Kaishu Script
The name kaishu literally means «exemplary writing». This style also has several synonymous names: kaiti (楷体, kaiti), zhengkai (正楷, zhengkai), zhenshu (真书, zhenshu) and zhengshu (正书, zhengshu). Looking up the meanings of the characters forming these names will probably suggest the ideas of correctness and exemplary form.
Kaishu began to spread in China during the Wei–Jin (魏晋, Wei-Jin, 220–420) dynasties and survives to this day. Its predecessor is considered to be lishu, whose manner of drawing lines underwent changes aimed at simplification and straightening. The system of writing characters is structured, the characters themselves are formed very neatly, and stroke order is strict. In fact, the character style in modern handwriting copybooks is none other than kaishu executed with a pen.
During the Song (宋, Song, 960–1279) era, printing was invented in China, leading to a new form of kaishu called «Song characters», which serves as the standard model for today’s printed typefaces. The Yuan (元, Yuan, 1271–1368), Ming (明, Ming, 1368–1644) and Qing eras brought flowing, soft forms to kaishu aesthetics. In the 20th century, the reforms of the 1950s–1960s modified kaishu somewhat, but the aesthetic principles of writing characters remained the same.
When you learn to write characters using the workbooks in the copybook files, you reproduce character forms whose broad outlines were established about a thousand years ago.