Corsiva

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Corsiva.

Corsiva, officially named Monotype Corsiva, is a script typeface designed by Patricia Saunders in 1995 for the Monotype Corporation. Saunders used the cursive writing style of Italian scribes from the 15th and 16th centuries, especially Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi, as inspiration. The characters are all set at a slight angle and, like most script fonts, the lines are tapered as though they were made with a calligraphy pen. Most of the capital letters feature a swash. The font was designed to mimic Hermann Zapf's popular typeface Chancery and features very similar glyph sizing. Microsoft has been including the typeface with various Microsoft Office products since 1997.

Long before I had even heard of Chancery and before I switched to using LibreOffice, I used Microsoft Office, which is how I learned about Corsiva. I really like the flow of Corsiva and use it for various semi-formal designs. In particular, I love the swashes on the capital letters and the gap between the swash and stem on the B, D, P, and R. I also like the widening on the v and w, the curvature of the tail on the y, and the loop on the g. The typeface has a lot of interesting symbols as well like the ampersand, pilcrow, and section sign. The only thing I don't like about it is the asterisk.

Due to Corsiva being purposefully designed to mimic Chancery, (and several other Monotype fonts mimicking others) there were a series of lawsuits claiming such copycat typefaces infringe on the original typeface's copyright, with Corsiva being one of the key complaints. However, it was eventually ruled that the typefaces were sufficiently different. Also, Saunders took inspiration for her glyphs public domain sources.

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