Black lettering tattoo of several lines of script across a woman's upper back, seen from behind in a black strappy swimsuit beside a pool.

Lines of script across upper back

Lettering · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing several lines of small black script tattooed across her upper back. The lettering is fine and fairly even, with the lines running slightly diagonally across the skin. The ink is black with no colour, and the background shows a black swimsuit, pale paving and a blue pool edge.

Lettering Back Script

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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 forme for the Harrow Gazette was already locked up when your letter came, so you will have to take my word on the poem. Mr Abney set every verse by hand, line by line, and he insisted on reading each one backwards from the stick, which made my head ache by the third stanza.

Keep reading

The lines ran at a slant because he had tilted the chase to save space in the last column, and the type kept sliding. I learned to hold it steady with my thumb while he drove the quoins home. Nobody will ever read it that way round, he said, so the reading has to be done by the setter, and that is the only honest work in the trade.

On Thursday a proof came back with a letter dropped in the eleventh line, a small r lying upside down like a fallen sparrow. I found it myself before the press started. Mr Abney shook my hand, which he has never once done, and then went back to his bench as if nothing had happened.

I am sending you the spare proof I pulled for myself. Read it in the window light, not the lamp, and tell me if you can make out the last line, because I still cannot, and I would rather hear it from you than keep guessing. Your loving sister, Ada.