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In The Netherlands, we learn to write Latin characters in cursive in school, but most adults write block letters in practice. My experience is that in other countries using the Latin alphabet, most adults use block letters as well. How is this in Cyrillic? Does handwritten Cyrillic by a typical adult Russian more closely resemble upright "block letters"¹, italic print, or the cursive taught in school?

The difference can be quite large (д/д, т/т, и/и) and a source of confusion to learners (for example, see Why does italic 'т' look like 'm', What is the stroke order for Cyrillic?, What are these Russian characters that aren't in the alphabet in my learning material?, What Russian letter is this?); and lower case д actually has three different shapes. I can read upright block letters quite well, italic block letters with some difficulty, how much may I need cursive?

Related: What is the preferred form of Cyrillic to use for handwriting?

¹I'm not sure if this term is correct for Cyrillic!

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Херрит
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    in Cyrillic these are called print letters - печатные буквы – Баян Купи-ка May 29 '19 at 17:24
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    in this age of computers, relevance of ability to understand cursive is in decline, and if god forbid you need medical help, even knowledge of cursive won't help you to understand health workers' handwriting on medical documents which are still filled out by hand, no one told them that patients need to understand their summaries, they mostly communicate with each other and a patient only serves as an errand boy to deliver the documents – Баян Купи-ка May 29 '19 at 17:29
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    in the age of computers, more and more medical help uses hospital information systems and rarely things are written by hand, often even prescriptions are printed out. I think your statement is a bit deregatory, esp. in front of those who can not make their own judgement on the matter. – Darya Shcherbakova May 29 '19 at 19:40
  • it's definitely not flattering and i definitely feel degraded when handed their chicken scratch without any ability to decypher it – Баян Купи-ка May 29 '19 at 20:02
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    I understand your frustration (and sometimes share it) but it's unfair to generalize to any group of people. Such thinking leads to prejudices and labeling in other (more critical) societal discussions. The most innocent examples are: "women can't drive", "women can't program", "women are bad engineers", and I won't go into mentioning all the popular labels used in Russia for describing minorities and so on. – Darya Shcherbakova May 29 '19 at 20:27
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    it's so pervasive you can't help but to generalize, and if they don't have computers or printers, there's no way for them to put together documents other than by handwriting, and no one, dare i say literally no one ever writes in print letters, because they're not required to by any regulation, as if they would follow the rules had there been any, and doing that of their own accord would be too big a favor to a disposable invisible patient – Баян Купи-ка May 29 '19 at 20:58
  • I feel your pain, and this discussion becomes completely off-topic, but no good doctor should treat a patient as disposable or invisible. Either a patient needs to find a new doctor, or ask the same doctor to clarify - I assume the only way to change something when you don't like it is to actually express it in one way or another. – Darya Shcherbakova May 29 '19 at 22:39
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    Even in Latin script it certainly depends on the country and on the person. Most people I know around here (including me) use cursive for taking notes. But there are indeed trials to introduce a schoolscript that is more block-like in my country. – Vladimir F Героям слава May 30 '19 at 07:43
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    I cannot comment on Cyrillic, but my experience with Latin script is that cursive is still very common among educated professionals (and even expected/demanded in several professional settings.) I guess it could vary from country to country. – luis.espinal May 30 '19 at 13:39
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    For what it’s worth, my experience does not match yours. I haven’t spent much time in the Netherlands and don’t remember observing anyone writing there, but from an Anglo-Scandinavian point of view, at least 80–90% of adults whose writing I’ve encountered have using joined-up writing. Not necessarily the classical cursive (this), but definitely joined-up (this. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 30 '19 at 22:19
  • @JanusBahsJacquet Perhaps it depends on the generation… when I lived in Sweden, most of my colleagues would also write block letters. – Херрит May 31 '19 at 05:04
  • For what it's worth, here in Latvia, and as far as I know, also neighbouring countries, in schools there is a move towards using computers for writing, but as long as there is handwriting taught, it is joined-up. The reason being if you have to write by hand, then you'd better have a fast way of writing, rather than chugging with block letters. Latin scripts all around. – Gnudiff May 31 '19 at 09:42
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    I was going to query your assertion, Херрит, that most residents in countries that use a Latin script write in block letters, because that's something I would associate with such a severe lack of education that few would be happy displaying, but perhaps you're right. I live in Britain and I have some slips on which a number of shop staff recently wrote short notes for me. All of the notes are in block letters except for one in which the author mostly used block but she used cursive for the letter combination "der". Talk about a declining civilisation! –  May 31 '19 at 16:38
  • @ruffle I find handwritten block letters much easier to read than handwritten cursive, so I would consider it a friendly courtesy and not a decline of civilisation — but we're degressing. – Херрит May 31 '19 at 17:50
  • In the future, cursive handwriting will exist only among the educated elite, not among those who know only how to print. Privileged, gifted people will learn cursive because it is a far more sophisticated, and indeed faster and more penetrating method of hand writing than printing, and it still works when the batteries run out of the iPhone. Hand writing is a cerebral activity. Printing indicates a certain kind of mind set and cursive contains signals of more and more complex personality readings. – user5402 Jun 02 '19 at 00:36
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    @Paracosmiste Reminds me of how the Korean elite at the time apparently objected to the introduction of Hangul, because ordinary people could learn to read and write. – Херрит Jun 02 '19 at 10:42
  • Only cursive for adult. In Russian it names 'прописные буквы'. – le-zenith Jun 04 '19 at 11:54
  • I think, it's better for beginners to start learning using block letters, but the handwriting style is optional at all. – Farid Rjb Sep 13 '19 at 10:28

8 Answers8

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In school it's taught cursive and only cursive, in many "serious" places (like government jobs, jobs in financial sector etc.) it will be considered very non-professional if you can not do cursive. In fact it's even hard to imagine that somebody does not.

However I have to admit that things are gradually changing and even Russian language teachers are adopting for such changes, although very slowly and very gradually. For instance, in 90s you were very lucky if your Russian language or Literature teacher (well, natural sciences teachers were more liberal) accept T form for lowercase. Now from what I see how my son is doing his homework - such deviations from the standard are tolerated.

shabunc
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    won't this be strict only for primary schoolers? I don't know about current situation, but in 90s I haven't met teachers unaccepting of different writings of т or р or other letters in the middle school or high school and I went to three schools. I think primary school is the only period where anyone cares about your handwriting and afterwards it's you own choice (as long as it's legible) – Darya Shcherbakova May 29 '19 at 19:45
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    well, @DaryaShcherbakova you were lucky, that's all I can say. – shabunc May 30 '19 at 09:28
  • I think you mean "adapting to such changes." – jpmc26 May 31 '19 at 10:17
  • Do official fill-in forms insist on block printing separate letters when writing? That's very common in the UK, for legibility. – Dannie May 31 '19 at 12:42
  • This is the same as English, really. An adult who cannot write cursive also looks childish - it's equally difficult to imagine someone in an adult/professional context writing in block print (other than for special cases like certain form templates, etc, where it is required). – J... May 31 '19 at 15:28
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    @J... "it's equally difficult to imagine someone in an adult/professional context writing in block print" – I'm in UK/US academia, in a tech-related area which admittedly is not always the most "professional," but I can't remember the last time I saw someone write in cursive beyond a signature. For sure it was not recently. – Danica May 31 '19 at 16:52
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    @Dougal And when was the last time you saw someone write with a manual implement at all? I'm not talking about annotations on an SLD or other niche cases where you would want to write in block or caps, just like a hand-written letter or note, document, etc. – J... May 31 '19 at 16:59
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    @Dougal Now, I'll grant that, especially among young people, handwriting anything is increasingly rare - to the point where some people can barely do it at all. It doesn't come out as cursive or print, but just a kind of chaotic scribble. I wouldn't necessarily say that this is because printing in block letters is becoming the norm over cursive, however, but rather that people are simply losing the ability to write text with a pen or pencil altogether. – J... May 31 '19 at 17:10
  • @J... Yesterday (and I didn't go into the office today). Most frequently it's on a whiteboard and/or with math interspersed, which surely both decrease cursive frequency as well, but notes left for others and so on are never cursive either. I suppose I do rarely see handwriting that is (a) in a relatively formal context, (b) on paper as opposed to a board, and (c) not related to filling out a form, though. – Danica May 31 '19 at 17:16
  • @Dougal Fair enough, I've not lived in the UK for over a decade now, but certainly every Brit to this day learns "joined-up" handwriting in school. I certainly saw a lot of it over many years there. I'm quite sure that has also been the case, at least until recently in the US and was certainly the case in Canada when I was in primary school. I suspect that today's adults will probably be the last generation to cultivate any skill at handwritten text, though. – J... May 31 '19 at 17:44
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Things may be changing, but I dare say an overwhelming majority of 'adult' Russians (those finished primary school 10+ years ago) write in cursive - when they have to hand write at all.

Writing in block letters has always been considered 'childish': only small kids do it because they haven't learnt any better yet. (But again, things are changing, and perception too).

Perhaps, because of less practice, the script can be inconsistent (I might even write т and т interchangeably), but it will be cursive nevertheless.

The main advantage of cursive is that it's much faster to write. Those who still have to write a lot by hand (like those proverbial doctors) always use cursive. The difference is not so much how a particular letter is written but the fact that they are joined together, and you don't need to lift the pen off paper as much.

I, for one (having finished my primary school still in the USSR) tend to write cursive even in English - unless I'm filling in a form or writing just a word or two.

Zeus
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    I've learned in a school (in Russia) with in-depth study of German (it was in the early and mid-2000s), so we learned both German and English in primary and secondary school. Interestingly, we've been taught cursive in German, but block letters in English. (Now I use cursive for both - although I very seldom do encounter German - just because it's much simpler and faster to write.) – trolley813 May 30 '19 at 08:25
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As already said, all Russians are taught in school how to write in cursive and use it in everyday life. Writing with cursive letters is much more faster but everyone has his own style, that is sometimes hard to read, so sometimes you are asked you use block letters. That's why when you fill a form, for example when you apply for a new ID, you have to use block letters to write your name and other information to avoid any mistakes.

Glorfindel
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ettudagny
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Many responders have already mentioned the cursive handwriting as faster...

In fact, perhaps unlike some cursive scripts I see daily used in Europe/US at least, the seeming purpose of Russian cursive writing is to write a word, or large parts thereof, as one line without picking up the pen from the paper and seeking to a new position to start the next letter of the same word. This "built-in" habit from the school impacts my handwriting in other languages, which some native-speakers (and native-readers) then reported to be curious and not the way they would write the same words and sentences.

I think this also impacts the aspect mentioned above, like interchangeability of "т" and "m" for the same letter - I also have this habit without a second thought, but if I give it a thought, the choice likely relies on what liason from the previously written letter would be simplest to implement without extra momentum to the hand... or maybe adding one if it feels tired from holding one position for a while and needs the slight massage of a more jagged writing :)

My schooling was in late USSR/early Russia, and while there was a strong emphasis (and significant grading impact) during Russian classes regarding legibility of what was written, I don't think there was much stress regarding the choice of variants to write same letters same way consistently.

UPDATE: I asked around, and my wife whose schooling was in early post-USSR years said they were drilled on proper cursive writing with one true font. Variations like the "T" examples above were not tolerated, treated as a mistake - that they twitched and put some garbage in the page and skipped a real letter from a word, thus wrote it incorrectly.

For schoolkids today parents can apparently sign a request on how their children should be taught writing - with cursive scripts and further enhancing that skill, or with block scripts and further move into typing/tapping rather than penning.

Jim Klimov
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    The purpose of cursive writing was originally, and remains still, to avoid having to lift the pen while writing. I distinctly remember handwriting lessons in elementary school where we were taught that the pen must never leave the paper except between words – the only exception being dotting i’s and j’s (which was done after you’d written the whole word out). As a leftie, I always loathed this, because writing long words was a huge strain when you couldn’t lift and recentre your hand. – Janus Bahs Jacquet May 30 '19 at 22:14
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    @JanusBahsJacquet Historically this was important when everyone used fountain pens, but it's actually more comfortable to not use cursive with ballpoint pens, see https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/. Plus there's the leftie thing. – Elizabeth Henning May 31 '19 at 00:34
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    Putting "т" and "m" in italics makes them display the same in my browser. It's confusing to read "interchangeability of m and m", which is what your post seems to say. – sumelic May 31 '19 at 03:55
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    @sumelic This is indeed a fine demonstration of said interchangeability. – Mr Lister May 31 '19 at 06:12
  • Interesting, for typical wordprocessing fonts italicised "т" is just skewed. I updated the post to make the original letters better visible, thanks :) – Jim Klimov Jun 04 '19 at 11:47
  • @JanusBahsJacquet : I was surprised that "the purpose" was not quite upheld in the (Czech) schools my daughter went to. They have quite a fancy way of writing connections between letters, not always quickly going from the place your pen is when you ended a letter to the spot the connection "must" start from. I do not know for sure, maybe it is a matter for youngsters, and as they age it would shift towards fast handwriting, but currently it is more of a calligraphic exercise - pretty, tidy, standardized, and impractical for writing a lot of text quickly :) – Jim Klimov Jun 04 '19 at 11:58
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Here's a sample of hand-written lyrics done by a Russian born adult (me) prior to seeing this question. I will leave it you to decide whether it's block or cursive. I wanted it to be easy for my son to read so I left many letters unjoined. As you can see, the choice between т and m is somewhat arbitrary.

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Sergey Slepov
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I wanna add my $0.02. As someone who grew up in Russia and went through school there. I'd say, writing other than cursive would just slow me down. Because in cursive your blue line just flows from one letter to the other. In block letters you would always have to stop, pause, find a new spot for your letter and continue writing.

user10185984
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  1. As others pointed out it was required in russian schools at least 8+ years ago. Standard cursive can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet. д has two common cursive forms: tail going down and up. Latter is non-standard from pre 1918 that survived for some reason (it fits badly for fast writing) and some teachers taught it instead of standard one. Their kids later suffered from this deviation because most Russian teachers won't tolerate such chaos when strict rules exist. It is usually used in Italic fonts. Fonts have different goals, rules and allow madness to spread (like mixing print with cursive and some outdated/strange variations of letters).
  2. It's much faster than writing print letters. Russian doctors use it to fill data where block letters aren't required (blazing fast but hard to read for untrained eye).
  3. If print writing is mandatory at work - they will write in it and maybe will use few cursive letters instead of print ones (print ones are very bad for handwriting). If it's not mandatory and they write a lot they'll use cursive and maybe will use few print letters instead of cursive ones. Those who write rarely usually use mixed print-cursive and write same letter in different script depending on some associations in the brain (in word X they write cursive з and in word Y they write print з). Problem is mainly with Print script being dominant in common information sources and Cursive is dominant in academic studying (lecture notes, seminar notes, etc). If you don't use some knowledge for long time brain 'forgets' it. For most people that's what happens with Cursive while Print script always reinforced by all information mediums.
  4. Average person doesn't need cursive a lot in modern times. But this knowledge is expected if you know how to write down talk/recorded speech and will be doing something like that a lot or will be dealing with handwriting of other people (academia, working with archives, reading some rare snippets of cursive text).

In school I usually practiced writing cursive without looking at notebook. 1st word requires one start location lookup, next word requires only fixed length shift from previous word's end, only few letters can cause some trouble at first. Can't imagine writing print letters like that.

Also training correct cursive writing (calligraphy) improves fine motor skills which are always good. It's simpler than learning to write thousands of hieroglyphics properly and effect also must be smaller.

Nowadays I rarely write a lot of text (in school and university it was many pages a day at least 5 days a weak, currently few short notes in a weak with lots of numbers and schemes) and my ability to write cursive properly degraded heavily.

lostero
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Cursive or intersections with some block letters (like @Jum Klimov mentioned). No one uses block letters on their own when handwriting. It's way too slow.

Ivan Olshansky
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JellyCan
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