Donald Neal Thurber (1927–2020) developed the D’Nealian handwriting system, in an attempt to correct what he saw wrong with the Zaner-Bloser Method, i.e. the teaching of formally unrelated print and cursive writing. D’Nealian was first introduced in schools in the early 1980s.
Sample pages of D’Nealian Handwriting, 2022 edition. Grades K–5. Savvas Learning Company, U.S.A.
D’Nealian is a progressive system in which preschool students (5–6 years old) are first introduced to formal preparatory exercises and capital letters, and then taught unjoined but slanted print or manuscript letters that have a foundation of continuous strokes and exit strokes. Most lowercase letters resemble their cursive counterparts.
From second grade onwards (7–8 years old), students are taught a slanted, joined continuous cursive style with ascender and descender loops. The foundational forms of these cursive letters draw from the cursive style of the Zaner-Bloser method.
