A Short History of Cursive Handwriting

In the Roman world, formal inscriptions used carved capital letters, but everyday writing on wax tablets, papyrus and wooden tablets used quicker, more connected letter forms now called Roman cursive. Speed was the reason: connected strokes meant fewer lifts of the pen or stylus.

Around the late 8th and 9th centuries, scribes working under Charlemagne's court developed Carolingian minuscule, a clear, rounded lowercase script that spread across much of Europe. It is the ancestor of the lowercase letters we use in print and, indirectly, in cursive.

In 15th-century Italy, humanist scholars favored a more legible hand that evolved into the italic script, a slanted, compact, quickly written style. Writing masters of the 16th century, such as Ludovico degli Arrighi, whose manual La Operina appeared in 1522, taught it, and it influenced writing across Europe.

In 17th- and 18th-century England, commercial life increased the demand for quick, clear handwriting. Writing masters produced engraved copybooks, such as George Bickham's The Universal Penman, that spread the round hand and the elegant style now called copperplate. The pointed pen produced the contrast between thick and thin strokes that people associate with formal script.

In the United States in the 19th century, Platt Rogers Spencer developed Spencerian script, a flowing, decorative hand taught widely in schools and business colleges. Toward the end of the century, Austin Palmer promoted a plainer method based on movement of the whole forearm, written faster and with fewer flourishes. The Palmer Method became dominant in American schools in the early 20th century.

• Zaner-Bloser: a long-running American program, taught in many schools since the early 20th century.
• D'Nealian: developed in the 1970s to make the move from print to cursive easier by using slanted print forms.
• Many schools use a mix or their own version.

These models differ mostly in their capital letters, while the lowercase letters are much closer. That is why the letters on this site follow a traditional model but say to follow your teacher's capitals if they differ.

In the 2000s and 2010s, keyboards led many US schools to drop or reduce cursive instruction, and in some places it has since been restored by state or district decisions. Whether or not it is taught, a large body of historical and personal writing is in cursive, which is one reason people still learn to read and write it.