How To Print On Quill Bill Of Ladings: Fill & Download for Free

The written word is a miracle. To be able to put down ideas in a fashion such that people at a distance in space and time can retrieve the information was no less miraculous to our forebears than the uploading and downloading of information to the “cloud” or across satellite and fibre optic networks is to us today. The written word so permeates our existence in the 21st century that we would do well to ponder for a moment how momentous it still is that we communicate most often in this fashion, even with all the advances since in photography and video.US Interstate Highway sign in the Highway Gothic font — an example of both the ubiquity of text and the confusion over the term “gothic.”The exact nature of writing has been dependent on two factors: technology and the purpose of most communications. Let’s start with two ancient scripts and then we can address the much, much later scripts mentioned in the original question.Ancient MesopotamiaWhen archaeologists began unearthing cuneiform tablets in Mesopotamia they came upon thousands upon thousands of legal documents, contracts, bills of lading, invoices, grain distribution and all the other written detritus of a business-oriented commercial culture. Of course there are other things as well, notably Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest surviving full length epic; base-60 trigonometry tables that rival today’s in terms of usefulness, efficiency and accuracy (1); and astronomical observations.Cuneiform clay tabletThe technology of cuneiform was clay, and thus the marks made in it are small wedge shapes pressed into wet clay. The purpose of the communications was largely commerce so the tablets were made to be relatively small so that they could be transported, stacked and even placed into little clay envelopes—and sealed shut!Cuneiform clay tablet and clay envelope with embossed seals.Ancient ChinaBy contrast, ancient Chinese writing, engraved into bones and tortoise shells, is primarily concerned with rituals and predicting the outcomes of various actions. There are hundreds of characters denoting animals and very specific bronze ritual vessels. Again, there is other material: formulas for medical decoctions and the beginning of the world’s longest continuous astronomical observations (2). Early Chinese writing was engraved, so the lines are thin and curving.Ancient Chinese script engraved on a tortoise shell.Later, when silk and brush and ink were devised and took over the task of writing, the form of the writing changed dramatically. The characters were made up of an accumulation of shorter, squared off strokes of the brush.Chinese characters written with brush and ink on silk.Medieval EuropeMoving way ahead in history to the post-Roman Empire in Europe we discover a wide variety of script styles that are variously known as Blackletter, Fraktur, Gothic, etc. The technology is the broad-nibbed pen, usually a cut quill (feather). And what is the purpose of writing? Overwhelmingly the texts being produced are religious: the Christian Bible, psalters, prayer books, books of hours, etc. There is also a small canon of literature that a highly educated, well read literate person would have in their library. This is the key: the rate of literacy in the Medieval period is very low. Books are laborious to produce. In China and increasingly in the Islamic world paper is available, a relatively efficient and cheap commodity to produce. In Europe the substrate upon which books is written is vellum, which is produced from animal hides through a highly labor intensive, time consuming process. In China books can be printed from wood blocks or even movable ceramic type. There is no point to printing books in Europe because there is no abundant commodity (e.g., paper) upon which to print. With a small audience of literate readers, who are reading a few very expensive books, there is no requirement that writing be simple to read. The highly stylized, dense and ornate forms of Medieval letters are actually designed to slow down the speed of reading. Religious and philosophical texts should be read slowly and the words and sentences pondered upon.Medieval European manuscript in blackletter (Gothic) script.As in previous ages, there were other reasons for writing. Charlemagne (742–814 CE) probably more often known as Karl der Grosse, united much of Western Europe. Although illiterate himself, he was astute enough to realize that the plethora of different scripts in use within his domain was hampering efforts to collect all the taxes his emperorship was levying on his subjects. He set his monks—who were most often the scribes during this time and place—to creating a simpler alphabet that would serve as a standard throughout his newly proclaimed Roman Empire. The scribes followed through and the result is the basis of the lower case Latin/Roman letters we use most often in print today.Medieval European manuscript in Carolingian minuscule script.Copperplate, English Roundhand, Spencerian and other Pointed Pen scriptsThe questioner mentions the Declaration of Independence (3) issued by the thirteen British colonies in North America. In this era Europeans and Americans are writing in cursive scripts written with quill pens. With the advent of the Industrial Revolution the feather quills began to be replaced with copper and steel pointed pen nibs which had to be dipped in an ink well. The next innovation was the fountain pen which contained an ink reservoir. The paper of the time was actually of superb quality, primarily made of recycled linen cloth (for a short time a huge source of this linen was from ancient Egyptian mummies that were unwrapped for the approximately 4.5 meters of cloth on each body. The import of mummies into North America was stopped after a cholera outbreak was erroneously attributed to the mummies).Colonial American pointed pen style written with quill on linen paper.What else had changed since Medieval times? This is handwriting! People are corresponding: sending letters across the oceans and down the street; to friends, colleagues and to the editor; and writing to their political leaders. People are taking notes, keeping journals, writing pamphlets and poetry. Accountants spend days leaning over huge ledgers; court clerks are writing down every word spoken in court; physicians are writing prescriptions; In short, people are busy writing prolifically and quickly, and in a wild array of non-standard spelling!TodayAnd what about today? No more dip pens. Most people do NOT use fountain pens. The ballpoint pen and the humble pencil, felt-tip markers and gel pens, and the ability to input text on all manners of keyboards and screens have all conspired to make it easier and faster than ever to produce terabytes of text. All this is bad news for handwriting. The Italics of the Italian Renaissance, developed to facilitate legible, fluid handwriting, is only used by calligraphers. Spencerian and Copperplate are the domain of professionals who labor over wedding announcements and envelopes, while the Palmer Method handwriting of the 1950s and 1960s is no longer taught. There are stalwarts among those who would continue to teach handwriting to schoolchildren, but their battle is against all odds, kids stealthily snap chatting on their iphones while the teacher drones on about beautifully written letters (I used to do my math homework in typing class, quickly returning my hands to the keyboard when the teacher would pass by. Don’t get me started on the irony that typing is not taught when people seem to be born with a keyboard in their hands).Moving beyond handwritten scripts, fonts are the essential ingredient of today’s written word. For the most part these must be quick to read (serif fonts for longer texts, san serif for highway signs), universal (the whole world recognizes the Roman/Latin alphabet), and machine readable (scan, scan, scan).(1) This ancient Babylonian tablet may contain the first evidence of trigonometry(2) https://books.google.com/books?id=MEgsBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA267&lpg=PA267&dq=chinese+world%27s+longest+continuous+astronomical+observations&source=bl&ots=EoY7UkA9eI&sig=sr7rl0jcKI8L755Uo_EobEetKoU&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjllp-vjtrWAhVG2SYKHUVOB2EQ6AEINzAG#v=onepage&q=chinese%20world's%20longest%20continuous%20astronomical%20observations&f=false(3) History of penmanship