Cursive - English Cursive

English Cursive

Cursive writing was used in English before the Norman conquest. Anglo-Saxon Charters typically include a boundary clause written in Old English in a cursive script. A cursive handwriting style—secretary hand—was widely used for both personal correspondence and official documents in England from early in the 16th century.

Cursive handwriting developed into something approximating its current form from the 17th century, but its use was neither uniform, nor standardised either in England itself or elsewhere in the British Empire. In the English colonies of the early 17th century, most of the letters are clearly separated in the handwriting of William Bradford, though a few were joined as in a cursive hand. In England itself, Edward Cocker had begun to introduce a version of the French rhonde style, which was then further developed and popularised throughout the British Empire in the 17th and 18th centuries as round hand by John Ayers and William Banson.

Back in the American colonies, on the eve of their independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain, it is notable that Thomas Jefferson joined most, but not all of the letters when drafting the United States Declaration of Independence. However, a few days later, Timothy Matlack professionally re-wrote the presentation copy of the Declaration in a fully joined, cursive hand. Eighty-seven years later, in the middle of the 19th century, Abraham Lincoln drafted the Gettysburg Address in a cursive hand that would not look out of place today.

Note that not all such cursive, then or now, joined all of the letters within a word.

In both the British Empire and the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, before the typewriter, professionals used cursive for their correspondence. This was called a "fair hand", meaning it looked good, and firms trained their clerks to write in exactly the 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, see Crossed letter. Block letters were not suitable for this.

Although women's handwriting had noticeably different particulars from men's, the general forms were not prone to rapid change. In the mid-19th century, comparatively few children were not taught the contemporary cursive; in the United States, this usually occurred in second or third grade (around ages seven to nine). Few simplifications appeared as the middle of the 20th century approached.

After the 1960s, there arose an argument that cursive instruction was more difficult than it needed to be: that conventional cursive was unnecessary, and it was easier to write forms of simply slanted characters called italic. Because of this, a number of various new forms of cursive appeared in the late 20th century, including Getty-Dubay, and Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting. Most of these models lacked the craftsmanship of earlier styles such as D'Nealian, Spencerian Script, Zaner-Bloser, and the Palmer Method, but almost all were less demanding. With the range of options available, handwriting became non-standardized across different school systems in different English-speaking countries.

With the advent of typewriters and computers, cursive as a way of formalizing correspondence has fallen out of favor. Most tasks which would have once required a "fair hand" are now done using word processing and a printer. However, western etiquette advocates the use of longhand in personal notes (e.g., thank-you notes) to provide a sense that a real person is involved in the correspondence.

The teaching of cursive has been de-emphasized in many public schools, but is still used occasionally for situations such as timed tests with large writing portions, where it is considered faster by some. Also being able to write in a fair-hand is still looked upon as a sign of literacy in many countries. In some countries, the quality of one's cursive is used to determine the appointment of public office.