Connecting the letters
Deseret cursive was never standardized or formally promulgated, and it does not appear in the published readers as a model for instruction. Surviving exemplars of Deseret cursive are confined to private manuscripts, including diaries, correspondence, meeting minutes, and financial records. These preserve individual writers’ approaches to letterforms and joins rather than a single prescribed system.
Deseret cursive survives in the writing of George D. Watt, James Henry Martineau, Thomas W. Ellerbeck, and Marion J. Shelton. Watt’s cursive “Flour Note” of March 1853 predates the alphabet’s block and printed forms; cursive remained in use into 1859–1860, in Ellerbeck’s Ledger C. The rounded forms and connecting strokes of early Deseret cursive helped shape the later scriptura quadrata, or block hand, which preserves vestigial cursive loops and connectors, like the internal stroke in the counter of ⟨𐐔⟩ and the leftward/rightward joins of ⟨𐐝⟩.
The examples on this page come from Watt’s Bishops’ Meeting Minutes of 6 June 1854. They preserve an early stage of the alphabet: in house, for example, the diphthong in mouth is written with two vowels, lot followed by foot ⟨𐐉𐐋⟩. Spelling conventions also follow pre-1868 norms (such as they were) and can perhaps be more profitably compared to the Deseret News scripture passages (1859–1860, 1864) than to the 1868 Deseret First Book or the 1869 Book of Mormon.
Authentic Cursive Visualizations
Show Watt’s original
Follow the red nib. A brief pause marks a pen lift. Copy the word, then try it from memory.
Reading Watt’s Early Forms
Several shapes in Watt’s cursive represent different sounds from those they represent in later Deseret. His trap vowel resembles the later letter for /n/ ⟨𐐤⟩ while /n/ itself is written as a single vertical stroke. The checkmark-like ⟨𐐈⟩ represents dress, rather than its later value, trap. The rounded ⟨𐐇⟩ represents strut, rather than its later value, dress. Watt writes /r/ with the shape ⟨𐐊⟩, which later represents strut; the later /r/ letter ⟨𐐡⟩ does not appear in his cursive.
Writing Principles
- Keep the nib at a steady angle; vary pressure gently through curves.
- Follow connected strokes without lifting. Where a stroke returns, retrace its existing line.
- Preserve the openings inside loops and the proportions between letters. Use the scan to check your result.
For separate letters, see How to Write the Deseret Alphabet.
Historical background: Ryan K. Shosted and N. E. Davis, The Deseret Alphabet: A Fixed and Unalterable Sound (2026), “Linguistic Perspectives,” pp. 98–100.
About the Bishops’ Meeting Minutes.