Cursive script (East Asia)

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Cursive script
Mi Fu's On Calligraphy, a written discourse about the cursive style
Traditional Chinese	草書
Simplified Chinese	草书
Literal meaning	sloppy/scrawled script
showTranscriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin cǎo shū Bopomofo ㄘㄠˇ ㄕㄨ Wade–Giles ts'ao3 shu1

Chinese characters
Scripts
Precursors Oracle-bone Bronze Seal (bird-worm large small) Clerical Regular Semi-cursive Cursive Flat brush Simplified characters Type styles Imitation Song Ming Sans-serif
Properties
Strokes (order) Radicals Classification
Variants
Character-form standards Kangxi Dictionary Jiu Zixing/Inherited Form Xin Zixing General Standard Chinese Characters (PRC) Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese Characters (Hong Kong) Standard Typefaces for Chinese Characters (ROC Taiwan) Grapheme-usage standards Graphemic variants General Standard Characters (PRC) Jōyō kanji (Japan) Other standards Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC) Previous standards Commonly-used Characters (PRC) Frequently-used Characters (PRC) Tōyō kanji (Japan)
Reforms
Chinese Clerical reforms Traditional characters Simplified characters (first round second round) Debate Japanese Old (Kyūjitai) New (Shinjitai) Ryakuji Sino-Japanese Differences between Shinjitai and Simplified characters Korean Yakja Singaporean Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs
Literary and colloquial readings
Use in particular scripts
Written Chinese Zetian characters Slavonic transcription Hokkien Nüshu Kanji (Kokuji) Kana (Man'yōgana) Idu Hanja (Gukja) Chữ Nôm Sawndip
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Cursive script (Chinese: 草書; pinyin: cǎoshū), often mistranslated as grass script, is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. Cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it. It functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style. People who can read standard or printed forms of Chinese or related scripts may not be able to read this script.

Names[]

The character 草 (cǎo) means quick, rough, or sloppy and the character 書 (shū) means script in this context (it can also mean "book"). Thus, the name of this script is literally "rough script" or "sloppy script." The same character 草 (cǎo) appears in this sense in the noun "rough draft" (草稿, cǎogǎo) and the verb "to draft [a document or plan]" (草擬, cǎonǐ). The other indirectly related meaning of the character 草 (cǎo) is grass, which has led to the semantically inappropriate calque "grass script."

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 clerical script. 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 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 zhāngcǎo (章草), and variously also termed ancient cursive, draft cursive or clerical cursive in English, to differentiate it from modern cursive (今草 jīncǎo). 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 zhāngcǎo and "modern cursive," there is also "wild cursive" (Chinese and Japanese: 狂草; pinyin: kuángcǎo; rōmaji: kyōsō) which is even more cursive and difficult to read. When it was developed by Zhang Xu and Huaisu in the Tang dynasty, they were called Diān Zhāng Zuì Sù (crazy Zhang and drunk Su, 顛張醉素). Cursive, in this style, is no longer significant in legibility but rather in artistry.^{[citation needed]}

Cursive scripts can be divided into the unconnected style (Chinese: 獨草; pinyin: dúcǎo; Japanese: 独草; rōmaji: dokusō) where each character is separate, and the connected style (Chinese: 連綿; pinyin: liánmián; Japanese: 連綿体; rōmaji: renmentai) where each character is connected to the succeeding one.

Derived characters[]

Many simplified Chinese characters are derived from the standard script rendition of their corresponding cursive form, e.g. (书, 东) (Chinese: 草書楷化; pinyin: cǎoshūkǎihuà).

Cursive script forms of Chinese characters are also the origin of the Japanese hiragana script. Specifically, hiragana developed from cursive forms of the man'yōgana script, called sōgana (草仮名). In Japan, the sōgana cursive script was considered to be suitable for women's writing, and thus came to be referred to as women’s script (女手, onnade). Onnade was later applied to hiragana as well. In contrast, kanji was referred to as men’s script (男手, otokode).

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  Cursive script in Sun Guoting's Treatise on Calligraphy.

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  Chinese characters of "Cursive Script" in regular script (left) and cursive script (right). Notice that for the cursive form, there is only a total of 3 strokes, 17 strokes less than its regular counterpart.

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

Notable calligraphers[]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Chinese cursive script.

References[]

• The Art of Japanese Calligraphy, 1973, author Yujiro Nakata, publisher Weatherhill/Heibonsha, ISBN 0-8348-1013-1.
• Qiu Xigui Chinese Writing (2000). Translation of 文字學概要 by Gilbert L. Mattos and Jerry Norman. Early China Special Monograph Series No. 4. Berkeley: The Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. ISBN 1-55729-071-7.

External links[]

• Cursive script/grass script calligraphy generator