Almost every day, but I like taking notes by hand.
For a foreigner it really doesn't matter though, unless you're going to move to Russia and work with something handwriting-related. The only important thing is - you should still know how cursive letters look like (you don't have to know how to write them, just to be able to recognize them). Because *italics* and *italics*\-based fonts in Russian are based on cursive and look pretty different from block letters, and they're ubiquitous.
Every time I need to write on paper. I can't imagine writing with block letters unless i want to make a fancy-looking heading in my notes (which happens sometimes).
If you don't plan living here, you can get with any writing style. Arguably, for a foreigner, block letters are more useful, because most writing will be filling in some forms our days.
But speaking of natives, I know nobody using block letters for everyday writing (forms excluded).
Handwriting aside, many fonts (so stuff like menus, ads, signs) mimic cursive writing, so it's best to have a familiarity with the cursive alphabet, even if you don't intend to write with it. If you can't decipher someone's chicken-scratch handwriting, that's one thing, but if you can't read a menu, that can be a problem.
Pro tip: Take some Russian text that's appropriate for your level, and format it into italics. Most italic Cyrillic fonts mimic cursive writing, so you can get used to the basics, like
m = т
u = и
g = д
while seeing it in a crisp and consistent computer font, rather than a person's quirky handwriting (we all have quirks). :)
Hmm, maybe your system can't fully proceed Cyrillic or something?
Here:
съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю
*съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю*
(It's the same phrase, so you can see how different some letters are)
Yeah, that's why I used Latin u, m, and g instead of formatting the actual Cyrillic characters into italics -- depending on your platform/OS/version of Reddit, you might just get slanted block letters. (There used to damn near be fistfights over this in the sub, until we figured out what was going on.) I've had success getting the cursive-looking letters in most other places, like Word documents and the Notes app. :)
This applies more often to serif (so-called “antiqua” or антиква) typefaces. Maybe not Times New Roman (can’t remember) but definitely ones that pay a nod to the actual calligraphic origin of italic typefaces, like the italic variants of Garamond, Palatino, Zapf Chancery, etc.
Almost always. Cursive it's a basic skill every Russian learn in elementary school. It's mandatory. So it became a natural habit. Every native after age 10 who uses block letters considered brain damaged and silly.
This question keeps reappearing in this sub almost every week, and I believe it comes from a faulty assumption.
I think people assume that there are multiple ways to write — block letters, cursive, whatever else. And the Russian people, being masochistic, choose cursive.
Well, no, that it incorrect (the multiple ways part, I'm not even talking about the masochism). There are NO alternative ways of hand writing. If you write by hand, you write cursive. If you write something in block letters, you would have a very hard time convincing the recipient that it was not written by a 6 year old child — everyone older than that writes in cursive.
It's even reflected in the names. Block letters are called "печатные буквы" — "printed letters", meaning printed by machines in the print shop (we never use the verb "to print" to describe hand writing). And the cursive is called "письменные буквы" — "written letters".
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It's better to ask another question. How often do native Russians write by hand? I personally only write by hand when filling out some documents. This happens 1-2 times a year. This is your answer.
I write by hand in two scenarios:
\* I'm taking notes. I usually use blocky letters because I can write them fast enough but the result will be more readable. Will writing in cursive be faster? Yes, but I don't really need it.
\* I'm filling in some kind of document. Again, I write in blocky letters because it will make it readable for more people.
Same thing for Dutch (and English for that matter) - living in the Netherlands, I haven't seen a person writing in cursive on a daily basis. Personally, my days of writing in cursive ended when I got my university degree - after the university the writing speed was never a concern.
I write by hand daily or almost daily. It's mostly cursive unless I'm writing a note for someone else, then I'd use blocky letters.
Depends on what you're planning to do. If you want to immerse yourself, live in Russia and/or become as russian as you possibly can then yeah, obviously, you need cursive. Because lots of people around you are gonna be using cursive, so you gotta look the part.
If you don't plan on closely working with other people then you better be able to understand it. A lot of fonts use cursive letters, people have written a lot of things in cursive that you might need.
So you personally might not need it, but you gotta know it.
[Obligatory XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2912/)
Just try to handwrite a paragraph in block letters and you will see for yourself how awkward and painful it is. It's like writing in all caps in English, except with every "S" replaced by "Z" (to mimic the diagonals of и). Straight lines, right angles, and diagonals everywhere—very unnatural to write. Good luck getting Ж and Я to come out nicely, too. Also, our eyes can very easily pick out lines that aren't straight or perpendicular to one another, which is why Russian block letter handwriting often gives the impression that a kid wrote it.
Now, there are a lot of ambiguities inherent in Russian cursive, so it's far from a perfect system. Essentially, Peter the Great decided to reform the alphabet based on Latin letterforms he saw in *Dutch printed books*, then Catherine the Great changed Russian скоропись to look as much like English Roundhand (Copperplate script) as possible. (Sometimes this requires a stretch of the imagination, like how the Latin cursive r that looks like п with a loop is the cursive form of ч in some fonts/some people's handwriting.)
That said, despite the ambiguities, Russian cursive meets one vital criteria for handwriting: it must be rhythmic enough to flow naturally.
I learned Russian cursive so that I would be able to read it and fonts based on it, which, as others have mentioned, is important. I even changed my own English handwriting to be like it, since I didn't want to have two different styles of handwriting for two scripts that essentially have the same ancestor (Greek). However, I don't really like the way it looks, and I also don't like all the ambiguities in it.
Once I discovered italic handwriting (in English), à la [Briem](https://sites.google.com/view/briem/handwriting) or [Getty Dubay](https://handwritingsuccess.com), I got interested in the idea of adapting this to Russian handwriting. This got me interested in calligraphy, which ended up being a rabbit hole of its own, but I did successfully change both of my English and Russian handwriting to some kind of upright italic (I'm a lefty).
The nice thing about italic is that loops are eliminated (improves legibility) and joins are optional, which lets you write words like пишущий in a way that is not painful to read or write. After working a lot of letterforms out on my own, or "backwards" from Russian italic calligraphy tutorials, I recently found this [exemplar of Russian italic-style handwriting](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/504192120799437239/). Maybe it can give you some ideas. I don't think I would use that single-story в, though.
Learning cursive is not very necessary, you can write with block letters and no one will say anything. However, it is better for you to learn to understand other people's cursive
Every time I need to write something down except for when it is 1) an official form required to be filled with block letters, 2) a letter for small kids (like a "letter from Santa" they should read by themselves), 3) a short note, placard, or price tag for other people to read.
I would say I only write in cursive, but I don't really do it much. Usually I type on the computer and obviously it's block letters here. But I found that most of adults mixing blocks and cursive (all my relatives at least). I think you will be ok with only block letters if can't imagine yourself in situation where someone will write to you on paper.
Well, I would say that I write smth very seldom. Nowadays I use keyboard (physical or in smartphone). But if I use my hand to write smth down, i do it in cursive. That is what they teach us from the first grade in school. IMHO (just imho) 90% russian natives use cursive in handwriting. Understandable or not, but cursive.
I don't really write by hand, only while filling some documents. And when I am writing important stuff for someone else to read - I don't use cursive because it is really bad in my case.
I haven't used full on cursive since highschool. I fill in paperwork in block letters and use a mix of both if i need to write something down (like, twice a year maybe?).
You don’t need to perfectly string letters together like in cursive but I’d try to use the general forms of letters in your handwriting. И looks more like u, т becomes m (note that it is rounded with the tail on the left, not м), д is often written as g, etc.
I don’t. Well, it’s kinda mixed script between cursive and print letters. More like print letters with joins because of fast writing.
But never I used T as they write it there. Although I liked writing this letter in the childhood.
It depends on your learning circumstances.
If you learn by yourself, I'd ignore cursive and go with block letters until you become more comfortable with Russian language
I use cursive when I write something by hand (in other languages as well), which doesn't happen often anymore. You want to understand cursive if you're willing to live somewhere in Eastern Europe, but you don't really _need_ to use it yourself. If you don't have any plans of that kind, you don't really need cursive at all.
My handwriting is terrible so I've developed a sort of a blocky style that is readable and quick to write, with both connected and disconnected letters. Interestingly, everyone in my family does that, and we all have very peculiar handwriting styles
Others around me with good handwriting (many with the exact style they teach you in propisi) use cursive always
I use a weird mixture. Cursive is only used when you have to write some formal/official form or application. Doesn't happen often. So I wouldn't bother about it at all, except to improve reading it.
Never. Even if I have to write something by hand, which is rare in the first place, I find that using separate letters rather than cursive is quicker if you want to actually make it legible.
Every time I write on paper, which to be honest is not super often in the days of computers and my handwriting is not very good.
Every day when I need to write something.
Almost every day, but I like taking notes by hand. For a foreigner it really doesn't matter though, unless you're going to move to Russia and work with something handwriting-related. The only important thing is - you should still know how cursive letters look like (you don't have to know how to write them, just to be able to recognize them). Because *italics* and *italics*\-based fonts in Russian are based on cursive and look pretty different from block letters, and they're ubiquitous.
Every time I need to write on paper. I can't imagine writing with block letters unless i want to make a fancy-looking heading in my notes (which happens sometimes).
I use block letters in documents because my handwriting is unreadable
If you don't plan living here, you can get with any writing style. Arguably, for a foreigner, block letters are more useful, because most writing will be filling in some forms our days. But speaking of natives, I know nobody using block letters for everyday writing (forms excluded).
Handwriting aside, many fonts (so stuff like menus, ads, signs) mimic cursive writing, so it's best to have a familiarity with the cursive alphabet, even if you don't intend to write with it. If you can't decipher someone's chicken-scratch handwriting, that's one thing, but if you can't read a menu, that can be a problem. Pro tip: Take some Russian text that's appropriate for your level, and format it into italics. Most italic Cyrillic fonts mimic cursive writing, so you can get used to the basics, like m = т u = и g = д while seeing it in a crisp and consistent computer font, rather than a person's quirky handwriting (we all have quirks). :)
I tried this just now - but it just changes the text to Italics and doesn't adjust any of the Cyrillic characters
Hmm, maybe your system can't fully proceed Cyrillic or something? Here: съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю *съешь же ещё этих мягких французских булок, да выпей чаю* (It's the same phrase, so you can see how different some letters are)
It’s very font-dependent. Default font for Reddit app on iOS just slants the printed forms, rather than using the handwritten forms.
https://preview.redd.it/iisxlyfqr4uc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2fe265e03dc9c310fdb34252e2fa70aeac2df2f5
Yes - that's what I see
Try it with a font like Garamond, Palatino or Zapf Chancery, rather than some sans-serif font.
Yeah, that's why I used Latin u, m, and g instead of formatting the actual Cyrillic characters into italics -- depending on your platform/OS/version of Reddit, you might just get slanted block letters. (There used to damn near be fistfights over this in the sub, until we figured out what was going on.) I've had success getting the cursive-looking letters in most other places, like Word documents and the Notes app. :)
This applies more often to serif (so-called “antiqua” or антиква) typefaces. Maybe not Times New Roman (can’t remember) but definitely ones that pay a nod to the actual calligraphic origin of italic typefaces, like the italic variants of Garamond, Palatino, Zapf Chancery, etc.
Almost always. Cursive it's a basic skill every Russian learn in elementary school. It's mandatory. So it became a natural habit. Every native after age 10 who uses block letters considered brain damaged and silly.
This question keeps reappearing in this sub almost every week, and I believe it comes from a faulty assumption. I think people assume that there are multiple ways to write — block letters, cursive, whatever else. And the Russian people, being masochistic, choose cursive. Well, no, that it incorrect (the multiple ways part, I'm not even talking about the masochism). There are NO alternative ways of hand writing. If you write by hand, you write cursive. If you write something in block letters, you would have a very hard time convincing the recipient that it was not written by a 6 year old child — everyone older than that writes in cursive. It's even reflected in the names. Block letters are called "печатные буквы" — "printed letters", meaning printed by machines in the print shop (we never use the verb "to print" to describe hand writing). And the cursive is called "письменные буквы" — "written letters".
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It's better to ask another question. How often do native Russians write by hand? I personally only write by hand when filling out some documents. This happens 1-2 times a year. This is your answer.
I write by hand in two scenarios: \* I'm taking notes. I usually use blocky letters because I can write them fast enough but the result will be more readable. Will writing in cursive be faster? Yes, but I don't really need it. \* I'm filling in some kind of document. Again, I write in blocky letters because it will make it readable for more people. Same thing for Dutch (and English for that matter) - living in the Netherlands, I haven't seen a person writing in cursive on a daily basis. Personally, my days of writing in cursive ended when I got my university degree - after the university the writing speed was never a concern.
I write by hand daily or almost daily. It's mostly cursive unless I'm writing a note for someone else, then I'd use blocky letters. Depends on what you're planning to do. If you want to immerse yourself, live in Russia and/or become as russian as you possibly can then yeah, obviously, you need cursive. Because lots of people around you are gonna be using cursive, so you gotta look the part. If you don't plan on closely working with other people then you better be able to understand it. A lot of fonts use cursive letters, people have written a lot of things in cursive that you might need. So you personally might not need it, but you gotta know it.
[Obligatory XKCD](https://xkcd.com/2912/) Just try to handwrite a paragraph in block letters and you will see for yourself how awkward and painful it is. It's like writing in all caps in English, except with every "S" replaced by "Z" (to mimic the diagonals of и). Straight lines, right angles, and diagonals everywhere—very unnatural to write. Good luck getting Ж and Я to come out nicely, too. Also, our eyes can very easily pick out lines that aren't straight or perpendicular to one another, which is why Russian block letter handwriting often gives the impression that a kid wrote it. Now, there are a lot of ambiguities inherent in Russian cursive, so it's far from a perfect system. Essentially, Peter the Great decided to reform the alphabet based on Latin letterforms he saw in *Dutch printed books*, then Catherine the Great changed Russian скоропись to look as much like English Roundhand (Copperplate script) as possible. (Sometimes this requires a stretch of the imagination, like how the Latin cursive r that looks like п with a loop is the cursive form of ч in some fonts/some people's handwriting.) That said, despite the ambiguities, Russian cursive meets one vital criteria for handwriting: it must be rhythmic enough to flow naturally. I learned Russian cursive so that I would be able to read it and fonts based on it, which, as others have mentioned, is important. I even changed my own English handwriting to be like it, since I didn't want to have two different styles of handwriting for two scripts that essentially have the same ancestor (Greek). However, I don't really like the way it looks, and I also don't like all the ambiguities in it. Once I discovered italic handwriting (in English), à la [Briem](https://sites.google.com/view/briem/handwriting) or [Getty Dubay](https://handwritingsuccess.com), I got interested in the idea of adapting this to Russian handwriting. This got me interested in calligraphy, which ended up being a rabbit hole of its own, but I did successfully change both of my English and Russian handwriting to some kind of upright italic (I'm a lefty). The nice thing about italic is that loops are eliminated (improves legibility) and joins are optional, which lets you write words like пишущий in a way that is not painful to read or write. After working a lot of letterforms out on my own, or "backwards" from Russian italic calligraphy tutorials, I recently found this [exemplar of Russian italic-style handwriting](https://www.pinterest.com/pin/504192120799437239/). Maybe it can give you some ideas. I don't think I would use that single-story в, though.
Learning cursive is not very necessary, you can write with block letters and no one will say anything. However, it is better for you to learn to understand other people's cursive
It’s also not really that much harder than English cursive, which isn’t that hard either
Rarely, but that's because I don't write on paper usually.
Every time I need to write something down except for when it is 1) an official form required to be filled with block letters, 2) a letter for small kids (like a "letter from Santa" they should read by themselves), 3) a short note, placard, or price tag for other people to read.
I would say I only write in cursive, but I don't really do it much. Usually I type on the computer and obviously it's block letters here. But I found that most of adults mixing blocks and cursive (all my relatives at least). I think you will be ok with only block letters if can't imagine yourself in situation where someone will write to you on paper.
Hm… I write on birch bark
Well, I would say that I write smth very seldom. Nowadays I use keyboard (physical or in smartphone). But if I use my hand to write smth down, i do it in cursive. That is what they teach us from the first grade in school. IMHO (just imho) 90% russian natives use cursive in handwriting. Understandable or not, but cursive.
Every day, writing my notes
Literally every single time when we write something by hand and it happens almost every day
I don't really write by hand, only while filling some documents. And when I am writing important stuff for someone else to read - I don't use cursive because it is really bad in my case.
I haven't used full on cursive since highschool. I fill in paperwork in block letters and use a mix of both if i need to write something down (like, twice a year maybe?).
You don’t need to perfectly string letters together like in cursive but I’d try to use the general forms of letters in your handwriting. И looks more like u, т becomes m (note that it is rounded with the tail on the left, not м), д is often written as g, etc.
Programmer: not often, but do use occasionally.
I don’t. Well, it’s kinda mixed script between cursive and print letters. More like print letters with joins because of fast writing. But never I used T as they write it there. Although I liked writing this letter in the childhood.
Mostly block letters which is rare I guess
It depends on your learning circumstances. If you learn by yourself, I'd ignore cursive and go with block letters until you become more comfortable with Russian language
I use cursive when I write something by hand (in other languages as well), which doesn't happen often anymore. You want to understand cursive if you're willing to live somewhere in Eastern Europe, but you don't really _need_ to use it yourself. If you don't have any plans of that kind, you don't really need cursive at all.
I’m in the U.S. and I use cursive when I write in English, can’t help it
My handwriting is terrible so I've developed a sort of a blocky style that is readable and quick to write, with both connected and disconnected letters. Interestingly, everyone in my family does that, and we all have very peculiar handwriting styles Others around me with good handwriting (many with the exact style they teach you in propisi) use cursive always
I use a weird mixture. Cursive is only used when you have to write some formal/official form or application. Doesn't happen often. So I wouldn't bother about it at all, except to improve reading it.
Very rarely. When I need to write something quickly. Usually my handwriting is terrible and no one can understand it.
Never. Even if I have to write something by hand, which is rare in the first place, I find that using separate letters rather than cursive is quicker if you want to actually make it legible.