Cursive Italic

[Nanny]

 

[GabrielleDuVent]

Because copperplate is what we're taught as cursive, I think.

 

Come to think of it, I did write in joint-up italic when I was a child - year 1 through 3 - but we mostly regarded this as "a weird joined-up writing of print". Cursive, in our minds, was the D'Nealian, which seems to be a derivative of the copperplate. I remember asking my father to teach me the copperplate when I was five or six - I wanted to be able to write fancy - and he taught me the D'Nealian. My mother writes the same cursive.

 

I think this stems from the fact that the cursive we see today was used in its very basic form back in the 17th and 18th century in the British Empire. As Britain colonised 1/4 of the globe, what was vogue in the UK must have spread throughout its colonies. Quite a few Asian countries, when they were teaching cursive, taught D'Nealian.

 

Nowadays, cursive (in a lot of people's minds) is some form of copperplate. Italic looks like connected printing. The German Kurrent looks Copperplate (as well as the cursive used now, apparently), and Greek cursive from 19th century also look copperplate. Take a look:

 

German cursive

Greek cursive

Japanese cursive

Korean cursive

Chinese cursive

[Sandy Fry]

In Scotland as a kid we were taught " joined-up writing ". Unfortunately, my job knocked the joined-up writing out of me as I had to write everything in block capitals. This had a serious detrimental effect on my handwriting. At the Los Angeles pen show I spoke with Michael Sull and ended up buying his book on American Cursive so that I can teach myself " joined-up " writing again. I was using an older manual from a download on IAMPETH and it was working but the instructions were a little ambiguous for me.

It may just be me but I think that Italic does not " flow " as easily as cursive. I think that you should write in the style that suits YOU as long as it is legible. Mine will be legible soon I hope!!!

 

David

 

P.S. I should say that joined-up writing in Scotland is basically American Cursive.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Sandy Fry

[dragos.mocanu]

I tend to use both major styles of handwriting, depending on my mood...usually with fine and flex nibs I write cursive, while with M and larger nibs (including Cursive Italics and Stubs) I write in print or my own, mangled, pseudo-italic.

Edited February 23, 2014 by dragos.mocanu

[Rosewood]

My current handwriting has a lot to be desired, it’s certainly not copperplate, nor is is strictly italic, it’s best described as… cursive mumbling with a few dots and lines to indicate somewhere in there is an ‘I’ or ’T’. Over the years I’ve adopted a number of unique styles for some characters which I’ve admired in other people handwriting, leading to a truly bastardised style of my own.

I started to work on my handwriting three days ago, (20 Feb) and chose to practice italic, printed to start with, and latter it will be cursive, I might even try an italic nib pen, is that a stub? My choice was not, unfortunately, based on aesthetics, I was particularly taken with several styles until I tired to read them. The reality is that most peoples reading experience today is from printed material, and we’ve probably lost our ‘eye’ to read comfortably and easily more ornate styles of handwriting. So italic and cursive italic for me makes a lot of sense for both my ease of writing and hopefully for any recipient to read.

One thing I have found is that I cannot practice for too long, the speed of my writing is now painfully slow, and the concentration to form each letter is considerable, I was not expecting it to be quite this, it’s like starting all over again.

Nanny, I find both your examples easy to read, and I like the italic style you’ve created, it’s perfectly legible, but has a nice elegance to it.

 

Rosewood.

[Tasmith]

Nanny,

 

Very nice writing!

 

I'm currently learning how to write italic using Fred Eager's "The Italic Way to Beautiful Handwriting" and also reading Margaret Shepherd's "Learn Calligraphy". The entire text in "Learn Calligraphy" was written in italc by Margaret.

[Ted A]

My thought is that a solid hand with great legibility is not, by definition, as florid and exotic looking as copperplate or Spenserian. Beautiful, legible italic is leaves less room for creativity and artistic flair. I think, also, that italic is a more forgiving hand. Mine is nowhere near as lovely as yours is, but mine is still quite readable. But I think if I tried to write copperplate and was as poor at it as I am at italic, my writing would be unreadable.

[View from the Loft]

  On 2/23/2014 at 11:49 AM, Sandy Fry said:

In Scotland as a kid we were taught " joined-up writing ".

 

P.S. I should say that joined-up writing in Scotland is basically American Cursive.

Not in my experience as a product of Scottish education. Many primary schools in the 70s and 80s followed Tom Gourdie's Simple Modern Hand (from memory, I may have got the title wrong).

 

To me it matters not what form of cursive is used, or whether it is an italic derived hand. What matters is that it is legible. I sometimes think that too many people here are too quick to suggest learning a completely new hand when someone asks for suggestions to improve. Many times I feel that small changes will bring about large improvements in legibility e.g. Making everything slightly larger, comsistent size and slope, and closing the o, a,etc - or day I say it, remove unnecessary flourishes.

 

Just my view (ducks and waits for the incoming flak).

[dr saleem ali]

I am not english-speaking . My mother tongue is urdu ,similiar to arabic . I have all my graduate and postgraduate qualification in english .From my childhood , I was very much inspired by "copperplate " style because I found it artistic and beautiful , otherwise english writing did not attract me at all. Since my childhood I tried to copy it . One of my colleague lady professor says that my handwriting reminds "old enlishmen" writing. Because of my professional involvement ,I was not able to master in this style ,but my writing retains that "flavour".Interestingly ,my son who is in 10th grade writes in typical cursive style and he has not followed me !

[Mickey]

Here's my answer. I wrote cursive italic for 30 years, thank you Lloyd Reynolds. I learned Spencerian about 3 years ago. I can write considerably faster with it than I can with cursive italic, and with less degradation as speed increases. The trick was learning how to accelerate Spencerian with minimal degradation. To do so, one must embed the stroke while learning, not the letter.* Changes of tempo are then felt uniformly across the hand, not just on particular letters or counters. (FYI, at speed, my x-height shrink to about 1.25mm from my usual 1.75mm. The spacing remains the same.)

 

* This is the problem with Palmer and some other Spencerian offshoots. They tended to emphasize letter form over principle, and with a predictable result, a tendency for new adopters to draw the letters, rather than write. The correct strokes are never learned.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Mickey

[da vinci]

I was taught Italic at junior school, but unfortunately did not apply my self as I should have done and regret it now.

 

We had to use fountain pens, the school provided a blue plastic pen, the shape and length of a desk pen, but with a small (about 1 inch) clipless cap.

 

I still remember some of the basic letter shapes and when I have the time try to apply them in my writing.

[da vinci]

Oops - duplicate post

Edited February 23, 2014 by da vinci

[brunico]

  On 2/23/2014 at 6:50 PM, da vinci said:

the school provided a blue plastic pen, the shape and length of a desk pen, but with a small (about 1 inch) clipless cap.

 

Bring back memories?

[da vinci]

  On 2/23/2014 at 6:57 PM, brunico said:

Bring back memories?

Oh yes! We had steel italic nibs as you would expect, but the pen looked very similar to that!

[WirsPlm]

I have no idea how you did this, but you seem to have missed the many, many threads discussing italic handwriting. Have you looked in the Penmanship forum?

[jimk]

I am a dedicated follower of the Lloyd Reynolds school, in my uncraftsmanlike way. But I would like to argue that italic can provide plenty of opportunity for delightful calligraphy!

 

Here is some nice italic:

 

http://www.italic-handwriting.org/exemplars/humphrey-lyttleton

[Mickey]

  On 2/24/2014 at 2:02 AM, WirsPlm said:

I have no idea how you did this, but you seem to have missed the many, many threads discussing italic handwriting. Have you looked in the Penmanship forum?

 

I don't see what the difficulty is. While the title for this thread might be a bit more informative (or discriminating), the question has not really been chewed over all that much, i.e., why FPN's member show a marked preference for round hand derivatives over italic cursive? Some of the answers have actually been on point.

[bokchoy]

  On 2/23/2014 at 4:27 PM, Ted A said:

My thought is that a solid hand with great legibility is not, by definition, as florid and exotic looking as copperplate or Spenserian. Beautiful, legible italic is leaves less room for creativity and artistic flair.

 

I'm not sure I whether I agree or not

 

To my untrained eye, many examples of "good" italic look more similar than Copperplate and Spencerian derivatives in everyday handwriting. However, every now and then I see some outliers.

 

This is one of the more interesting ones:

http://my-calligraphy-blog.blogspot.ca/2009/11/italic-handwriting.html

 

There's another a example somewhere with pointed flourishes on the ascenders and h's with descenders. It was somewhat narrow, very neat, very legible and written mostly unjoined. Very unusual and striking style. Unfortunately, I can't find it. It's probably in a thread about writing speed, since the writer mentioned that he wrote it at 32wpm.

 

So, I think it's possible to develop an italic hand with creativity and artistic flair. I just see fewer examples of them compared to Copperplate/Spencerian derivaties, or maybe I don't have enough experience yet to see the finer variations.

[Sandy Fry]

  On 2/23/2014 at 5:45 PM, View from the Loft said:

Not in my experience as a product of Scottish education. Many primary schools in the 70s and 80s followed Tom Gourdie's Simple Modern Hand (from memory, I may have got the title wrong).

 

To me it matters not what form of cursive is used, or whether it is an italic derived hand. What matters is that it is legible. I sometimes think that too many people here are too quick to suggest learning a completely new hand when someone asks for suggestions to improve. Many times I feel that small changes will bring about large improvements in legibility e.g. Making everything slightly larger, comsistent size and slope, and closing the o, a,etc - or day I say it, remove unnecessary flourishes.

 

Just my view (ducks and waits for the incoming flak).

Not arguing with you there buddy but I am just starting to learn American Cursive and it sure does look the same as my writing did in Scotland in the 60's. When my old mum writes to me her writing looks very much like American Cursive.

 

I totally agree with you that legibility is number 1...I think I did mention that in my post.

 

David

[DanF]

I use both Spencerian Business hand and cursive italic, but for some reason find cursive italic the more difficult to pull off consistently. I have yet to achieve anything near perfection with the Spencerian, but I do find it to be the most beautiful and elegant script out there. Not that CI can not be rendered beautifully as well, it just doesn't speak to me quite the same. Like some others have said, I tend to use CI more with broader pens, and Spencerian with the really fine ones.

 

Dan