Chinese calligraphic scripts (seal, clerical, regular, running, cursive)

Chinese calligraphy has five main scripts. Seal script covers the forms of writing that came before Han clerical script; after Qin unified China, officials led by the prime minister Li Si standardized a new form, small seal script. Clerical script developed in the Han dynasty and replaced the rounded lines of seal script with angular strokes, with a strong emphasis on horizontals. Regular script had developed out of clerical script by the end of the Han. Its corners are clear-cut and its strokes straight; it came to matter most in the Tang and remains the standard script today. Running script grew up alongside regular script: each character keeps its full form and stays apart from its neighbours, but the strokes inside a character often flow into one another, so it is quicker to write than regular script and easier to read than cursive. Cursive script carries strokes from one character into the next and reduces components to symbol-like marks; it is regarded as the script that best conveys a calligrapher's personal feeling. The online guide to the National Palace Museum's exhibition Flashes of Insight describes a letter by the Song calligrapher Mi Fu, Rong Xue Tie, whose first two lines are in running script, each character standing alone, and whose last two lines turn to flowing cursive.

Compare the corners of two characters: a round turn points to seal script, a sharp angle to clerical or regular script; where the strokes seem to run on from one character into the next, look for cursive.

• Song and Yuan calligraphy 宋元書法：尚意與復古→The Song and Yuan card looks at the calligraphy styles prized in two periods.