Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

For all the dedicated primary teachers who insisted that we’d always need legible handwriting, here’s our retort: Have you ever seen cursive Russian? If you thought deciphering a doctor’s scribbles was tough, wait till you witness the artistic whirls of Russian script.

When Twitter user Christian stumbled upon the Russian cursive alphabet and shared his discovery with a pair of images captioned “Losing my mind after learning about Russian cursive,” we were initially baffled. The photos looked like pages plucked right out of the mysterious Voynich manuscript or perhaps the scribbles of someone attempting to prime a new ballpoint pen.

However, as more Twitter users chimed in with their own renditions of Russian handwriting, the reality dawned on us. This wasn’t whimsy; it was a genuine writing style. So the next time someone critiques your cursive, just mention how a doctor’s note in Russian cursive could easily be mistaken for abstract art. Rest assured, your penmanship is just fine.

Christian tweeted that he’d lost his mind over how crazy Russian cursive is, and the post went viral

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: beanerbastard

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

People joined the thread and posted more baffling examples of handwriting in Russian

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: slumberalien

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: slumberalien

Is Russian Cursive Taught In Schools?

If cursive wasn’t hard enough already, Russian cursive letters take it to a whole new level. Still, students learn Russian cursive writing from first grade.

Natasha Alexandrova, a Russian language educator and the author of “Russian Step By Step,” claims that “learning cursive writing gives you an insight into the Russian way of doing it.”

She explains, “Any Russian who went to school will gladly reminisce about the school years when they used Propisi and learned how to handwrite correctly (some have fond memories while others remember rewriting those letters a million times until they were perfect), but everyone had that experience.”

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: poppy_haze

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: ellasrhapsody

Someone pointed out that Trump’s signature has an uncanny resemblance to Russian cursive

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: RageofBaltimore

Do All Russians Write In Cursive Or Is It A Dying Art?

In Russian culture, mastering handwriting is part of the growing process and a notable milestone in a child’s educational and personal development.

Russians almost always use cursive when writing by hand. If someone writes in print, it could be perceived as childish or unnatural, suggesting a strong cultural preference for cursive writing in Russia.

It turns out that writing by hand is so widely popular in Russia that people still write letters, postcards, post-its, notes to family and friends, recipes, contact information, addresses, and shopping lists.

Russian cursive makes this doctor’s notice super baffling

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: yung_pissbaby

More people shared their handwriting

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: meviosblom

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: AlchemistLily

If you plan to visit Russia and think that print would suffice, you may be wrong. Natasha suggests, “You will encounter handwritten signs and even names of stores, stations, and other important things printed in fonts that mimic the handwriting.”

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: thefaustiansprt

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: dori_reborned

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: nana_PhoebeWB

Is Russian in Cursive Really That Hard To Read?

We all know that learning a new language brings a host of challenges. However, when it comes to the intricacies of cursive Russian, even native Russians can get stumped at times.

Apparently, there’s even a term that Russians use, “медицинский почерк” (“medical handwriting”), to describe some extreme examples of hard-to-read handwriting, drawing a humorous parallel to the notorious illegibility of doctors’ calligraphy.

If you’re curious to see just how intricate it can get, take a look at these other examples of Russian cursive below!

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: kagamirror03

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: Anniecuteddy

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: DShimmm

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: m_1_n_3_k_0

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: Ksenia59231310

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: illbuyuawhiskey

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: efountain_

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: neonailol

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: slumberalien

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: thebloodwood

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: noorah0298

Think Your Doctor’s Handwriting Is Hard To Read? Try Russian Cursive

Image credits: bloody_seams

Writer on a quest to explore every corner of the world, one country at a time. Fueled by my love for Arcane, oversized hoodies, and weightlifting, I try my best to bring even more fun energy to Bored Panda. My cup of tea? Pop culture, funny content, sharing interesting facts about the world, and creating listicles for fellow Pandas. When I’m not crafting articles, my eyes are still glued to a screen — be it binge-watching my favorite shows, leveling up in video games, or learning Spanish with Duolingo. Always on the hunt for the ultimate playlist, I scour Deezer to find the right tunes to listen to while working on my creative projects.

Read less »

Liucija Adomaite is a creative mind with years of experience in copywriting. She has a dynamic set of experiences from advertising, academia, and journalism. This time, she has set out on a journey to investigate the ways in which we communicate ideas on a large scale. Her current mission is to find a magic formula for how to make ideas, news, and other such things spread like a virus.

Read less »

I'm a Visual Editor at Bored Panda since 2017. I've searched through a multitude of images to create over 2000 diverse posts on a wide range of topics. I love memes, funny, and cute stuff, but I'm also into social issues topics. Despite my background in communication, my heart belongs to visual media, especially photography. When I'm not at my desk, you're likely to find me in the streets with my camera, checking out cool exhibitions, watching a movie at the cinema or just chilling with a coffee in a cozy place

Read less »

What do you think ?

POST

Will Fenton 4 years ago

Medieval English did the same thing, as did most other cursive scripts in the pre-industrial age. Because natural quill pens only work effectively on the down stroke the cursive script tends to emphasise the vertical letters. In Med English they result in words that represent a series of very densely spaced serrations- emphasising the vertical 'timing' of the word. The problem is, you need a working knowledge of language to actually understand the word because a word made up of 5 or 6 minims could represent literally thousands of words . This wasn't so much of a problem in the medieval period as most texts were legal or religious and therefore followed very set patterns. If you know what the document is about, you can usually infer the word from its context. I always found medieval Latin a lot easier to transcribe than some 19th and 20th century cursives because of this. The UK National Archives runs free online courses in paleography if you're interested in finding out more.

16points

Will Fenton 4 years ago

mimi numinum niuium minimi munium nimium uini muniminum imminui uiui minimum uolunt- the most famous example of this. Minims_pal...0d60fa.jpg

6points

Load More Replies...

Kathy Baylis 4 years ago (edited)

Um, I‘m an American who took Russian language in college years ago, so have written in Cyrillic, both printing and cursive. Since I wanted to get a decent grade I was careful to write legibly. But. But! You really do not want to see my handwriting in my own language. Though it was good while I was learning it in elementary school, once I got to high school and college, and had several instructors who spoke fast, wrote fast, and erased even faster during lectures, my efforts to write as much down in my lecture notes as I could before they disappeared (pre-computers, so nowhere for instructors to upload PowerPoint presentations) meant my handwriting became a scrawl that even I sometimes couldn’t read. It hasn’t improved since. So I tend to go easy on people whose handwriting isn’t perfect. Include doctors in that now. Though you might still get a handwritten scrip once in a while, they’re more likely to enter them online, where they’re printed legibly (as long as the doc can spell!).

8points

Martz Migraña 4 years ago

It happened to me kind of the same. My handwriting is, without excuses, just as bad as a drunken doctor's script. But when I stated studying japanese, I really put a lot of effort on the properly writing of the kana and kanji, I'd write them so neat and smooth even my teacher would be constantly complementing me on it and wondering why my regular handwriting was do awful. Of course, nobody wanna write s****y kanji! They're hard enough when legible, now Imagen them written in a crooked and messy way! Haha

5points

Load More Replies...