Cursive font generator

The letters come from Unicode's Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols, a block added in Unicode 3.1 in 2001 so mathematicians could tell symbols apart by style. In a formula, a script 𝒜 and a plain A can stand for different things. The generator's Cursive style uses that script set, and Bold cursive uses the bold script set.

Because they were designed as maths symbols, Unicode advises against using them to style ordinary writing. Social apps show them happily, but software that reads text, such as search and screen readers, often doesn't treat 𝓁ℴ𝓋ℯ as the word love.

Eleven script letters already existed in Unicode before 2001: the capitals B, E, F, H, I, L, M and R, and the small e, g and o. They had been encoded as stand-alone technical symbols in the Letterlike Symbols block, so the new script set left reserved gaps at those spots instead of encoding them twice.

A careful generator fills each gap with the older character, which is why ℋℯ𝓁𝓁ℴ uses three of them in five letters. On some phones those older characters come from a different font than their neighbours, so ℋ can look larger or ℯ lighter than the rest of the word. A careless generator is worse: it uses the empty, reserved slots, and you get boxes exactly where those letters should be.

Tip: Bold cursive has no gaps. Every letter from 𝓐 to 𝔃 comes from one set, so if your word is full of e, o, H or B, the bold version will look more even.

Plain script has thin hairline strokes. It looks elegant when large, but at bio size the thin parts can almost disappear, especially in lowercase letters like 𝓂 and 𝓃. Bold script keeps the loops and fills them out, so it holds up better on a small screen.

A simple rule: bold cursive for a name or heading, plain cursive for a short sign-off. If you want a second line underneath, small caps such as ʜᴀɴᴅᴍᴀᴅᴇ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʟᴏᴠᴇ sit well with either, because they stay easy to read.

• Long text: script is slow to read past a few words, and a whole caption in it tends to get skimmed.
• Numbers: there are no cursive digits, so prices, dates and times sit upright in the middle of a slanted line, as the table above shows.
• Search: people type plain letters, so a business name that only appears in cursive may not match what they search for.
• Screen readers: many read these characters one by one or skip them, so a cursive caption can be lost on someone listening to it.
• Codes and addresses: if people copy a discount code or email address written in cursive, they copy the cursive characters too, and the code or address won't work.