Teaching Cursive: Overview

Introduction

Cursive writing is a flowing, curved form of handwriting. The letters are slanted and looped, and successive characters are connected. Cursive allows for faster writing, requiring few lifts of the pen or pencil. Cursive seeks to combine legibility, clarity, and speed with aesthetics. The origins of cursive writing date back to the ancient Egyptians. Modern cursive traces its roots to fifteenth-century Italy when scholar Niccolò Niccoli invented the italic style.

The teaching of cursive writing in the US has undergone many changes to make the style of penmanship easier for students to learn. Since the mid-nineteenth century, cursive writing has been taught in American classrooms through various models, including Spencerian, Palmer, Zaner-Bloser, and D'Nealian methods. In American schools, children are first taught how to print with the ball-and-stick method, which involves drawing straight lines and circles to form letters; around third grade, students may be taught cursive writing, using pencils and ruled, or lined, paper.

Technological progress and educational standards, however, have jeopardized the future of cursive writing. With the advent of electric typewriters, computers, and other electronic forms of communications in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, schools have placed less emphasis on teaching cursive writing. In 2010, the Common Core State Standards omitted requirements to teach cursive writing in the United States. Advocates of teaching cursive argue that it allows younger generations to understand historical and personal documents, communicate faster, develop motor skills, and improve reading and writing. Opponents contend that cursive is becoming, or has already become, obsolete and therefore instructional time and efforts should be dedicated to other skills and tasks.

Understanding the Discussion

Calligraphy: An ornate form of handwriting.

Cursive: In the context of writing, text that employs slanted, looped letters that are joined, or closed up; sometimes referred to as “script.”

Keyboarding: The use of a mechanical or electric typewriter, a computer keyboard, or a similar device to record information; also called “typing.”

Handwriting: Any text that is manually created, including both cursive and print writing.

Penmanship: The art of handwriting, especially script.

Print: In the context of writing, text that employs unjoined, or open, and upright letters and numerals, often intended to mimic the form of mechanically or digitally produced text.

History

Cursive writing has evolved throughout history as humans sought efficient ways to communicate with one other and record daily transactions. Its development has benefited from advancements in writing tools and materials. Chisels and stone gave way to the stylus, brush, reed pen, quill, wax tablets, papyrus, and parchment. These tools enabled writers to make rounded scripts instead of angular ones, while the softer materials allowed for curves.

The ancient Egyptians used hieroglyphics, an intricate system of writing based on symbols that look like the objects they represent. Around 2000 BCE, they started using hieratic writing, a simpler form of hieroglyphics, for business and personal matters. In 700 BCE, a cursive form of hieratic writing called “demotic” was invented. Easy to use, demotic became the preferred style of writing in Egypt.

Cursive advanced under the ancient Romans, who introduced rounded curves and fewer writing tool lifts. During the first century CE, the Roman writing system also included lowercase letters, called minuscule, a characteristic feature of cursive. Minuscule letters have ascenders—strokes that extend above the main part of the letter, such as the letter b—and descenders—strokes that extend below the main part of the letter, such as the letter g.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the emperor Charlemagne united Western Europe in the late eighth century. Charlemagne ordered the monk Alcuin of York to standardize the script used in biblical texts, which were written in numerous regional variations of the Roman system. Alcuin developed Carolingian minuscule, which accentuated legibility and featured joined letters, lowercase letters, and punctuation.

As literacy spread in Europe, books rose in demand. The price of parchment increased, so letters were compressed to take up less space. The heavy, angular Gothic script emerged as an alternative to the wider-spaced Carolingian minuscule in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century, he used the Gothic script. In reaction to the hard-to-read and less aesthetic Gothic style, Italian Renaissance scholars in the fifteenth century developed the humanistic script, which brought back the clean lines of Carolingian minuscule.

Niccolò Niccoli invented a cursive style of the humanistic script, known as italic. The slanted italic, which was quicker and more legible than Gothic, became the writing standard of Europe. Italic forms the basis of the modern cursive script.

The English developed a form of script known as round hand, or Copperplate, that worked well with quill pens. Round hand was brought to the United States by English colonists and was the style used by the country's Founders.

The instruction of cursive writing in US schools has developed since the mid-nineteenth century. As men and women entered jobs in administration and commerce, cursive was considered more of a practical skill than an art. Platt Rogers Spencer sought to inject virtues, such as integrity, into handwriting. In the 1840s the bookkeeper developed the premier model of cursive writing used by schools. The Spencerian style is considered quite fancy. In modern times, the Coca-Cola logo uses this form of cursive.

In the 1880s, Austin Norman Palmer devised a model that was less ornate and easier to write than the Spencerian method. The Palmer method replaced the Spencerian method in the early twentieth century. More practical than the Palmer approach, Charles Paxton Zaner and Elmer Ward Bloser's method became the industry standard of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The D'Nealian method, created by Donald Neal Thurber in the 1970s, teaches cursive by connecting “tails” between letters.

The invention of the electric typewriter during the 1950s and the rise of personal computers during the 1980s sparked a shift in teaching cursive. Following these innovations, schools began to teach typing and computer keyboarding courses and allotted less time for cursive instruction.

Teaching Cursive Writing Today

As laptops, tablets, and smartphones have become more prevalent in the twenty-first century, however, the need for good penmanship has come under scrutiny. In 2010, the Common Core State Standard—a set of educational standards devised by and agreed upon by a coalition of state governments—did not require cursive to be taught in public schools. By 2023, twenty-nine of the fifty states no longer required cursive writing in their curriculums. In many states considering legislation around the teaching of cursive writing, the debate tended to become partisan, with Republicans favoring mandates and Democrats opposing them.

Critics of cursive writing felt that students should be taught other needed skills instead. Some favored a balance approach in which cursive is not eliminated but is no longer mandatory for all students. Supporters of teaching cursive argue that if students do not learn it, they will not be able to read key historical documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bills of Rights, in their original penmanship. Advocates also contend cursive writing is a faster form of communication; highlight the creativity and artistry of an individual's handwriting; and say cursive writing improves such abilities as motor skills, eye-hand coordination, dexterity, and letter and space recognition while reading.

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