Why you should teach lowercase cursive before uppercase

I am firmly convinced that the entire lowercase cursive alphabet should be taught and mastered before you start teaching uppercase cursive. Here's why: 

Lowercase cursive is exemplary cursive; uppercase is not

What distinguishes cursive writing from print?

In cursive, you write an entire word without lifting your pen. To accomplish that, you sometimes need to retrace back over a previous stroke. Mastering this can be a struggle for some students. Joining letters together can sometimes make students ‘forget’ how the individual letter was formed. The ‘counterclockwise’ (or ‘magic c’) letters a, c, d, g, o and q can be especially challenging to master in all word positions, especially if students have learned the individual letters without an entry stroke from the baseline (Zaner-Bloser, I'm looking at you...).

But how does all this apply to uppercase cursive? Barely.

First, let's look at pencil lifts. In lowercase cursive, there are 4 letters that require a pencil lift to complete: i, j, t, x. But, even though those letters can't be completed without a pencil lift, we don't let this interrupt our continuous word writing. We don't stop and interrupt our writing immediately after i in order to dot our i; we finish the word first and then we dot our i's. So basically, in lowercase cursive we write entire words without lifting the pen.

In uppercase cursive, there are 11 letters that don't connect to the next letter at all: B, D, F, G, H, O, P, S, T, V, and W. That's over 40% of the alphabet. You have no choice but to lift your pen in the middle of the word. 2 letters also have additional pencil lifts within the letter: F  and T. If a student is still learning to connect lowercase words without lifting their pen, uppercase cursive is confusing, and for some students, may even undermine their learning. 

And what about those tricky ‘counterclockwise’ letters? For 3 of them - A, C and O - the uppercase and lowercase forms are quite similar, although lowercase provides more effective practice due to the entry strokes and the fact that lowercase letters can appear in other positions than at the beginning of the word.  2 of them are drastically dissimilar: D and G, which means learning the uppercase forms is a lot of extra work but can hardly interfere with the lowercase. And one is actually harmful: uppercase Q starts with an oval shape similar to the one in lowercase q, but is constructed clockwise instead of counterclockwise. If you teach q and Q together, don't be surprised if your students mix them up.

In short, lowercase cursive is exemplary cursive and is the best cursive to teach students the principles of cursive, among them: don't lift your pen, and construct counterclockwise ovals. Only when students have mastered these principles should they be confronted with the exceptions found in uppercase cursive.

Uppercase cursive is hard!

Uppercase cursive is harder than lowercase cursive. You may think otherwise, due to the fact that uppercase letters can't be joined together, and that joining letters together is one of the main challenges of cursive. But if we look purely at teaching the individual letters, uppercase letters are harder than lowercase.

Lowercase cursive re-uses many of the same elements in different letters such as arches (n m h), counters (a d g), tall loops (l h k) and low loops (j g y). The letter h can be constructed entirely out of elements already found in the letters l and n. The letter g can be constructed entirely out of elements already found in the letters a and j. In contrast, uppercase H and G both contain elements that are completely unique to that letter. Sure, there are some letters with unique elements in lowercase cursive as well, but uppercase has many more.

Also, in D'Nealian, all lowercase letters start from the baseline. Uppercase letters in D'Nealian can start from all over the place: on the headline (A, B), below the headline (C, U), on the baseline (G, S), between the baseline and the midline (I) and below the baseline (J).

If we teach lowercase and uppercase together, that will take a lot of extra instruction and practice compared with just teaching the lowercase letter alone. Either we have to spend much longer on each letter, or the practice will have to be less rigorous. If we spend longer on each letter, it will take longer to go through the alphabet, which means it will take longer before students can start applying cursive outside the handwriting lesson. From the materials I've seen on TeachersPayTeachers and elsewhere on the internet that combine lowercase and uppercase, I'd say usually the practice is less rigorous. There are some individual letters, then some practice connecting the uppercase letter to the lowercase letter, and then suddenly a huge jump in difficulty to long words with the new letter in initial word position. But students are not prepared adequately for word writing. There is no systematic practice connecting from the lowercase letter to other letters, no practice connecting to the lowercase letter from any letters other than the equivalent uppercase letter, also often no gradual path from short to longer words. The difficulty at the end of the worksheets is often camouflaged by letting students trace everything before copying. 

Teaching the entire lowercase alphabet first will allow you to focus better on joining letters, on writing new letters in all word positions, on writing words... in short, on teaching to mastery before rushing on.

Teaching lowercase and uppercase separately allows for an optimal letter order for each

If you teach lowercase first, you can choose a letter order that is optimal for teaching lowercase. And then when you teach uppercase later, you can choose a letter order that is optimal for teaching uppercase. For example, in lowercase it makes sense to teach l before h before k. When teaching uppercase, it makes sense to group F and T together. Delibarely using a well-thought out letter order improves transfer between similar letters, prevents confusion between dissimilar letters, and saves time on letter learning which you can then spend on joins, words and sentences. 

Uppercase is less important

We teach cursive writing because, once it is mastered, it is easier and faster than printing. 

If we only taught uppercase cursive and no lowercase, cursive would be just as slow as printing.

But what if we only taught lowercase cursive and no uppercase? Well, uppercase letters constitute a very small percentage of the letters in a text, and 40% of the ‘proper’ uppercase alphabet already doesn't connect anyway. So cursive with print capitals would still be almost as fast to write as ‘proper’ cursive. 

This kind of ‘mixed’ cursive has in fact already been adopted by some curricula, most notable Handwriting Success. Other cursive curricula have over time simplified their uppercase cursive, increasing the similarities to print while simultaneously increasing the number of letters that can't be joined to the next lowercase letter. 

How can children use cursive if they haven't learned uppercase yet?

We want children to start applying cursive outside the handwriting lesson (in language lessons etc.) as soon as possible. If we teach lowercase and uppercase together, they can't really start using cursive until they've learned all the letters. If children learn lowercase and uppercase separately, they'll get through the lowercase alphabet a bit faster, but then what?

• If children learn cursive in 1st grade, you can simply let children write without uppercase letters until you've taught the uppercase letters. You can also let children underline letters that they know should be uppercase.
• If children learn cursive in higher grades (2nd/3rd), encourage them to use lowercase cursive as soon as they are able to, and let them freely mix this with uppercase print letters.

Regardless of what you do, make certain there is a gently transition from tracing, to copying words and sentences from a cursive example, to ‘transcribing’ words and sentences from print to cursive, to using cursive in other language tasks such as dictation and free composition.