Ontario School District

Etymology or meaning of names
Many calligraphy students were surprised to discover that their names have meanings. Their first names were written in a FOUNDATIONAL font with double pencils. The double pencils provide a ribbon of space that students colored with colored pencils, following the color spectrum, blending the colors together to form a rainbow effect. Then they wrote the meaning of their name with a flat carpenter's pencil. Notice the stacked blocks in a stair-step pattern on some of the compositions. This is the pen width, which is the width of the flat edge of the pen (in this case pencil), stacked 4 pen width high. Foundational font is written 4 pw or four pen widths high for the x height, or size of a small letter x. Ascenders and descenders, the strokes of letters above and below the x slant. This paper is written in Book Antiqua font, which is based on the original foundational or bookhand style of calligraphy, developed in the 11th centaury.