Cursive capital letters A–Z
The full capitals chart, with stroke order for every letter and a note on the ones that cause trouble. Cursive capitals are worth treating separately from the lowercase, because for roughly half the alphabet they are not the same shape scaled up — they are built from different strokes.
Cursive capitals chart
Tap a letter for its stroke order, the mistakes that make it unreadable, and how it joins to what follows.
Capital and lowercase side by side
A capital reaches the headline — the same top line that b, d, h, k and l reach — and should not overshoot it. Capitals that rise above the ascender height are the usual reason cursive looks uneven on ruled paper.
- Headline
- The top line. Tall letters — b, d, f, h, k, l — reach it; t stops just short.
- Midline
- The x-height line. Short letters such as a, c, e, n and o stop here.
- Baseline
- The writing line. Every letter sits on it.
- Descender
- Below the writing line, for f, g, j, p, q, y and z.
The five capitals people misread
These five depart far enough from their printed forms that readers who never learned cursive routinely cannot identify them. If a name or a form needs to be read by a stranger, printing these and writing the rest in cursive is a reasonable compromise.
Capitals that are not just the lowercase scaled up
For these twelve letters, learning the lowercase tells you almost nothing about the capital — the strokes are different. The other fourteen are close enough that one follows from the other.
Which capitals join to the next letter
These join
A C E H K L M N R U V W X Z
Each finishes with an exit stroke that runs straight into the letter after it.
These do not
B D F G I J O P Q S T Y
These conventionally finish without an exit stroke, so the next letter starts fresh. A gap after one of them is correct.
Copy and paste cursive capitals
Everything above is about forming capitals with a pen. For script-style characters to paste into a name or a bio, use this.
Script characters
𝒜𝓂ℯ𝓁𝒾𝒶
These are Unicode mathematical script characters, not a font. They paste into most social bios and usernames, but screen readers announce them character by character and some sites strip them — so avoid them in anything that needs to stay accessible or searchable.
What this chart does not claim
- There is no single correct cursive. Zaner-Bloser, D'Nealian, Palmer and Spencerian all teach different capitals, and schools vary by country and by decade.
- The forms here follow the Zaner-Bloser and D'Nealian conventions taught in most US elementary schools, because that is what most readers will recognise.
- The large characters on this page are Unicode script glyphs, not photographs of handwriting. They show the letterform; the numbered steps on each letter page describe the pen movement.
- If you are learning to a specific school's programme, follow its worksheets where they differ from this.
Frequently asked questions
Are cursive capitals just bigger versions of the lowercase letters?
For about half the alphabet, no. Capitals such as A, C, M, N, O, U, V and W are essentially the lowercase form scaled to full height. But B, D, F, G, I, J, P, Q, R, S, T and Z are built from different strokes entirely — capital B starts from a straight stem where lowercase b starts from a loop, and capital Q looks more like a figure 2 than anything in the lowercase.
Which cursive capitals are hardest to read?
G, I, J, Q and Z. Each one departs far enough from its printed form that people who did not learn cursive frequently cannot identify it — capital Q is commonly read as a 2 and capital Z as a 3. If legibility matters more than style, many writers print these five and leave the rest in cursive.
Do cursive capitals join to the next letter?
Most do, but not all. A, C, E, H, K, L, M, N, R, U, V, W, X and Z finish with an exit stroke that runs into the next letter. B, D, F, G, I, J, O, P, Q, S, T and Y conventionally finish without one, so the following letter starts fresh. A gap after one of those is correct, not a mistake.
How tall should a cursive capital be?
A capital reaches the headline, the same top line that tall lowercase letters such as b, d, h, k and l reach. It should not overshoot it. Capitals that rise above the ascender height are the commonest reason cursive looks uneven on ruled paper.
Is there one correct style of cursive capital?
No. Zaner-Bloser, D’Nealian, Palmer and Spencerian all teach different capitals, and schools differ by country and by decade. The forms shown here follow the Zaner-Bloser and D’Nealian conventions used in most US elementary schools, because that is what most readers will have been taught — but a capital that differs from these is not necessarily wrong.