An epitaph is a stone inscription buried in a tomb with the biography of the owner of the tomb. It originated in the Eastern Han Dynasty, developed in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and flourished in the Sui, Tang and Five Dynasties. It existed in the forms of stone carving, text and calligraphy: The stone carving constitutes its physical form, the literal content its textual form, and the handwriting its calligraphic form. Epitaphs, as they evolved throughout the medieval period from the Wei, Jin to the Five Dynasties, exhibit exquisite textual patterns and developed specific writing rules. Firstly, epitaphs in the medieval period formed a special system constituted by at least three formats: text, calligraphy and material object. General literary forms such as poems and rhapsodies were created by writers and handed down through writing, compilation, carving and printing. In addition to the process that general literary forms went through, epitaphs also had stone inscriptions, the stones buried in the grave with manuscript carved on them. Calligraphers had to write down the words that were to be carved on the stones, and a material object came into being after the carving.  Secondly, the medieval epitaphs demonstrated more evident literary features. The epitaphs and poetic genres were more fully combined, and the genres of Mingwen were increasingly diversified. Epitaphs consisting of Zhiwen and Mingwen became a regular pattern for later generations. Sometimes, Zhiwen and Mingwen were written respectively, with Zhiwen intended for recording events and Mingwen for extolling the virtues. The relatively fixed format of ″Thirteen Events″ also witnessed the stylistic stylization of the epitaphs. The epitaphs matured and flourished in the Tang dynasty. The authors took advantage of various literary styles in the previous generations and integrated their good qualities into the epitaphs, making the epitaph an independent and popular literary style. Thirdly, the writing rules of epitaphs in the Tang Dynasty were manifested in increasingly complete inscriptions, occasional annotations, and the special format of line breaks and blanks. Stone epitaphs are a complex of epitaph texts: their texts were provided by the author of the epitaphs, revised and supplemented by the bereaved, written by the calligrapher, and finally inscribed by the engraver. The information provided by the stone epitaph was much richer than that by the paper-based epitaph collections. For example, the epitaph inscriptions indicating the author's identity were important materials for studying the style and format of the epitaphs. However, they could not be found in the paper-based epitaph collections. Finally, the writing style of epitaph in paper-based collections is different from that in stone carving. The comparison of the two different types of epitaphs is helpful for us to grasp the stylistic characteristics of epitaphs. The newly unearthed stone epitaphs, many of which were included in paper collections, provide us with excellent materials for a comparative study of the style and form of the epitaphs. The forms of stone epitaphs are varied and complex, thus providing much additional information to mere textual forms. Paper-based epitaphs show the instability of the texts resulting from copying and printing, from which we can examine the course of the spread of the texts. A comparison will also bring out the different standpoints of the epitaph authors and the bereaved.