The art of beautiful writing, or a style of lettering—typically by hand—based on flat-tipped pen or brush strokes. Calligraphy is a form of lettering—the drawing of letters by hand—while typography is lettering adapted and made more orderly for special purposes, such as reproduction.
The Chancery script of the fifteenth century became the model for modern italic, and the writing masters of that period—such as Palatino—developed techniques for formal handwriting. Arthur Baker, the American calligrapher, has used Renaissance scripts for many of his models.
Hermann Zapf, the renowned German typeface designer, developed a calligraphy font that has been issued for typesetting by the International Typeface Corporation (ITC) under the name Zapf Chancery.
Despite the beauty of calligraphy, it does exhibit reduced legibility, and should only be used sparingly. Needless to say, calligraphy—either done by hand or using calligraphic fonts—should never be all caps.