Much writing has been done on the subject of the pre-industrialized “colonial” gravestones of North America between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The craftsmen of this period predominately used slate or sandstone to create beautiful yet mostly rudimentary memorials. The lettering was typically of a modern “printer’s roman” style which varied from carver to carver, containing ligatures and unique anomalies often used to correct mistakes due to a lack of laying out an inscription prior to carving. Some writing has been done specifically on the lettering of this period, but very little. Even less information can be found on the engraved letterforms of the memorials of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Monument Lettering Center picks up its research here, after the industrial revolution, and as a more collective lettering and design ideology begins to emerge in the burgeoning monument industry.

Around the mid nineteenth century, on the heals of the industrial revolution, monuments were still largely created by hand; typically of marble, a soft stone beautifully suited for hand carving. Highly specialized letter carvers are employed to engrave inscriptions, using varied alphabets and lettering styles, mostly following the lead of popular print/advertising design and lettering styles outside of the monument industry.

New methods are being employed to increase production speed and quality of gravestone manufacturing, and the occupation of memorial draftsman is created.

Efforts to speed up the memorial making process continue. Standardized lettering styles specific to the monument industry begin to be more thoroughly documented and distributed through articles in trade publications, the creation of lettering plates, and the printing of lettering books. These advances begin giving less specialized workers the ability to complete the lettering on a memorial.

Though the Spacerite system is gaining ground in the monument industry, many memorialists continue to draw their own lettering by hand, and others begin to create lettering plates and blueprints of their own alphabets to be used by the industry for laying out letters and inscriptions. Sandblasting is quickly gaining popularity and begins to overtake carving inscriptions by hand.

By 1940 sandblasting has completely overtaken hand carving as the method used for engraving memorials, the Spacerite letter system has been widely adopted by the industry, and the first stencil die-cutting letters are invented and produced.

Though the Spacerite system still reigns supreme, there is some pushback against the  predictability and monotony of the lettering. Many manufacturers begin creating their own alphabets for reproduction, and modifying the Spacerite letters during the stencil-cutting process, creating sans-serif and other variations of the alphabets. Though it has become increasingly rare to see hand drawn lettering on headstones, there is a slight resurgence during this period.

Stencil cutting dies continue to saturate the industry as more and more monument manufacturers begin using the stencil press for cutting memorial designs in stencil. New stencil press design companies are created, giving birth to many versions of the classic memorial alphabets, as well as never before seen lettering styles.

Computer aided design (CAD) software and stencil-cutting machines begin taking over. The trend towards personalized and “pictorial” memorials that began in the late 1980s continues to grow.

Though there are still some who prefer the old methods, the computer era of monument design is well underway. The flexibility and speed of using computer systems for designing memorials further heightens the growing shift towards personalized memorial designs.