I've come across two versions of writing a capital G and a capital J in cursive. I cannot understand which one is correct because Wikipedia shows that the capital G from my textbook is, in fact, the capital J from Wikipedia and vice-versa.
Is it a mistake in my textbook or one can use them interchangeably and just needs to be consistent when deciding which one to use as a capital letter?
Here are examples from my textbook.
UPDATE
Thanks. I've corrected my textbook.
As an American who learned her cursive penmanship in the early 60s, I am shocked to see cursive capitals J and G, respectively, written that way. They seem to be switched in my humble opinion ("G" for "J", and vice-versa), but just the capitals; the lower case look fine.
Is it possible they write these differently in the UK? I would tend to doubt it. My opinion, strange as it seems, is that your book is in error, and Wikipedia is correct.
However, standard, uniform cursive penmanship has been de-emphasized in importance lately. In my part of the US, I think they have even stopped teaching it in elementary schools altogether. The way the letters are formed, especially capitals, are pretty individualized these days anyway, and a lot of people prefer to print, or even mix printing with some form of cursive that they find natural.
As a Brit, I agree with the previous answer, that the capital letters are the wrong way round.
Here is an example picture which looks correct for all letters to me:
It's worth mentioning that, although technically correct, I tend to use roman capitals (as mentioned by @JamesK) to avoid any confusion.
In the Palmer Method (1888) the G has the form shown next to the J above. You can see that the G is just a big version of the g, with a hugely exaggerated back-and-forth motion for the tail. The Palmer Method emphasized muscle motion, and the exaggerated stroke led to more movement of the arm as well as giving the letter a more distinctive shape.
The truth is there are actually many different ways to write cursive letters with none really being more correct than the other.
That being said, one of the most common styles used is D'Nealian cursive which is a cursive taught in elementary schools in the US when kids are first learning to write cursive letters.
Here is a G:
Here is a J:
And as an ex-South African I found both styles strange when I moved to North America, I almost freaked when my daughter started doing cursive and the some of the letters are written backwards and require more pen up, pen down actions than the system I (and it seems is still taught in South Africa)
Short answer, there is no "right" answer, there are easier and more legible versions. I will always prefer my G's and J's (and I's and S's and...)
In my view, the main reason of good font is in its middle ground between understandability and charm. For example, below font's J is more recognizable in both cases(not G, though, in my opinion, this one (as some above) looks similar (lowercase one):
... and here G looks better:
Of course, second variant might be more formal than above fonts, but as I said, it is essential in some cases in my opinion. Though, merging these two fonts should not be difficult.
