During the twelfth century the handwriting of English royal, episcopal and private acts became increasingly diverse. This article surveys the different elements and processes that contributed to such diversity. It examines first the ways in which clerks, especially royal clerks, modified their handwriting in order to write more swiftly, not only adopting simplified variant forms but also incorporating spontaneous cursive traces. Alongside this development, many scribes maintained a tradition of employing set handwriting for written acts, both the earlier Anglo-Saxon tradition of writing documents in the same script as that used for books as well as more ornamental varieties with distinctive proportions introduced first by scribes with experience of northern French diplomatic practice, and then, from the 1140s, through increasing familiarity with the handwriting of papal acts. By the mid twelfth century, in the absence of a single, shared tradition of documentary handwriting, scribes responded variously to the competing impulses of, on the one hand, pressure of business and on the other, a concern to make the appearance of the handwriting conform with the solemnity of the act. Some combined rapidity of execution with new features of style; others incorporated into their usual set hand forms and elements derived both from informal, rapid handwriting and from continental practice. By the end of the century, however, scribes were beginning to share a common repertoire of cursive elements and features of style, executed at different levels of formality and size, according to the context, thus creating a new hierarchy of scripts for the writing of documents.