About the graduation cap
A small square board with seven centuries behind it
The graduation cap most people recognize today, a flat square board fixed on a soft skull cap
with a tassel hanging from the center, is formally called the square academic cap, and it is
nicknamed the mortarboard because of its resemblance to the flat board a bricklayer uses to
carry mortar. Some circles call it a trencher, an Oxford cap, or simply a square, and every
one of these names describes the same object.
Its roots reach back to the earliest medieval universities of the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, where scholars and clerics wore soft skullcaps as part of everyday academic dress.
Oxford required graduates to wear gowns during ceremonies starting in the fourteenth century,
and the flat, square shape gradually took over from rounder cap styles by the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, eventually settling into the form still used at commencement today.
Tassels are a comparatively recent addition. They were not part of early academic dress and
only became common in the eighteenth century, attached to a button at the center of the board.
The gesture graduates know best, moving the tassel from the right side of the cap to the left,
developed later still as a shorthand for the moment a candidate officially becomes a graduate.
Today the cap is worn far beyond university halls, appearing at high school commencements,
kindergarten promotion ceremonies, and professional graduations alike, which is exactly why
getting the right size, material and style matters regardless of the level of education being
celebrated.
