Some Basic Terminology for Calligraphy

Okay, you have your supplies ready, and you've set up your place to do the writing.

And yes, I know, you're anxious to get at the writing. Well, we're almost there. Just hang in there for a bit more. :)

Calligraphy has a language of its own and you'll need to know some of the basic terms. You could always just go to the Calligraphy Dictionary if you run across something you don't understand.

But we'll cover some of the basics here - with diagrams to make it a bit easier.

First. let's look at something called the pen width. With calligraphy pens - other than the monoline ones, you are working with nibs that have a wide side and a very narrow side. The distance from one edge of the wide side to the other is called the pen width.

This is important because alphabet heights are measured in pen widths. It doesn't matter what size nib you are using, you simply know to write each alphabet by the pen widths of whatever nib you are using. Most alphabet sheets will have a diagram like this showing the pen widths - either in the checkerboard style or the stair-step diagram.

You can get guideline sheets for many of the main pen widths, but it might help you to create your own guideline sheets. Even that can vary from project to project depending on the design of the project, the height of the ascenders and descenders, and how much line space is needed for that particular job. If you have the Staedtler Calligraph Duo feltmarker, then here are two Guideline Sheets for the larger nib that you can use for our Basic Italic lesson or to try out the exercises.

Another thing you'll need to become familiar with is pen angles. Depending on the style of alphabet you are doing, you could hold your pen anywhere from a 90 degree angle right through to 0 degrees. The most commonly used angles though are 45 and 30 degrees.

The next things to be aware of are the different lines that will be referred to. As you can see from the diagram, there are five basic lines in calligraphy.

First is the writing line or base line on which the letters are written. Then you have the waist line, which is the height of the lower case letters. In Italic and some of the other alphabets, you will have a branching line - the place at which strokes branch off to form the rest of the letter.

Acenders are the strokes of certain letters which go above the waistline to the ascender line. Descenders are the strokes on certain letters which go below the writing line to the descender line. This diagram shows ascender and descender lines for the formal Italic alphabet, but those lines can vary in height depending on the style or alphabet hand being used.

For some alphabets you will also need to know the "slant" of the letters - measured in degrees. You'll often find guidline sheets with the slant lines included. One of these Guideline Sheets has a 10 degree slant to the right - often used for Italic calligraphy.

I think that's about it for some basic terminology. Now let's start playing with your pens. We'll start with some exercises to get you comfortable with holding the pen correctly.