Cursive script (East Asia)

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Chinese characters
Chinese family of scripts Written Chinese Kanji Hanja Chữ Hán
Historical forms and styles Neolithic symbols in China Oracle bone Bronze Seal (Bird-worm Large Small) Clerical Cursive Semi-cursive Regular Flat brush Typefaces Fangsong Ming Sans-serif
Properties and classification Components Strokes (order) Radical
Collation and standards Character-form standards Jiu zixing Xin zixing Kangxi Dictionary forms (1716) General Standard Chinese Characters (mainland China, 2013) Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese characters (Hong Kong, 2007) Standard Form of National Characters (Taiwan, 1982) Grapheme-usage standards General Standard Characters (PRC, 2013) Jōyō kanji (Japan, 2010) Other standards Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC, 2002) Nan Min Recommended Characters (Taiwan, 2009) Previous standards Commonly-used Characters (PRC, 1988) Tōyō kanji (Japan, 1946)
Reforms China Clerical reforms Traditional characters Simplified characters (first round second round) Debate Japan Kyūjitai Shinjitai Ryakuji Korea Yakja Singapore Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs and readings Literary and colloquial readings
Variants Graphemic variants Zetian characters
Derived systems Slavonic transcription Nüshu Kana ( Man'yōgana Hiragana Katakana ) Jurchen script Khitan ( Large Small ) Idu script Bopomofo Sawndip Chữ Nôm
Transliteration of Chinese
v t e

Cursive script (Chinese: 草書, cǎoshū; Japanese: 草書体, sōshotai; Korean: 초서, choseo; Vietnamese: thảo thư), often referred to as grass script, is a script style used in Chinese and East Asian calligraphy. It is an umbrella term for the cursive variants of the clerical script and the regular script.^[1]

The cursive script functions primarily as a kind of shorthand 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 草 cǎo primarily means "grass", which has led to the semantically inappropriate calque of 草書, "grass script". However, 草 can be extended to mean hurried or rough, from which the name 草書 came. Thus, the name of this script is literally "draft script",^[1][2] "quick script" or "rough script" (the character 書 shū means script in this context). The character 草 appears in this sense, for example, in 草稿 (Modern Mandarin cǎogǎo, "rough draft") and 草擬 (cǎonǐ, "to draft [a document or plan]").

History

Cursive script originated in China through two phases during the period from the

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 (Chinese: 草書楷化; pinyin: cǎoshūkǎihuà), e.g. 书, 东.

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).

• 
  Cursive script in Sun Guoting's Treatise on Calligraphy
• 
  Chinese characters of "Cursive Script" in

  strokes

  , 17 strokes less than its regular counterpart.
• 
  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

  Zhu Zhishan

  ; 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
  .
• ISBN 1-55729-071-7
  .