An ancient Chinese calligraphic script developed during the Han dynasty (206 BC to 200 CE) and widely adopted for official and educational purposes. It developed from seal script (zhuanshu), originating in the brush writing of the later Zhou and Qin dynasties. It first appeared in the Qin Dynasty (221-226 BCE), and came into its mature form during the Eastern Han dynasty (late 3rd century BCE). Though somewhat square and angular, with strong emphasis on the horizontal strokes, the lishu is a truly calligraphic script type, making full use of the flexible brush to modulate the thickness of the line. Many Han examples survive, written with a brush on bamboo slips or carved in stone. Characters were approximately uniform in size and evenly spaced within a composition, but the construction of characters and individual strokes varied greatly. The main characteristics of the clerical script are its angular strokes, which replaced the rounded lines in the seal script, and its simplified character structures, which defied the six principles of Chinese characters. Clerical script laid the foundation for the development of later scripts, including the standard or regular script, the running or semi-cursive script, and the cursive script. A prisoner Cheng Miao is said to have created this script, and the new style of writing became popular among prison workers for clerical documents and transcriptions. At the end of the Han dynasty the lishu developed into the more supple and fluent kaishu.

廣義的隸書，包括尚存篆書筆形的秦隸及出現波磔的漢隸（八分），為本詞彙的主要定義；可見的書寫材料則有漢代石刻，及二十世紀以來出土的大量簡牘、帛書。東漢末期筆法成熟的碑刻，是十八世紀以來學習隸書的入門作品；而簡、帛書則展現了毛筆書寫的筆畫提按、粗細變化，皆具有歷史與藝術價值。

clerical script(P,,U,English-P,D,U,NA)
lishu(,U,English-NP,UF,U,U)
li-shu(,U,English-NP,UF,U,U)
chancery script(,U,English-NP,UF,U,U)
隸書(P,,U,Chinese (traditional)-P,D,U,NA)
li shu(,U,Chinese (transliterated Wade-Giles)-NP,UF,U,U)
li shu(,U,Chinese (transliterated Pinyin without tones)-P,UF,U,NA)
lì shū(P,,U,Chinese (transliterated Hanyu Pinyin)-P,UF,U,NA)

Top of the AAT hierarchies
....Objects Facet
........Components (Hierarchy Name)
............components (objects)
................<components by specific context>
....................<information form components>
........................<script and type forms>
............................scripts (writing)
................................<scripts by form>
....................................Chinese scripts
........................................clerical script