Cursive

:For the musical band, see Cursive (band).

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.

Related Topics:
Lower case - Italic - Half r - Eighteenth century - Long s

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Capital letters may use distinctive cursive forms, but some styles use forms related to print styles.

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Traditionally, all the connected strokes in a word are completed before one "crosses one's t 's and dots one's is," 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.)

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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.

Related Topics:
Copperplate - Eighteenth century - Ascender - Descender - Minuscule

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