History of American cursive

Round hand is a style of handwriting and calligraphy that began in England in the 1660s.^[1] It is known by its round oval letters, its open, flowing line and its contrast of thick and thin strokes.^[2] It became a fixed standard through printed writing manuals.^[3] By the middle of the 18th century it had spread across Europe and crossed the Atlantic to North America.^[4] These hands grew into what is now called copperplate script.^[5]

In America, the form called English roundhand was the main script taught in schools until the middle of the 19th century.^[6] Before the typewriter, professional people in Britain and the United States wrote their correspondence by hand in cursive.^[7] Firms trained all their clerks to write in exactly the same script.^[8]

Platt Rogers Spencer developed his script in 1840, and it was soon taught in a school he set up for the purpose.^[9] His aim was an oval-based style that could be written quickly and legibly.^[10] He took inspiration from the shapes of smooth pebbles in a stream.^[11] The script's growth was tied to the arrival of better steel pens.^[12]

Spencerian was used in the United States from about 1850 to 1925.^[13] Until the typewriter spread, it was the standard American style for business correspondence.^[14] It even became the official hand of government clerks.^[15] President James A. Garfield called it "the pride of our country and the model of our schools."^[16]

Beside copperplate, Spencerian lowercase letters look more delicate and are less heavily shaded.^[17] The script slants at 52 degrees from the baseline.^[18] Spencer died in 1864, and his sons carried his work on.^[19] They did so by issuing his previously unpublished book, the Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship.^[20] It came out in 1866.^[21]

Austin Palmer's method was meant to simplify Spencerian.^[22] It developed around 1888 and was set out in his book Palmer's Guide to Business Writing in 1894.^[23] It relied on "muscle motion", using the arm muscles nearer the body rather than the fingers.^[24] In 1912 alone, one million copies of the textbook were sold across the United States.^[25] Its supporters stressed plainness and speed, and said it was much faster than Spencerian.^[26] They also claimed it let a writer compete with the typewriter.^[27] It soon became the most popular handwriting system in the country.^[28]

The Zaner–Bloser method grew up beside it, beginning around 1904 at the Zanerian College of Penmanship in Columbus, Ohio.^[29] It teaches block letters first and cursive afterwards.^[30] Its print letters stand upright, while its cursive slants.^[31] By the middle of the 20th century it was the most popular way of teaching penmanship in the US.^[32] Palmer's method, meanwhile, began to lose favour in the 1950s.^[33]

The D'Nealian method was introduced in 1978.^[34] It is derived from the Palmer Method.^[35] Its slant is 85 degrees from the baseline, the same in print and cursive.^[36] The decline of cursive itself began in the 20th century, first with the typewriter, which was widely adopted by the 1920s.^[37] After the Second World War, the cheap ballpoint pen did away with the flourishes that liquid ink and flexible metal nibs had allowed.^[38]

The first obstacle in an old record is simply that handwriting has changed over time.^[39] The best-known trap is the long s: a letter that looks like a lowercase f.^[40] The National Archives notes that it appears in handwritten and printed documents into the early part of the 19th century.^[41] Printers in the United States gave it up between 1795 and 1810.^[42] Handwriting held on to it longer: the long s survived in manuscript into the second half of the 19th century.^[43] Most 19th-century handwritten examples use it for the first s of a double s.^[44] In handwriting it was usually used only before a round s.^[45]

Use as many context clues as you can.^[46] Other letters of the period can mislead too: the lowercase p often has a much taller ascender than a modern p.^[47] Its bowl may be open at the bottom, so that it looks like an h.^[48] Some writers make a lowercase e that looks like a mirror-image 3, sometimes called a "Greek e".^[49] Stock phrases such as "Dear Sir" help you get your bearings, because they seldom hold spelling surprises.^[50] The National Archives asks volunteers to transcribe it as an ordinary s in documents from before the mid-19th century.^[51]