The Small Seal Script 小篆

Before the Qin conquest of the last remaining six of the Seven Warring States of China, local styles of characters evolved independently of one another for centuries producing what are called the scripts of the Six States. At that time, different states had simplified and decorated characters in different ways for practical use, so there were several different forms for the same character.

To strengthen his reign, the first emperor Qin Shihuang took a series of measures to intensify the centralised feudal society and standardising the writing script was one of the measures. Prime Minister Li Si created small seal script on the basis of big seal script and made it the official script for the whole country.

There are two uses of the term seal script, the Large or Great Seal script and the Lesser or Small Seal Script; the latter is also simply called seal script, or Qin seal script. The Large Seal script was originally referred to writing of the Qin system similar to but earlier than the Small Seal. Later it was used to refer to Western Zhou and Shang writing, such bronze and oracle bones inscriptions. Since the term is used loosely without clearly referring to any specific historical script and is not used with any consensus in meaning, modern scholars tend to avoid it, and when referring to seal script, generally mean the (small) seal script of the Qin system.

Prime Minister Li Si systematized the seal script through elimination of most variant structures, is said to have compiled ‘Cangjie Pian’, a non-extant work of character recognition listing some 3,300 Chinese characters in small seal script.

After the collapse of Qin dynasty, the standardized seal script was still widely used for decorative engraving and seals (name chops, or signets) in the Han dynasty. Ever since, its predominant use has been in seals, hence the English name.

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秦灭战国七雄中的其他六雄前，几个世纪以来，各地字体各自独立发展，形成所谓的六国文字。当时，各国在应用上以不同的方式来简化与修饰文字，造成一个字有几种不同写法。

为了强化政权，秦始皇采取了一系列的措施来深化中央控制的封建社会；书同文就是其中的一项措施。宰相李斯以大篆为基础创制了小篆，使它成为全国的官方文字。

篆书有两种，一种叫大篆，另一种叫小篆。小篆也称篆书，或秦篆。大篆原指小篆以前的相似的秦国文字。后来用来指西周与商朝文字，例如金文与甲骨文。由于它的含义不清，不用来指定一种特定文字，用法也不统一，现代学者倾向于避免用它；说到篆书，一般指秦朝小篆。

秦宰相李斯去掉大部分的相异结构，把小篆系统化；据说还编了一本现已不存在的‘仓颉篇’，辨认了3，300个小篆文字。

秦朝灭亡之后，标准的篆书继续在汉朝广用来当作装饰雕刻与用于印章。此后，它主要用在印章，连英文也把篆书译为‘印章’。