The šekaste or ‘broken’ script is a derived form of the nastaʔliq, its main characteristic, apart from those shared with its parent script, being the linking up of letters that are not normally joined. The tendency towards minimization and exaggeration already noted in the nastaʔliq script is carried still further, as is the smoothing out of sharp curves and angles.

Since nowadays it is normally written with a steel or fountain pen, instead of the traditional reed still used for the other two calligraphic scripts, it does not show the variations of thickness that are characteristic of nasx and nastaʔliq, and also of earlier šekaste. It must also be remembered that, unlike the other two scripts, it is an unstandardized handwriting, and therefore subject to the personal variations and idiosyncracies of individual writers. As will be seen even from the few examples given in this appendix, these variations can be very wide-ranging. No hard and fast rules can therefore be given, and the forms of the letters and combinations given below should be taken rather as a guide to the decipherment of hand-written letters. A further difficulty arises from the fact that many common terms and expressions used in correspondence are taken for granted, and so often scribbled without much attention to clarity. Fluency in recognizing these can only be acquired by constant practice.

2. In the first of the tables below the shapes of the individual letters are given in their joined and separate forms.