We measured all ten cursive fonts — here is what actually differs

Measured 2026-09-21 · all values in em units

Every cursive font generator, including this one, tends to describe its styles with adjectives: elegant, romantic, casual. Adjectives do not help you choose. So we parsed the glyph outlines of all ten fonts Curvioo ships and measured the properties that actually change how a name looks on a page — x-height, cap height, ascender and descender reach, letter width, and slant.

The whole dataset is below. If you disagree with our reading of it, you can rerun the measurement yourself: the method is documented in src/data/font-metrics.ts and needs nothing more than an open-source fontTools install.

The measurements

Sorted by x-height to cap-height ratio, lowest first. "Span" is the ascender-to-descender distance and sets the minimum line band each font needs.

Four things the numbers change

1. Short names look uneven in low-ratio fonts

The x-height to cap-height ratio ranges from 0.412 in Handwritten (Sacramento) to 0.640 in Brush Script (Kaushan Script) — a spread of about 55%. In a low-ratio font the capitals are much taller than the lowercase body, so a short name like "Ian" renders as one large letter followed by three small ones. That is exactly the dramatic effect you want on a monogram and exactly what you do not want in a form field or a small caption, where it reads as a typo.

2. Slant varies more than the styles admit

The measured lean of the lowercase "l" runs from -8.0° in Handwritten (it leans backwards) to +38.5° in Fancy Script. A backslant is unusual and deliberate; it is why Sacramento reads as informal on a label. Worth knowing before you use it somewhere formal.

3. The line-height you need is not the same for every style

Ascender-to-descender span is the smallest vertical band a line occupies before it collides with the next. Real Handwriting (Homemade Apple) needs about 1.86 em, while Casual Note (Caveat) needs about 0.95 em. On a worksheet or invitation where you set one line height for the whole page, that difference is the reason some rows look crowded and others look empty. If you are printing, set line height from the largest span you use.

4. Width budgets differ by name length

The advance width of a single lowercase "n" spans from 0.338 em in Cursive Classic (the narrowest) to 0.585 em in Real Handwriting — roughly 73% wider. For a short name that is invisible; for a long name on a fixed-width card it is the difference between fitting and wrapping. Multiply the advance by the letter count before you commit to a layout, not after.

Why this matters for a name specifically

These four properties are the reason two names of the same length can behave completely differently in the same font. A name with no descenders never touches the band that Real Handwriting's 0.84 em descender reserves, so it can use a tighter line height than the font average suggests. A name built mostly from round letters is affected by width (property 4) more than by span (property 3), because round letters are the wide ones.

Every name page on this site already applies that reasoning automatically — see the "how it behaves in a cursive hand" block near the top of any name page.

Limits of this data

• Slant is an outline estimate from the "l" glyph, not the designer's stated italic angle.
• We measured Latin lowercase and capitals only. Numbers and punctuation were not sampled.
• Values are per font version. If Google ships a new cut of a family, these numbers shift and we re-measure.
• "Span" is a geometry figure. Perceived crowding also depends on the ink coverage of the specific letters, which this table does not model.

Reproduce it

Fetch each family from the Google Fonts CSS API, parse the WOFF2 with fontTools, read the outlines with a bounds pen, and divide by head.unitsPerEm. The exact numbers this page renders live in src/data/font-metrics.ts.