 The Russian (and Cyrillic in general) cursive was developed during the 18th century on the base of the earlier Cyrillic tachygraphic writing (, "rapid or running script", which in turn was the 14th–17th chancery hand of the earlier Cyrillic bookhand scripts (called "ustav" and "poluustav").It became the handwritten counterpart of so-called "civil" (or Petrine) printed script of books.In order, modern Cyrillic italic typefaces are based (in their lowercase part) mostly on the cursive shape of the letters.