Bold cursive text generator

In 2001, Unicode 3.1 added a block of maths letters so that formulas could use a bold or script letter as a symbol with its own meaning. Bold script was one of the sets: 52 letters, from U+1D4D0, “mathematical bold script capital A,” to U+1D503, small z. Social apps don’t care about the maths. They just show the characters, which is why your bold cursive arrives intact.

Bold script is also the more consistent of the two cursive sets. Regular script has eleven holes where letters such as ℬ and ℯ had been encoded years earlier, so generators borrow those older characters and a word can look slightly uneven. The bold set was encoded in one unbroken run, so 𝓗𝓮𝓵𝓵𝓸 keeps the same weight from the first letter to the last.

The capitals carry most of the decoration, with big entry strokes and loops. That makes all caps a bad idea: 𝓑𝓡𝓘𝓓𝓐𝓛 reads as a row of ornaments, while 𝓑𝓻𝓲𝓭𝓪𝓵 is recognisable at a glance. Use a capital at the start of a name or a word, and let the lowercase do the rest.

Some capitals sit closer together than you might expect, depending on the font your phone uses. Compare 𝓘 with 𝓙 and 𝓣 with 𝓕 on your own screen before you build a name around them.

Unicode has no script digits, so numbers stay as they are: 𝓔𝓼𝓽. 2019. Next to heavy script, ordinary digits can look thin. The same maths block does have bold digits, and the bold styles on this page produce them, so you can paste a heavier year or price in by hand.

Bold digits are maths symbols too, so a phone number or price written in them may not be recognised as a number, and people can’t copy it into a dialler or calculator. Keep anything someone has to use in ordinary digits.

Both styles are heavy and decorative, and they suit very different profiles. Here is the same name in each, with bold italic as a calmer option:

Pick one decorative style per profile. A bold cursive name with a bold Old English tagline underneath makes both harder to read.

If you sign off posts or DMs with the same styled words, let your keyboard type them. The built-in iPhone keyboard and Gboard on Android can both turn a short code into a saved phrase, and the phrase can be made of these characters.

1. On an iPhone, open Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement and tap +.
2. Paste your bold cursive, such as 𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴 𝔂𝓸𝓾, into Phrase, and type a short code you never use otherwise, such as tyx, into Shortcut.
3. On Android with Gboard, open Gboard’s settings, then Dictionary > Personal dictionary, pick your language, tap + and add the phrase with a shortcut.
4. Type the code in any app; the keyboard offers the styled phrase as a suggestion, or swaps it in when you press space.