Spencerian Script

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P. R. Spencer's book, published 1866

Spencerian Script is a script style that flourished in the United States from 1850 to 1895.^[1]

Platt Rogers Spencer, whose name the style bears, was impressed with the idea that America needed a penmanship style that could be written quickly, legibly, and elegantly to aid in matters of business correspondence as well as personal letter-writing. Spencerian Script was developed in 1840, and began soon after to be taught in the school Spencer established specifically for that purpose. He quickly turned out graduates who left his school to start replicas of it abroad, and Spencerian Script thus began to reach the common schools. Spencer never saw the great success that his penmanship style enjoyed, having died in 1864, but his sons took upon themselves the mission of bringing their late father's dream to fruition.^[2]

This they did by publishing and distributing Spencer's unpublished book, Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship, in 1866. Spencerian Script became the standard across the United States and remained so until the 1920s when the spreading popularity of the typewriter rendered it obsolete. It was gradually replaced with the simpler and less elegant Palmer Method developed by Austin Norman Palmer.