Cursive script (East Asia)

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Cursive script
Mi Fu's On Calligraphy, a written discourse about the cursive style
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	草書
Simplified Chinese	草书
Literal meaning	draft script
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin cǎoshū Bopomofo ㄘㄠˇ ㄕㄨ Wade–Giles ts'ao3 shu1 IPA [tsʰàʊ.ʂú] Yue: Cantonese Jyutping cou2 syu1 Southern Min Hokkien POJ chhó-chir
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese alphabet	thảo thư chữ thảo
Hán-Nôm	草書 𡨸草
Korean name
Hangul	초서
Hanja	草書
Japanese name
Kanji	草書体

Chinese characters
Chinese family of scripts Written Chinese Kanji Hanja Chữ Hán
Evolution of script styles Neolithic symbols in China Oracle bone Bronze Seal Large Small Bird-worm Clerical Cursive Semi-cursive Regular Flat brush Modern typefaces Fangsong Ming Hei
Properties and classification Components Strokes order Radicals Orthography jiu zixing xin zixing Digital encoding
Collation and standards Kangxi Dictionary forms (1716) Commonly Used Characters (PRC, 2013) Commonly-Used Characters (Hong Kong, 2007) Nan Min Recommended Characters (Taiwan, 2009) Standard Form of National Characters (Taiwan, 1982) Jōyō kanji (Japan, 2010)
Reforms Simplified characters second round Traditional characters debate Japanese script reform kyūjitai
Homographs and readings Literary and colloquial readings Kanbun Idu
Variants Zetian characters
Derived systems Kana man'yōgana hiragana katakana Jurchen script Khitan large small Nüshu Bopomofo Slavonic transcription
Transliteration of Chinese
v t e

Cursive script (Chinese: 草書, 草书, 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.