Chapter IX The Proud Cursive Script
Section I An Overview of Cursive Script
Cursive script in its broad sense refers to scratchy way of writing, and seal, clerical and regualar scripts can all be written in a scrachy way. In a strict calligraphical sense, it refers to a cursive clerical script (章草in Chinese that reads zháng cǎo) first and later to modern cursive (今草in Chinese that reads jīn cǎo) and wild cursive scripts (狂草in Chinese that reads kuáng cǎo). Modern cursive script is being used quite widely today; modern as it is, it has a history of almost 2,000 years already and evolved from clerical script, it was a quickly written clerical script or scratched clerical script, only that the way of scratching was formalized or stereotyped, some strokes like up pointing and right stretching strokes were eliminated and strokes were visibly connected. Wild cursive script is most unrestrained, so far only two masters have been considered as most successful in this script, they are Zhang Xu (张旭 in Chinese that reads Zhāng Xù) and Huai Su (怀素 in Chinese that reads Huái Sù,725-785) of Tang Dynasty. They have been referred to as “Crazy Zhang and Wild Su”. The picture on the left is Zhang Xu's wild cursive script.
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The creator of modern cursive script was 
Zhang Zhi (张芝 in Chinese that reads
zhāng Zhī ?-192) of Han Dynasty.
Unfortunately, there aren’t any authentic
pieces of Zhang Zhi left, only in the
《Collections of Chunhua Pavillion》there
are five presumable piecesof his, the one
on the right is one of them.
By the time of Jin, Wang Xizhi brought cursive script to a new height, especially his 《Models that Starts with Characters of Ten and Seven十七帖》like the picture above and below have been most influential. What we see now is not the original, only prints. They were 27 letters Wang wrote to one of his friends in a time span of 14 years. There are 134 lines with 1,166 characters.
His son Wang Xianzhi and his grandson of the 7th generation Monk Zhiyong (智永in Chinese that reads zhì yǒng) all accomplished a great deal in cursive script.
Section II Festures of Cao Shu
1. Cursive clerical: “Zhang Cao章草”, a quickly written clerical script, characters are flatened, there is still the tail of a wild goose.
2. Modern cursive clerical（今草）: also know as “minor cursive script” （小草）which has dropped the wild goose tail, the structure becomes a vertical rectangle, and each character is connected with the next. It is fluent and smooth, simple and in motion. Modern cursive does not care about writing in rows, but in columns or vertical lines. It pays great attention to contrast between lines weights, sizes and density.
3. Wild cursive（狂草）: also know as “greater cursive script” （大草）is much freer and less constrained, the whole piece is finished in one breath.
