Before surveying the history of Latin script it is necessary to refer to several forces and tendencies that fashion and alter writing, things that make this history visible. This should make it simpler to understand the processes at work in writing.

There are two fundamentally different techniques of writing (though certainly with some overlap); I term them the calligraphic and the cursive. The former is in general proper to bookhands, the latter is proper to the whole spectrum of everyday scripts.

The calligraphic technique, for which a broad (and slit) quill is suited, is required for the realisation of script types such as the canonical capitalis, uncial, half-uncial, caroline minuscule, Beneventan script, and the Gothic textura. In these kinds of script the letters have to be constructed from their various elements with either broad or hair strokes and have to be executed technically correctly, that is either towards the body or towards the right, following the limits of the quill-point(s); the quill should not injure the page surface or spill through shaking. These ‘constructed’ scripts are written with the hand firmly supported on the little finger. In their realisation the sequence of strokes must be followed, that is the ‘structure’ of the letters — not haphazard but organically and technically determined; this structure also determines the first alterations that appear in cursive writing. The constructed scripts, especially the established script types, preserve the form of the letters.