A Practical Look at Michael Sull's American Cursive Approach
The Michael Sull method of teaching American cursive isn't actually a mysterious system. It's a structured way of connecting print letters into flowing script, originally developed in the late 1980s and packaged as workbooks and teaching guides under the American Cursive Handwriting Michael Sull brand. The core idea is straightforward: students learn connected strokes between individual letter forms so that writing becomes continuous rather than a series of separate pencil lifts. The materials break down into three main parts. First, there are the letter connections—how a lowercase 'a' flows into a 'b', for example. Second, there are word patterns, which show how frequently occurring letter combinations like 'ing' or 'tion' get their own shortcut strokes. Third, the workbooks include guided practice pages where students trace, then copy, then eventually write freely from the model.
American Cursive Handwriting Michael Sull
I picked up one of the original workbooks around 2004 when my school district was still trying to keep cursive alive in the curriculum. The real problem I ran into wasn't the method itself—it was the stroke consistency. Kids who came in with shaky fine motor control or a habit of writing each letter individually found the connected drill exercises frustratingly slow. I spent weeks fighting with students who kept lifting their pencils between every letter anyway, defeating the whole purpose. The workaround was simple but not obvious from the workbook instructions. I had them do the exercises on graph paper instead of the provided blank lines. The grid squares gave them a visual boundary that made it harder to rush through connections. Once they could maintain a steady rhythm inside the boxes, removing the grid usually didn't derail their flow. That took about two weeks of extra practice on my part, but it cut the total time students spent on remedial retraining significantly. Here's something most people miss about this method. The original workbooks assume a certain baseline of print fluency before students ever touch cursive. If a learner hasn't automated their lowercase print letters, the connection drills will feel impossibly slow because their brain is still processing letter formation rather than movement patterns. I've seen instructors push ahead too fast in that scenario, and the result is a student who can barely write in print and now can't write in cursive either. The fix is to go back and do timed print fluency drills for 5 minutes daily before introducing cursive connections. Usually 10 days of that is enough to unblock progress.
Another thing worth noting: the Sull method emphasizes a particular pen grip and paper angle that differs from standard D'Nealian or Zaner-Bloser approaches. You hold the pen farther back than many modern instructors teach, and the paper sits at roughly a 30-degree angle rather than flat. This isn't a minor detail. It changes the natural stroke direction and reduces hand fatigue during longer writing sessions. When teachers skip this step and let kids write flat-handed, they often see cramping within a few weeks of intensive practice. The major downside of the program is availability. The original SAG (Sull Academic Group) publications went out of print years ago. You can find them used on eBay and Amazon Marketplace, but pricing has climbed into the $30 to $60 range for complete sets. The digital versions floating around aren't official—the copyright holder hasn't released an e-edition. There are also modern cursive programs like PenPal Schools' curriculum or the handwriting section in Journeys that cover similar ground with more current pedagogical research behind them. If you're looking to implement this today, the most practical path is buying a used Level 1 workbook and supplementing it with free graph paper and a basic ballpoint pen. The expensive gel pens and specialty pencils the program suggests don't actually improve results for most learners. Cheap Bic Cristal or Parker Jotter pens work fine and reduce the cost barrier considerably.
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I'd also caution against using the program as a standalone curriculum for older students. The workbook content assumes a 2nd to 4th grade pace, and middle schoolers often find the repetition tedious. For that age group, I'd recommend pairing it with actual handwriting practice using meaningful content—copying passages from history texts or literature—rather than just working through the exercise pages in order. It makes the drill feel less arbitrary and keeps engagement higher. The method itself isn't broken. It's just a product of its time, and some of the underlying assumptions about student readiness and instructional pacing don't hold up as well today as they did when the first editions came out. Used wisely and supplemented where needed, it still produces better cursive results than most free alternatives. Just don't expect it to work without some adaptation on your part.
