Black ink calligraphy lettering of a Latin phrase written in a flowing script across a white paper strip on a dark wood surface, drawn as a tattoo design.

Latin script lettering on a paper strip

Lettering · Black and grey · Flash

A strip of white paper on a dark wood surface carries a line of handwritten black ink script in a flowing calligraphic hand. The lettering is Latin, with long swashed strokes at the start and end of the line and a fine, even weight throughout. The image is monochrome and sharply lit, so the drawn design is easy to read.

Lettering Script Calligraphy Latin text Handwriting Paper

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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

The footbridge at Carrick Junction has carried a Latin line across its ironwork since before the war, and nobody agrees on who painted it. You are the one asked to copy it out, because the council wants it recorded before the rust takes the letters. You kneel on the cold platform with a strip of card and a fountain pen that keeps blotting, tracing each word the way your mother once traced hymn numbers.

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Eight-year-old Tom Hebden stands at your elbow with a paper bag of cough sweets, reading over your shoulder. 'What's it say?' You tell him it is a bit of Seneca, an old playwright nobody performs any more, and that the words mean there is no soft road from the earth up to the stars. He frowns at mollis and asks whether soft means easy. You say it does, and that the line is really an argument about whether anyone gets to take the easy way up.

The 4.12 to Leeds comes in beneath you, brakes shrieking, and the whole bridge shivers so the ink jumps across your last word. You let it. The long swash at the end of the line runs off the edge of the card like a train leaving the frame, and you decide it is the best thing you have ever copied.

When the platform empties you fold the strip into your coat and walk home over the level crossing, where the gates have already lifted. Tom waves from the wrong side of the fence with a sweet held up like a lamp. You wave back, and the road ahead is long, stony and entirely your own.