Not unlike the more exaggerated, colorful style of character writing used in commercial art and advertising, the decorative characters have their roots in the first emperor's designation of the Chinese script. When the Chin Shih Huang Ti made his one united written language, there were eight types of written script. Of the eight, four types were designated as "decorative scripts."
最有名的例子，是湖北宜昌附近出土的越王勾踐所用之銅劍，上刻：「越王鳩淺，自作用劍」八字，銘文上的每個字，都加上鳥頭及其他彎彎曲曲的裝飾，使字體成為一種圖案。