Editing Cursive (section)

==== Development in the 18th and 19th centuries ==== 
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 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.

Not all such cursive, then or now, joined all of the letters within a word.

[[File:HandwritingOfOneJohnJay(NotTheFamousOne).jpg|thumb|right|Cursive handwriting from the 19th-century US]]

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 all their clerks to write in exactly the same script.

Although women's handwriting had noticeably different particulars from men's{{explain|date=December 2023}}, the general forms were not prone to rapid change. In the mid-19th century, most children were 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.{{citation needed|date=December 2009}}

After the 1960s, a movement originally begun by [[Paul Standard]] in the 1930s to replace looped cursive with cursive italic penmanship resurfaced. It was motivated by the claim that cursive instruction was more difficult than it needed to be; that conventional (looped) cursive was unnecessary, and it was easier to write in cursive italic. Because of this, various new forms of cursive italic appeared, including [[Getty-Dubay Italic]], and [[Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting]]. In the 21st century, some of the surviving cursive writing styles are [[Spencerian Method|Spencerian]], [[Palmer Method]], [[Zaner-Bloser Method|Zaner-Bloser]], and [[D'Nealian Method|D'Nealian]] script.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/from-punishing-to-pleasurable-how-cursive-writing-is-looping-back-into-our-hearts/2018/08/31/aa180b9c-aa06-11e8-a8d7-0f63ab8b1370_story.html| title=From punishing to pleasurable, how cursive writing is looping back into our hearts|newspaper=The Washington Post| first=Karen|last=Heller|date=2 September 2018|access-date=8 September 2018}}</ref>