Bronze inscriptions are inscriptions cast on bronzes in Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Because it is engraved on the Zhong Ding, it is also called Zhong Dingwen. Bronze inscriptions have thick and wide strokes, round and muddy stippling, and graceful posture. Jin Wen and Oracle Bone Inscriptions belong to the same system, but they are more standardized and orderly than Oracle Bone Inscriptions.
Bronze inscriptions in the late Western Zhou Dynasty tend to be straight lines with neat and symmetrical strokes. This font is called Da Zhuan. During the Warring States period, there were great differences in the characters of different countries.
After Qin's reunification, in order to safeguard national unity, Qin Shihuang accepted the suggestion of Prime Minister Li Si and unified the writing. Li Si sorted and simplified Chinese characters according to the standards of Qin State, and formulated a standardized writing method, which was popularized throughout the country. This new font is called Xiao Zhuan.
The strokes of seal script turn around, although the pictographic meaning is retained to some extent, the symbolism is obviously greatly strengthened. Xiao Zhuan standardized the writing, but it was still inconvenient to write. Therefore, a simpler font called official script is popular among the people.
Lishu has a flat shape, the structure of characters is mostly square corners, and the strokes are thick and thin, forming a wave potential and picking method, which is called "zigzag, silkworm-headed dovetail". From seal script to official script, it is a bigger change. Official script is an important turning point in the development history of Chinese characters and a watershed between ancient Chinese characters and modern Chinese characters. Since then, most of the pictographic meanings of Chinese characters have been lost.
At the end of Han Dynasty, official script evolved into regular script. Regular script can be used as a French model for learning Chinese characters, so it is called regular script. The font structure from official script to regular script has basically not changed, but the wave-picking method of official script has been changed to eight-legged hook, which makes the font more square and straight and makes writing easier.
Parallel to regular script, there are cursive script and running script. The cursive script is characterized by many strokes, simple structure, coherent momentum and bold fonts.
Running script is a font between regular script and cursive script, which is simpler than regular script and easier to identify than cursive script. We can understand the evolution of Chinese characters through the following picture.