Cursive script (; , ''sōshotai''; , ''choseo''; ), often referred to as ''grass script'', is a script style used in Chinese and

East Asian East Asia is a geocultural region of Asia. It includes China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan, plus two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong and Macau. The economies of Economy of China, China, Economy of Ja ...

calligraphy Calligraphy () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an e ...

. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the

clerical script The clerical script (), sometimes also chancery script, is a style of Chinese writing that evolved from the late Warring States period to the Qin dynasty. It matured and became dominant in the Han dynasty, and remained in active use through t ...

and the

regular script The regular script is the newest of the major Chinese script styles, emerging during the Three Kingdoms period , and stylistically mature by the 7th century. It is the most common style used in modern text. In its traditional form it is the t ...

. The cursive script functions primarily as a kind of

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to Cursive, longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Gr ...

script or calligraphic style and is faster to write than other styles, but it can be difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it because of its abstraction and alteration of character structures. People who can read only standard or printed forms of Chinese or related scripts may have difficulty reading the cursive script.

Names

The character primarily means "grass", and the character means script in this context, which has led to the literal

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language ...

for as "grass script". However, can be extended to mean "hurried" or "rough", from which the name came. Thus, the name of this script is literally "draft script", "quick script" or "rough script". The character appears in this sense, for example, in (Modern Mandarin , "rough draft") and (, "to draft document or plan). The use of "cursive script" as the English translation was adopted in the early 20th century, and has become the mainstream translation, being widely used in academia and also by the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

in London and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

in New York.

History

Cursive script originated in China through two phases during the period from the Han to Jin dynasties. Firstly, an early form of cursive developed as a cursory way to write the popular but hitherto immature

. Faster ways to write characters developed through four mechanisms: omitting part of a graph, merging strokes together, replacing portions with abbreviated forms (such as one stroke to replace four dots), or modifying stroke styles. This evolution can best be seen on extant

bamboo Bamboos are a diverse group of mostly evergreen perennial plant, perennial flowering plants making up the subfamily (biology), subfamily Bambusoideae of the grass family Poaceae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family, in th ...

and wooden slats from the period, on which the use of early cursive and immature clerical forms is intermingled. This early form of cursive script, based on clerical script, is now called (), and variously also termed ancient cursive, draft cursive or clerical cursive in English, to differentiate it from modern cursive ( ). Modern cursive evolved from this older cursive in the Wei Kingdom to Jin dynasty with influence from the semi-cursive and standard styles.

Styles

Besides and "modern cursive", there is also "wild cursive" () which is even more cursive and difficult to read. When it was developed by Zhang Xu and Huaisu in the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

, they were called (crazy Zhang and drunk Su, 顛張醉素). Cursive, in this style, is no longer significant in legibility but rather in artistry. Cursive scripts can be divided into the unconnected style () where each character is separate, and the connected style () where each character is connected to the succeeding one.

Derived characters

Many

simplified Chinese characters Simplified Chinese characters are one of two standardized Chinese characters, character sets widely used to write the Chinese language, with the other being traditional characters. Their mass standardization during the 20th century was part of ...

are derived from the standard script rendition of their corresponding cursive form (), e.g. 书, 东. Cursive script forms of Chinese characters are also the origin of the Japanese

hiragana is a Japanese language, Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''. It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' means "common" or "plain" kana (originally also "easy", ...

script. Specifically, hiragana developed from cursive forms of the

man'yōgana is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of t ...

script, called . In Japan, the cursive script was considered to be suitable for women's writing, and thus came to be referred to as . was later applied to hiragana as well. In contrast, kanji was referred to as . Image:Treatise On Calligraphy.jpg, Cursive script in Sun Guoting's ''Treatise on Calligraphy'' Image:Cur eg.svg, Chinese characters of "Cursive Script" in

(left) and cursive script (right). Notice that for the cursive form, there is only a total of 3

stroke Stroke is a medical condition in which poor cerebral circulation, blood flow to a part of the brain causes cell death. There are two main types of stroke: brain ischemia, ischemic, due to lack of blood flow, and intracranial hemorrhage, hemor ...

s, 17 strokes less than its regular counterpart. Image:Cursive characters dragon.jpg, Eight different cursive representations of the character 龍 (dragon), from ''Compilation of Cursive Characters'' (《草字彙》), authored by Shi Liang (石梁) of the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing, was a Manchu-led Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China and an early modern empire in East Asia. The last imperial dynasty in Chinese history, the Qing dynasty was preceded by the ...

. The artists are: 1 Sun Guoting; 2, 3 Huaisu; 4 Yan Zhenqing; 5 Zhao Mengfu; 6, 7 Zhu Zhishan; 8 anonymous.

Notable calligraphers

* Huaisu * Wang Xizhi * Wang Xianzhi * Wen Zhengming * Yu Youren * Zhang Zhi, sage of Cursive Script * Zhang Xu

References

* ''The Art of Japanese Calligraphy'', 1973, author Yujiro Nakata, publisher Weatherhill/Heibonsha, . *

Qiu Xigui Qiu Xigui (; (13 July 1935 – 8 May 2025) was a Chinese historian, palaeographer, and professor of Fudan University. His book ''Chinese Writing'' is considered the "single most influential study of Chinese palaeography". Early life and educa ...

(2000). ''Chinese Writing''. Translation of 文字學概要 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley, Cal.: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. .

External links

Cursive script/grass script calligraphy generator
{{Authority control East Asian calligraphy Chinese script style Logographic writing systems