Posted 24 May 2012 - 23:38

I am happy to accept your interesting derivation of cursive, but there must be another meaning as many examples of Italic, far from running, are quite static - and are described as Cursive.



In terms of letter joining or the lack of it, I see no distinction between the slope example above, and the upright examples I posted earlier in this thread.



In both cases, the letters are joined where expedient, and otherwise left unjoined. This is typical Cursive

Italic.



Sorry, no other derivation for cursive. The meaning is from some long-dead Roman. The root for cursive probably came into English during the Roman occupation, and the root for curve most likely not until sometime after Charlemagne (most likely in late Middle English, after people started throwing googlies). As we've learned in other threads, people are quite happy using terms however they like and with little regard for meaning, so it's not surprising you've seen novel uses. (You are fortunate, however, to be spared the worst English in the world, that spoken by American radio personalities and by our local TV anchors. I would rather hear a Cornishman sing Webern.)You make my case, again, when you mention expedient. Slanting the letters creates more opportunities for expedience without sacrificing thinness of joins. Since the most common joins are from the bottom of one letter to the top of the next, the steeper the effective join angle (for thinnest joins) the narrower one can make the spacing between letters without having to resort to pen lifts or nib turning. Slanting the letters slightly compromises the letter shapes, but it also creates a steeper effective join angle, 45 degrees for an italic nibthe angle at which the letters slant. (Of course, there is the alternative... L-oblique nibs.)At some slant angle, there are enough opportunities for joining that italic can become a truly running (or opportunistic) hand. (I believe it is somewhere around 7 degrees: 45 + 7 = 52. Hmm?) It's unlikely cursive italic (at whatever slant) will be as fast as a good commercial script, but in my experience it is probably rapid enough for most people's brains.

Edited by Mickey, 24 May 2012 - 23:39.