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Roman cursive (or Latin cursive) is a form of handwriting (or a script) used in ancient Rome and to some extent into the Middle Ages. It is customarily divided into old (or ancient) cursive and new cursive.
![Old Roman cursive handwriting from the reign of Claudius (41 to 54 AD), with every i longum transcribed as "j":
...uobis * ujdetur * p[atres] * c[onscripti] * decernamus * ut * etiam
prolatis * rebus ijs * judicibus * necessitas * judicandi
jmponatur quj * jntra rerum * agendarum * dies
jncohata * judicia * non * peregerint * nec
defuturas * ignoro * fraudes * monstrose * agentibus
multas * aduersus * quas * excogitauimus * spero... I littera in manuscripto.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/I_littera_in_manuscripto.jpg/400px-I_littera_in_manuscripto.jpg)
Old Roman cursive, also called majuscule cursive and capitalis cursive, was the everyday form of handwriting used for writing letters, by merchants writing business accounts, by schoolchildren learning the Latin alphabet, and even by emperors issuing commands. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals, but cursive was used for quicker, informal writing. Most inscriptions at Pompeii, conserved due to being buried in a volcanic eruption in AD 79, are written in this script.
It is most commonly attested from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD, [1] but it likely existed earlier than that. The script uses many ligatures (see, e.g., Tironian notes), and some letters are hard to recognize – "a" looks like an uncial "a", but with the left stroke still straight, "b" and "d" are hard to distinguish, "e" is a full height letter (like the "s"), "p" and "t" are very similar, and "v" is written above the baseline, resembling a floating breve. [1] Many of the changes to the letters in Roman cursive were likely motivated by a desire to make the usage of ligatures easier. The letter "b" in Roman cursive contains a semicircular protuberance on its left side; this design feature may have been added in an attempt to conform to the needs of ligatures. [2]
The distinctive writing style of Roman cursive emerged as the design of letters became simplified in colloquial contexts. Throughout the progression of Roman cursive, the number of strokes required to inscribe differing letters was significantly reduced. Roman cursive writing connected the strokes of differing letters to facilitate writing without lifting the writing utensil. The angles of standard letters were written as curves in Roman cursive due to ease of tracing curvatures with contemporary calligraphy tools. Curves in Roman cursive were smaller than curves in standard Latin calligraphy; this is likely because smaller curves are easier to trace than larger ones. [2]
During the 1st and 2nd centuries the style of formal Roman cursive experienced dramatic changes. Documents from this period contain innumerable versions of the Roman cursive letters; many documents contain different variations on cursive letters within the same text. This process continued until scribes had adopted a uniform, professional cursive script utilized by them around the 2nd to 3rd centuries. This more standardized style typically consisted of downward strokes followed by right-leaning upward strokes. Collectively, these characteristics gave the style a two-line pattern. Although common in professional writing, this style of cursive is not universal to all documents in Roman cursive. More informal documents still retained disorganized features and were unsuitable for ligatures. During the 3rd century, informal cursive styles almost completely replaced the scribal cursive, even in formal contexts. [2]
The informal style developed into a four-line script known as New Roman cursive, sometimes also called minuscule cursive or later Roman cursive. [2] It was used from approximately the 3rd century to the 7th century. This style of cursive uses letterforms that are more recognizable to modern readers: "a", "b", "d", and "e" have taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters are proportionate to each other rather than varying wildly in size and placement on the line. [2] The right-leaning vertical strokes of New Roman cursive were rounder and longer than similar strokes found in Old Roman Cursive. Although there were a smaller number of ligature combinations in New Roman cursive, some new ligature styles emerged by imposing the characteristics of one letter onto another. Letters had short lines extending horizontally towards the next letter. [3]
These letter forms would gradually evolve into various scripts with a more regional character by the 7th century, such as the Visigothic script in Spain, the Beneventan script in southern Italy, or the Merovingian script in northern France. They also formed part of the basis of the uncial and half-uncial scripts, particularly for the letters "a", "g", "r", and "s", which in turn are the basis for Gaelic type. [4]
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A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is a, plural aes.
The Latin alphabet, also known as the Roman alphabet, is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered excepting several letters splitting—i.e. ⟨J⟩ from ⟨I⟩, and ⟨U⟩ from ⟨V⟩—additions such as ⟨W⟩, and extensions such as letters with diacritics, it forms the Latin script that is used to write most languages of modern Europe, Africa, America and Oceania. Its basic modern inventory is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet.
Palaeography (UK) or paleography is the study and academic discipline of the analysis of historical writing systems, the historicity of manuscripts and texts, subsuming deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysis of historic penmanship, handwriting script, signification and printed media. It is primarily concerned with the forms, processes and relationships of writing and printing systems as evident in a text, document or manuscript; and analysis of the substantive textual content of documents is a secondary function. Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating manuscripts, and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and printing of texts, manuscripts, books, codices and tomes, tracts and monographs, etcetera, were produced, and the history of scriptoria. This discipline is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating historic texts. However, in the absence of additional evidence, it cannot be used to pinpoint exact dates.
Calligraphy is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an expressive, harmonious, and skillful manner".
Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. Today, this is most commonly done with a pen, or pencil, but throughout history has included many different implements. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called "hands" while an individual's style of penmanship is referred to as "handwriting".
Uncial is a majuscule script commonly used from the 4th to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Uncial letters were used to write Greek and Latin, as well as Gothic, and are the current style for Coptic and Nobiin.
Carolingian minuscule or Caroline minuscule is a script which developed as a calligraphic standard in the medieval European period so that the Latin alphabet of Jerome's Vulgate Bible could be easily recognized by the literate class from one region to another. It is thought to have originated before 778 CE at the scriptorium of the Benedictine monks of Corbie Abbey, about 150 kilometres north of Paris, and then developed by Alcuin of York for wide use in the Carolingian Renaissance. Alcuin himself still wrote in a script which was a precursor to the Carolingian minuscule, which slowly developed over three centuries. He was most likely responsible for copying and preserving the manuscripts and upkeep of the script. It was used in the Holy Roman Empire between approximately 800 and 1200. Codices, pagan and Christian texts, and educational material were written in Carolingian minuscule.
Cursive is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionality and modern-day usage across languages and regions; being used both publicly in artistic and formal documents as well as in private communication. Formal cursive is generally joined, but casual cursive is a combination of joins and pen lifts. The writing style can be further divided as "looped", "italic", or "connected".
Blackletter, also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish until the 1870s, Finnish until the turn of the 20th century, Latvian until the 1930s, and for the German language until the 1940s, when Hitler officially discontinued it in 1941. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is sometimes referred to as Old English, but it is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc. Along with Italic type and Roman type, blackletter served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.
Roman square capitals, also called capitalis monumentalis, inscriptional capitals, elegant capitals and capitalis quadrata, are an ancient Roman form of writing, and the basis for modern capital letters. Square capitals are characterized by sharp, straight lines, supple curves, thick and thin strokes, angled stressing and incised serifs. When written in documents this style is known as Latin book hand.
Italic script, also known as chancery cursive and Italic hand, is a semi-cursive, slightly sloped style of handwriting and calligraphy that was developed during the Renaissance in Italy. It is one of the most popular styles used in contemporary Western calligraphy.
Visigothic script was a type of medieval script that originated in the Visigothic Kingdom in Hispania. Its more limiting alternative designations littera toletana and littera mozarabica associate it with scriptoria specifically in Toledo and with Mozarabic culture more generally, respectively.
Merovingian script or Gallo-Roman script was a medieval variant of the Latin script so called because it was developed in Gaul during the Merovingian dynasty. It was used in the 7th and 8th centuries before the Carolingian dynasty and the development of Carolingian minuscule.
Kurrent is an old form of German-language handwriting based on late medieval cursive writing, also known as Kurrentschrift, deutsche Schrift, and German cursive. Over the history of its use into the first part of the 20th century, many individual letters acquired variant forms.
Cursive Hebrew is a collective designation for several styles of handwriting the Hebrew alphabet. Modern Hebrew, especially in informal use in Israel, is handwritten with the Ashkenazi cursive script that had developed in Central Europe by the 13th century. This is also a mainstay of handwritten Yiddish. It was preceded by a Sephardi cursive script, known as Solitreo, that is still used for Ladino.
The Latin script is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world. It is the standard script of the English language and is often referred to simply as "the alphabet" in English. It is a true alphabet which originated in the 7th century BC in Italy and has changed continually over the last 2,500 years. It has roots in the Semitic alphabet and its offshoot alphabets, the Phoenician, Greek, and Etruscan. The phonetic values of some letters changed, some letters were lost and gained, and several writing styles ("hands") developed. Two such styles, the minuscule and majuscule hands, were combined into one script with alternate forms for the lower and upper case letters. Modern uppercase letters differ only slightly from their classical counterparts, and there are few regional variants.
The Vindolanda tablets are some of the oldest surviving handwritten documents in Britain. They are a rich source of information about life on the northern frontier of Roman Britain. Written on fragments of thin, postcard-sized wooden leaf-tablets with carbon-based ink, the tablets date to the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Although similar records on papyrus were known from elsewhere in the Roman Empire, wooden tablets with ink text had not been recovered until 1973, when archaeologist Robin Birley, his attention being drawn by student excavator Keith Liddell, discovered some at the site of Vindolanda, a Roman fort in northern England.
Greek minuscule was a Greek writing style which was developed as a book hand in Byzantine manuscripts during the 9th and 10th centuries. It replaced the earlier style of uncial writing, from which it differed in using smaller, more rounded and more connected letter forms, and in using many ligatures. Many of these forms had previously developed as parts of more informal cursive writing. The basic letter shapes used in the minuscule script are the ancestors of modern lower case Greek letters.
Skoropis is a type of Cyrillic handwriting that developed from semi-ustav in the second half of the 14th century and was used in particular in offices and private office work, from which a modern handwriting developed in the 19th century.
A teaching script is a sample script that serves as a visual orientation for learning to write by hand. In the sense of a guideline or a prototype, it supports the demanding process of developing handwriting skills and abilities in a visual and illustrative way.
