Cursive Alphabet: Capital and Lowercase Letters

Cursive is the joined-up way of writing in which the letters of a word flow into each other without lifting the pen. It was the everyday handwriting taught in schools for more than a century, and it is still used for signatures, wedding invitations, greeting cards, tattoos and logos. Below you will find the whole cursive alphabet twice: as text characters you can copy and paste anywhere, and as a guide to how each letter is written by hand.

Cursive capital letters A–Z

Tap any letter in the chart to copy it. The “bold script” column is the most readable on phones; the “script” column is thinner and closer to classic copperplate. The last column gives the Unicode code of the script letter — notice that eleven letters (like ℬ, ℰ, ℱ and ℳ) have codes far away from the others, because Unicode added them years earlier in its Letterlike Symbols block.

Cursive lowercase letters a–z

Lowercase cursive letters are where the joining happens. In handwriting most of them start and end on the baseline with a small connecting stroke; in the copy-and-paste version each letter is a separate character, so the letters sit next to each other rather than truly joining.

Want a whole word or name in cursive instead of single letters? Type it in the cursive font generator and copy it in one tap.

How cursive letters are formed

Most school methods group the lowercase letters by the stroke they start with. Learning them in these families is much faster than going from a to z, because each group repeats the same movement and your hand learns it once.

• Undercurve letters — i, t, u, w, r, s, p, j, e, l, b, h, f, k. They begin with a stroke that swings up from the baseline, like the start of a smile.
• Downcurve letters — a, d, g, o, q, c. They begin near the top with a stroke that curves down to the left, like starting a c.
• Overcurve letters — n, m, x, v, y, z. They begin with a hump that rises and falls, like a small hill.
• Loop letters — e, l, b, h, k, f (tall loops) and g, j, y, z, q, p, f (loops below the line). The loops are what make cursive look like cursive.

Capital letters follow the same idea with bigger, more decorative movements. Many of them — A, C, E, O, Q — start with a large downcurve; others — N, M, H, K, U, V, W, X, Y, Z — start with a small hook or cane stroke at the top. Only a few capitals join the letter after them; with the others you lift the pen and start the next letter separately.

Letters people find hardest

• Cursive Q looks like a large 2 and is the capital most people do not recognise.
• Cursive Z dips below the line with a loop, so it can look like a 3 with a tail.
• Cursive G and S are tall loops that look nothing like their print versions.
• Cursive r and s are small and change shape depending on the letter before them.
• Cursive F and T share almost the same top stroke; the small cross stroke on the F is what tells them apart.

How to practise cursive handwriting

1. Start with the undercurve family (i, t, u, w). Write rows of each letter, joined together: iiiii, uuuuu.
2. Keep a steady slant of about 15–20 degrees to the right. Lined paper with slant guides helps a lot at first.
3. Join two letters, then short words that use only one family (“it”, “wit”, “tutu”) before mixing families.
4. Add the downcurve letters (a, d, g, o) — the join into them is the trickiest part, because the pen has to travel back to the top of the letter.
5. Practise capitals last, by writing your own name and the names of friends and family.
6. Ten minutes a day is enough. Speed comes once the shapes are right, not before.

Children usually learn cursive between the ages of seven and nine, once print letters are secure. Adults learn it faster because the hand already controls a pen well; a few weeks of short daily practice is typically enough to write the whole alphabet comfortably.

Cursive letters on a computer or phone

There are two ways to get cursive on a screen. In a word processor or design app you can choose a script font — the letters then truly join, but the font only exists inside that document. On social media, in chats, in game names and in file names you cannot choose a font, and that is where the Unicode cursive characters in the charts above come in: they are part of the text itself, so they keep their look wherever you paste them.

Unicode cursive covers only the 26 English letters. Numbers have no script version, and letters with accents keep the accent as a separate mark on top (𝓮́). Letters from other alphabets — Cyrillic, Greek, Japanese — stay unchanged. Screen readers also read styled letters one by one, so do not write important information, like an address, only in cursive characters.

Cursive in signatures, tattoos and invitations

For a signature, use the chart to decide which capital shapes you like, then practise them by hand: a signature has to be your own movement to stay consistent. For a tattoo, use the copyable letters as a preview and ask the artist to draw the final lettering, so the joins and spacing look right on skin. For invitations and cards, a script font in your design tool gives truly joined letters at any size, and the fancy text generator helps you try names in many styles before you choose.

Is cursive still taught in school?

Cursive dropped out of many school programmes in the 2010s when keyboards took over, and a number of US states have since brought it back. Supporters point out that people who never learn cursive cannot read old letters, family documents or historical records, and that joined writing can be faster for note-taking by hand. Whatever your reason for learning it, the charts above give you every letter in one place.

Cursive vs. print letters

Print letters are made of separate strokes and every letter stands alone, which makes them easy to read at a glance — that is why signs, forms and books use them. Cursive letters are made of continuous strokes that carry the pen from one letter into the next, which makes writing faster and smoother once the shapes are learned. Many adults end up with a mix of both: print capitals with joined lowercase letters, or cursive only for the signature. There is no wrong choice, as long as other people can read it.