Cursive
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- For the musical band, see Cursive (band).
Cursive is any style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single (complicated) stroke. In British English, the phrase "joined-up writing" is far more commonly used, while the term "running writing" is sometimes used in Australia. Cursive is considered distinct from the so-called "printing" or "block letter" style of handwriting, in which the letters of a word are unconnected, and from "print-writing", which is a cross between cursive and printing, with some unconnected letters and some connected.
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History
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, before the development of the typewriter, professional correspondence was written in cursive. This was called a "fair hand", meaning it looked good, and all clerks in a firm were trained to write in the exact same script. In the early days of the post office, letters were written in cursive -- and to fit more text on a single sheet, the text was continued in lines crossing at 90-degrees from the original text. Block letters could not do this.
Although women's handwriting had noticeably different particulars from men's, the general forms were not prone to rapid change. In the mid-nineteenth century, comparatively few children were taught cursive, and as it was an important skill, more emphasis could be placed on learning it; there was no pervasive striving for efficiency in the classroom. Few simplifications appeared as the middle of the twentieth century was reached. An example of the timeframe in which cursive came to be taught is that in the United States, it would be usually taught in second or third grade (around ages seven to nine).
After the 1960s, it was decided that the teaching of cursive writing was more difficult than it needed to be. Forms of simply slanted characters, termed italic, were argued as being easier and traditional cursive unnecessary. Also, the copyrighting of handwritten letter forms as a sort of typeface became profitable. Because of this, a number of various new forms of cursive appeared in the late twentieth century; D'Nealian and Zaner-Bloser are two of them. With the range of options available, handwriting became unstandardized across different school systems in different English-speaking countries.
Description
Most of the lower case letters of cursive correspond quite directly to those seen on the printed or typewritten page, particularly with italic fonts, although neither cursive nor block letters commonly use the hooked "a" or double-bowled "g". The exact letterforms differ in style. In some cursive forms, the "f" is written using two loops instead of a crossbar. Some styles, notably the French, leave the "p" open at the bottom, like an "n". The letter "r" in cursive, however, derives from the medieval "half r", and the "z" has a tail, also from medieval writing. The other letter forms have generally remained the same, though the minuscule letter "w" in the eighteenth century looked like what we now use for an "n" that was linked onto a "v". And of course the "long s" has disappeared.
Capital letters may use distinctive cursive forms, but some styles use forms related to print styles.
Traditionally, all the connected strokes in a word are completed before one "crosses one's t 's and dots one's i's," a phrase which has become a byword for finishing touches. (In most writing forms, both the x 's and X 's are crossed in the same manner, and the j 's are dotted.)
Eighteenth through mid-twentieth-century cursive styles differ from the even more artistic Copperplate handwriting, which was used for captions of engraved illustrations in the eighteenth century, in that Copperplate writes the ascenders and descenders of minuscule letters with thick, solid lines, while cursive employs loops of thin lines. This would have saved ink in a clerk's office.
Victorian Modern Cursive
Image:Cassowarys Victorian Modern Cursive.png
Victorian Modern Cursive originates from the state of Victoria, Australia, and was first used in 1985. In addition to Victoria, it is used in Western Australia and, to some extent, the rest of Australia. The most traditional of about six writing forms, specialized for either the left or right hand, it is based on French cursive handwriting, and therefore features a "p" and "b" with open bowls such that the letters look like "n" with a descender and "v" with an ascender, respectively, as well as an "x" formed from two semicircles. It differs particularly in its use of a block-letter "r" rather than a half "r", reduced loops and onsets, and slanted print-style capital letters similar to the "italic" schoolchildren's writing forms. The other writing forms do not have loops.
More samples can be seen on the Victorian Government's early years of schooling webpage.