[autocorr]

I don't think cursive is necessarily faster. But I do recall studies that showing what you're talking about: that a person's developed hybrid printing (printing with personal ligatures) are just as fast if not faster than full cursive.

What cursive does appear to be useful for historically is writing for long periods without tiring. Cursive written in the older Spencerian script fashion is written with big movements of the wrist and arm along the main diagonal path with little finger movement. The wrist and arms tire less quickly than fingers. Some professions in the 1800s like had to write all day, so it was quite useful and worth the significant training costs of learning such penmanship skills. They also had to write with pens that didn't write equally well in all directions.

And of course other fancy scripts likely just signalled class status similar to being able to recite Homer (in Greek) on command.

[halpagg]

I grew up on cursive, and it always tired my arm so badly. When I learned it took far, far, far less effort for people back in fountain pen days, I felt somewhat cheated. Although they were all forced to use their right hands, never mind their brain lateralization, and that’s unfortunate.