Black ink decorative script alphabet showing upper and lower case letters with swirling flourishes, in a lettering style, on a white background.

Decorative script alphabet sheet

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A sheet of upper and lower case letters from A to Z set in an ornate, looping script with swashes, loops and tapered strokes. The linework is solid black with no shading, and the letters are arranged in rows across the page. There is no colour or body placement, so the sheet reads as a reference for lettering design.

Lettering Alphabet Script Lettering Flourish Swash

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mr Pascoe wanted the letters for the new lamp-room door done before the inspectors came up the coast on Friday, and he handed me the sheet of flourished capitals to copy from, the one with loops that hang off the baseline like washing. My hand was steady then. I had been a sign-writer's boy for four years and knew how a swash should lift off a stroke without shaking.

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The trouble was the L. It curled back on itself like a fern and I could not make the tail finish where the drawing said it should. I tried it on scrap board nine times in the back of the workshop while the paint went tacky in the pot. Mrs Hale from the chandlery brought tea, watched over my shoulder and said the lighthouse didn't need fancy letters. It needed to be read from a boat in fog.

On Thursday night the fog came in thick as wool. I walked up the headland with the board under my arm and the brush wrapped in a rag, and found the old lamp still burning in the tower, though nobody had kept it since the automatic light went in. I hung the board on the gallery railing and painted by its glow. The loops went where they were meant to go, and the tail of the L came round as if it had been waiting for me.

On Friday the inspectors came up, read the name from a boat half a mile out, and said nothing about the script. Mr Pascoe paid me in coins and a bad joke. I still have the sheet, creased where I folded it to fit my apron pocket, and I still write my own name that way on the corner of every invoice, the capital curling up like a question someone has already answered.