Sosho
| Cursive script | |||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 草書 | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | 草书 | ||||||||
| Literal meaning | sloppy/scrawled script | ||||||||
|
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| Transcriptions | |
|---|---|
| Standard Mandarin | |
| Hanyu Pinyin | cǎo shū |
| Bopomofo | ㄘㄠˇ ㄕㄨ |
Cursive script (simplified Chinese: 草书; traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: cǎoshū), often mistranslated as grass script (see Names below), is a style of Chinese calligraphy. Cursive script is faster to write than other styles, but difficult to read for those unfamiliar with it. It functions primarily as a kind of shorthand script or calligraphic style. People who can read standard or printed forms of Chinese may not be able to comprehend this script.
The character 書 (shū) means script in this context, and the character 草 (cǎo) means quick, rough or sloppy. Thus, the name of this script is literally "rough script" or "sloppy script". The same character 草 (cǎo) appears in this sense in the noun "rough draft" (草稿, cǎogǎo), and the verb "to draft [a document or plan]" (草擬, cǎonǐ). The other indirectly related meaning of the character 草 (cǎo) is grass, which has led to the mistranslation "grass script".
Cursive script originated in China during the Han dynasty through the Jin period, in two phases. First, an early form of cursive developed as a cursory way to write the popular and not yet mature clerical script. Faster ways to write characters developed through four mechanisms: omitting part of a graph, merging strokes together, replacing portions with abbreviated forms (such as one stroke to replace four dots), or modifying stroke styles. This evolution can best be seen on extant bamboo and wooden slats from the period, on which the use of early cursive and immature clerical forms is intermingled. This early form of cursive script, based on clerical script, is now called zhāngcǎo (章草), and variously also termed ancient cursive, draft cursive or clerical cursive in English, to differentiate it from modern cursive (今草 jīncǎo). Modern cursive evolved from this older cursive in the Wei Kingdom to Jin dynasty with influence from the semi-cursive and standard styles.
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