Why Have American Handwriting Styles Changed over Time?
Our alphabet probably originated in ancient Greece. It has formed many Western languages, changing in appearance throughout cultures and time periods. Modern English handwriting is rooted in Italian Renaissance scripts, which can be divided into the humanistic book hand, the source of modern lowercase letters, and italic, the source of cursive writing. Both evolved in early-fifteenth-century Florence among a circle of scholars. In 1522 a papal scribe in Rome published the first writing instruction manual. Other manuals followed, including one by Giovanni Francesco Cresci, who introduced a rounder script that was easier and quicker to write. This form, known as the Italian hand, spread through Europe during the commercial expansion of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Italian hand entered England and, by the early seventeenth century, had developed in two directions: a narrow, sloped style considered appropriate for women’s writing, and a simpler version for commerce (later
