Cursivity

I do not say it of the first of all Didot designs that were cut by Waflard for the Imprimerie Royale in 1775, but I confess that the 'maigre' (fig. 23) presents to my eye the best example there has been of a regular formal italic, an italic in which cursivity has been almost entirely removed.

The earliest extant texts of Japanese origin which exhibit a degree of cursivity are, like their Chinese counterparts, on wooden tablets, though in this case dating from the late seventh and early eighth centuries; the next earliest cursivized texts are perhaps the Shōsōin phonogram texts A and B (ca.762).