High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cursive is any style of handwriting that is designed for writing notes and letters quickly by hand. In the Arabic, Latin, and Cyrillic writing systems, the letters in a word are connected, making a word one single complex stroke. In fact, the word comes from the Latin cursivus, meaning "flowing". In the United Kingdom, the phrase "joined up writing" or "joint writing" is far more commonly used, while the term "running writing" or "handwriting" is most commonly used in Australia. Cursive is also commonly known as simply "handwriting" in Canada and New Zealand. Cursive is considered distinct from the so-called "printing" or "block letter" style of handwriting, in which the letters of a word are unconnected, and from "print-writing", which is a cross between cursive and printing, with some unconnected letters and some connected. In the Hebrew cursive and Roman cursive, the letters are not connected.