Dover edition), via Wikimedia Commons
  7. [7] Bickham, The Universal Penman, p. 194 (Dover edition), via Wikimedia Commons
  8. [8] Writing in the 18th Century (George Washington's Mount Vernon)
  9. [9] Fisher, The American Instructor (Philadelphia), catalogue record
  10. [10] Fisher, The American Instructor (Philadelphia, 1770), p. iv, full text
  11. [11] The Power of Penmanship: Writing the Declaration of Independence (U.S. National Archives)
  12. [12] Writing in the 18th Century (George Washington's Mount Vernon)
  13. [13] Fisher, The American Instructor (Philadelphia, 1770), p. 30, full text
  14. [14] Fisher, The American Instructor (Philadelphia, 1770), p. 30, full text
  15. [15] Fisher, The American Instructor (Philadelphia, 1770), p. 28, full text
  16. [16] Serle, A Treatise on the Art of Writing (London, 1766), p. 3, full text
  17. [17] Dougherty, History of the Teaching of Handwriting in America, Elementary School Journal (1917)
  18. How to Read 18th Century British-American Writing (DoHistory) — the reading tells
  19. Transcription tips (U.S. National Archives, Citizen Archivist) — inst. and ult.