Print vs Cursive: Which Handwriting Style Is Better?

What print and cursive actually are

Print (also called manuscript) builds each letter separately, mostly from straight lines and circles, and lifts the pencil between letters. It looks a lot like the type in a children's book, which is one reason it's easy to read. A slanted print variant tilts the letters slightly and adds small tails to some lowercase letters, so they sit closer to the shapes used later in cursive.

Cursive joins the letters of a word with connecting strokes, so the pencil stays on the paper for most of each word. It comes in two broad looks:

• Traditional cursive: the looped, slanted style many adults remember, with looped capitals and loops on letters like b, f, h, k and l.
• Modern cursive: simpler, more upright joined letters with fewer loops and plainer capitals.

The two styles teach different motor habits. Print is a set of separate shapes. Cursive is a set of shapes plus the joins between them, which is extra learning at first but fewer pencil lifts once it's automatic. Most adults end up writing something in between, and as you'll see below, that may not be a bad thing.

Which handwriting style is taught first?

In the United States, print almost always comes first. The Common Core language standards ask students to print all upper- and lowercase letters and do not require cursive at any grade, according to Education Week's reporting on why the standards left it out. Where schools do teach cursive, it usually arrives around third grade, after children learn to print, though timing varies by curriculum.

That order isn't universal. French children learn upper and lower case cursive before entering primary school, while German children start with capital letters and pick up cursive in their second year of primary school.

Cursive is also back on the agenda in US statehouses. A number of states have passed laws requiring cursive instruction in recent years, most recently Pennsylvania in February 2026, so whether your child gets cursive in school depends heavily on where you live. Check your own state's current rules rather than relying on a national count, since the list keeps changing.

Bottom line: print first is the norm in the US, cursive first is the norm in some other countries, and children learn to write well under both systems.

Is cursive faster than print?

This is where a lot of online advice overreaches. You'll find pages claiming cursive is dramatically faster, sometimes with a specific percentage attached. The studies we could actually open don't support a big, consistent speed advantage either way. Here's what they found:

Steve Graham, one of the researchers behind the 1998 study, summed it up for Education Week: when you look at speed data for print and cursive, “it doesn’t look that different.” Speed seems to depend far more on how much a writer has practiced, and how automatic their letters are, than on whether the letters join.

The most useful finding for everyday writers is the mixed-style result. Fluent writers often join the letters that join easily and lift for the ones that don't. If you or your child naturally drift into that hybrid, there's no evidence you need to stamp it out.

Which is easier to read?

Legibility results lean slightly toward print in the early years, though not cleanly. In Pallot and Sumner's Year 2 study, the children who learned print first produced a greater proportion of legible words than the cursive-first group in both copying and free writing. The same paper notes that Bara and Morin (2013), working with older children aged 8 to 10, found cursive more legible but slower. Graham and colleagues found no legibility difference between pure print and pure cursive, while papers written in mostly-cursive mixed style got the best legibility ratings.

A large study of 715 second graders in Quebec by Morin, Lavoie and Montésinos-Gelet (2012) concluded that print, cursive and combined approaches have different effects on speed, quality, word production and text production, which is a polite way of saying each style has trade-offs rather than a clear winner.

Legibility matters more than people think. Graham told Education Week that “the more legible paper will get higher scores for writing than the less legible paper”, even when the content is the same. So whatever style a writer uses, readable letters should come before speed.

Is cursive better for the brain?

This is the claim behind many cursive campaigns, and it mostly comes from research on handwriting versus typing, not cursive versus print. Brain studies such as Audrey van der Meer's EEG study of 36 university students show that writing by hand engages connected brain activity in ways typing doesn't. But as NPR's reporting on that research put it, “evidence suggests that it’s the writing by hand that matters, not whether it’s print or cursive.”

A review of the research literature on the Science of Learning blog reached a similar conclusion, finding no evidence that cursive writing is better for students than printing. Virginia Berninger, a long-time handwriting researcher at the University of Washington, told Education Week that “no clear research evidence supports one being better than the other.”

None of this means cursive is useless. It's a real skill, it lets people read old letters and historical documents, and plenty of writers enjoy it. It just isn't a proven brain booster compared with print. The well-supported advice is simpler: keep kids writing by hand, in whichever style they're learning.

Italic: a style between the two

If neither style feels right, italic is worth a look. It's a semi-cursive, slightly sloped style that grew out of Renaissance Italy, and it has been promoted in English-speaking countries as an easier-to-learn alternative to traditional cursive. Letters keep simple, print-like shapes, and the writer can leave them unjoined or add short joins once the basic forms are steady.

That makes italic a natural fit for the mixed-style finding above, and a practical choice for adults who want faster, tidier handwriting without relearning loops. Read more about italic, a style that sits between the two.

Practical advice: choosing a style

For parents

• Follow your child's school for the first style. The National Handwriting Association warns against home practice that conflicts with how school teaches it.
• Aim for automatic, readable letters first. The research above points to fluency and legibility, not style, as what pays off.
• Add cursive once print is solid if the school doesn't teach it, or if your child is curious. Short daily sessions work better than long weekly ones.
• Don't fight a natural mix. An older child who joins some letters and not others is doing what the faster writers in Graham's study did.

For adult learners

• If your goal is legibility, clean up your print or try italic before taking on traditional cursive.
• If you want to read and write cursive, start with the lowercase letters and the common joins, then capitals. Our guide to learning cursive step by step walks through an order that works.
• Use smaller lines than kids do. Adult practice sheets at 3/8 or 5/16 inch feel closer to normal notebook writing.

The quickest way to decide is to write the same sentence both ways. You can print a sheet in either style (print, slanted print, traditional cursive or modern cursive) from the same generator, or try a cursive sheet focused on letter joins. Adults can use the adult handwriting practice sheets, which default to smaller line sizes.

Questions people ask

Sources

1. The relationship between handwriting style and speed and legibility (Graham, Weintraub and Berninger, 1998), Journal of Educational Research, via Hebrew University research portal
2. Handwriting Speeds of 4th to 8th Grade Students (Gökmen et al., 2022), International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education
3. How much does style matter? Investigating legibility and speed of writing in Year 2 children (Pallot and Sumner), UCL Discovery
4. The Effects of Manuscript, Cursive or Manuscript/Cursive Styles on Writing Development in Grade 2 (Morin, Lavoie and Montésinos-Gelet, 2012), Language and Literacy (University of Alberta)
5. Why Don't the Common Core Standards Include Cursive Writing?, Education Week
6. Teaching Cursive: Overview, EBSCO Research Starters
7. Handwriting and the brain: why it matters for learning, NPR
8. Does cursive writing offer educational benefits over printing?, Science of Learning (Substack)
9. Learning handwriting in France and Germany, Cursus
10. Italic script, Wikipedia
11. Providing help, National Handwriting Association
12. Cursive handwriting is set for a comeback in Pennsylvania schools, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
13. Writing by hand may increase brain connectivity more than typing on a keyboard, Frontiers