It gets even more intricate! Until the 15th century or so, there were dozens of different styles of Latin script optimised for slightly different writing technologies [0], some so different to what we’ve now converged on that I hesitate to call them the same script. Our current handwritten lowercase letters developed around fountain pens and quills — something I realised when I started using fountain pens and realised that lowercase writing suddenly became much more natural. On the other hand, our printed lowercase letters have changed little since Charlemagne standardised his miniscule script for maximum legibility with a broad-edged nib. Meanwhile, in Germany, blackletter styles developed for fast writing with the same nib; this eventually ended up as Sütterlin [1], which looks quite different to the script we’re currently using. In England blackletter developed into ‘secretary hand’ instead [2], which again looks quite different. And of course there’s more! [0] is the best overview I’ve found.

(Thinking about this I do often wonder what a form of handwriting optimised for the ballpoint pen would look like… probably quite different to our current handwriting styles!)

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20100403062849/http://guindo.pnt...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_hand