Russian cursive is a printed variant of the Russian cursive and is typically referred to as рукопи́сный шрифт rukopísny shrift, " handwritten font". It is the handwritten form of the modern Russian Cyrillic script, used instead of the block letters seen in printed material. In addition, Russian italics for lowercase letters are often based on Russian cursive. Most handwritten Russian, especially in personal letters and schoolwork, uses the cursive alphabet, although use of block letter in private use has been rising. In Russian schools most children are taught from first grade how to write with this script.
History
The Russian cursive was developed during the 18th century on the base of the earlier Cyrillic tachygraphic writing. It became the handwritten counterpart of so-called "civil" printed script of books. In order, modern Cyrillic italic typefaces are based mostly on the cursive shape of the letters. The resulting cursive bears many similarities with the Latin cursive. For example, the modern Russian cursive letters "АВДЕИКМНОРСУХ авдезиопрстухч" may coincide with Latin cursive "ABDEUKMHOPCYX abgezuonpcmyxr", respectively ; both upright and italic printed typefaces demonstrate less similarity. One must not confuse the historicalRussian chancery hand, the contemporary Russian cursive and the contemporary Russian stenography. The latter is completely different from the other two, though it is sometimes called ско́ропись like the former.
Features
Russian cursive is much like contemporary English and other Latin cursives. But unlike Latin handwriting, which can range from fully cursive to heavily resembling the printed typefaces and where idiosyncratic mixed systems are most common, it is standard practice to write Russian in Russian cursive almost exclusively. There exists some ambiguity from the fact that several lowercase cursive letters consist of the element that is identical to the dotless Latin cursive letter ı, the cursive Greek letterι or a half of the cursive letter u, namely и, л, м, ш, щ, ы. Therefore, certain combinations of these Russian letters cannot be unambiguously deciphered without knowing the language or without a broader context. For example, in the words волшебник, "magician" and домик, "little house" the combinations лш and ми are written identically. The word лишишь, "you will deprive" written in cursive consists almost exclusively of these elements. There are examples of different words that become absolutely identical in their cursive form, e.g. мщу, "I avenge" and лицу. In some forms of cursive, the distinction between т and ш may become elusive because both are written in the shapes of either m or ɯ. To alleviate this case of ambiguity, a horizontal bar can be written above the character if it is т, or below if it is ш. Also, writing т in its printed form rather than its usual m shape is common. The letter д may also be written in the shape of ∂. Several letters in Russian cursive are different from the cursive used in the Serbian and Macedonian languages. Thus, Serbian/Macedonian cursive lowercase г looks same as in Russian with additional macron, п is written like the cursive Latin u with macron, and the letter т is written in the shape of ɯ̅.
