cursive
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- handwriting
cursive, style of handwriting distinguished by rounded shapes in a word and, frequently, connection of characters. Cursive style allows the pen to flow in continuous strokes, accelerating the handwriting speed of a practiced hand.
Though modern cursive is often associated with languages that use the Latin alphabet, including English, Spanish, and French, cursive writing existed long before the development of written English. For instance, hieratic script was a form of ancient Egyptian cursive used from about 2925 bce to about 200 bce. Caoshu, a cursive variant of Chinese script, developed during the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce). By the 8th century ce, Byzantine schoolchildren learned to write in Greek miniscule, a variant of Greek script that consisted of rounded characters that were frequently joined. Cursive became the popular styling for the Cyrillic alphabet in the 15th century, as Muscovy was laying the foundations of a centralized Russian state.
Within the history of the Latin alphabet, a first step toward modern cursive writing was Carolingian minuscule. Popularized during the rule of Charlemagne in the late 8th to early 9th century, it became the basis of modern roman type: from Carolingian minuscule, almost all future styles of Latin writing would evolve.
Another major evolution came in the 12th century with Anglicana, a style of writing widely used by English scribes in Britain and northern France. Its purely cursive form, aptly called cursiva Anglicana, was popular with scribes by the 13th century. Sometimes called court hands for their prevalence in government documents, these styles would vary slightly over the next few centuries and between countries. Changes included added or removed flourishes, characters that slanted one way or the other, and varying levels of clarity.
The dominant style of 18th-century English cursive was round hand, a style of calligraphy with thick lines produced on the downstrokes of capitals and minuscules through pressure applied on a flexible nib of a quill pen. Round hand was used by scribes and writing masters and taught to literate members of the public via copy books, which were “how-to” guides with detailed instructions on standards and technique. Round hand made its way to the British colonies, including those that later became the United States. The Declaration of Independence was written in round hand.
Following round hand, development in English cursive is fairly simple to track. One of the most successful techniques of standardizing handwriting in the United States was the Spencerian method, developed by Platt Rogers Spencer in the mid-19th century. Spencerian penmanship instruction focused not only on a writer’s handwriting but also on their body positioning in order to facilitate long hours of continual writing without fatigue. According to a workbook written by Spencer and others, “Form, in writing, is the picture of a movement, and movement the result of a proper action of the writing muscles.…Before we can expect a satisfactory handwriting, [these muscles] are to be rendered strong and supple.” Aided by the advocacy of Victor M. Rice, superintendent of public schools for Buffalo and later for New York state, Spencer saw his method become a popular alternative for round hand in the United States about the 1850s.
Following Spencer was Austin Norman Palmer, an entrepreneur and educator who in 1894 introduced the Palmer method: a standardized system of business writing. The Palmer method intended to teach businessmen to write clearly and efficiently, without the ornamentation common in cursive writing. Though originally intended for business use, the Palmer method also gained popularity in schools.
These methods of cursive writing were entwined with the technology available at the moment of their development. Rather than being carved or inscribed, as hieroglyphic writing was, hieratic was written in ink using a reed pen on papyrus. Round hand was particularly suited for the quill pen. Spencer’s method arrived when schools traded the quill and ink pot for slates and chalk, which allowed students to erase and start over during practice. By the time Palmer had developed his method, paper was becoming less expensive and thus more accessible to the common businessperson. And as typewriters, then word processors, then personal computers came into common use, the need for a standardized system of cursive writing dwindled.
Along with that dwindling need for cursive writing, emphasis on penmanship in schools declined. In 2010 a set of educational guidelines for U.S. schools, known as the Common Core State Standards, was introduced and omitted cursive from its standards for English language arts. Many states continued to mandate some level of cursive education, but the exclusion of cursive from the Common Core sparked a defensive reaction among many Americans. Some worried that less time spent in the classroom learning cursive could hinder students’ ability to decipher handwritten letters from older relatives, write a legible signature, or study historical documents.
In the 21st century, tools that use artificial intelligence to interpret cursive writing have increased the accessibility of such handwritten records. Optical character recognition (OCR) software is able to transform scanned pages of uniform handwriting into editable text documents, although such software is better suited for print materials than handwritten ones. Advancements in cognitive computing have also led to the emergence of handwritten text recognition (HTR), which can transcribe less structured handwriting by using deep-learning algorithms.
