While learning Chinese, you  cannot neglect writing characters. There are numerous styles, or scripts, in  which Chinese characters can be written, deriving from various calligraphic and  historical models. Most of these originated in China and are now common, with  minor variations, in all countries where Chinese characters are used.

To learn Chinese well, it is necessary to know the history of Chinese character development. The Shang  Dynasty oracle bone script and the Zhou Dynasty scripts  found on Chinese bronze inscriptions are no longer used; the oldest script  that is still in use today is the Seal Script (篆書(书), zhuàn  shū). It evolved organically out of the Spring and Autumn period Zhou  script, and was adopted in a standardized form under the first Emperor of  China, Qin Shi Huang. The seal script, as the name suggests, is now used  only in artistic seals. Few people are still able to read it effortlessly  today, although the art of carving a traditional seal in the script remains  alive; some calligraphers also work in this style.

Scripts  that are still used regularly are the "Clerical Script" (隸書(隶书),lìshū)  of the Qin Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, the Weibei (魏碑, wèibēi),  the "Regular Script" (楷書(书), kǎishū), which is used mostly for  printing, and the "Semi-cursive Script" (行書(书), xíngshū),  used mostly for handwriting.

Your Chinese teachers may  have mentioned the cursive script (草书, cǎoshū, literally "grass  script") which is used informally. The basic character shapes are  suggested, rather than explicitly realized, and the abbreviations are sometimes  extreme. Despite being cursive to the point where individual strokes are no  longer differentiable and the characters often illegible to the untrained eye,  this script (also known as draft) is highly revered for the beauty and freedom  that it embodies. Some of the simplified Chinese characters adopted  by the People's Republic of China, and some of the simplified characters  used in Japan, are derived from the cursive script. The  Japanese hiragana script is also derived from this script.

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