Cursive P (Capital & Lowercase)

How to Write a Capital P in Cursive

1. Start with a small hook. Put your pencil on the left, a little below the top line, and curl a short hook up to the right.
2. Pull down the stem. From the top line, draw a long, slanted stroke all the way down to the baseline.
3. Retrace to the top. Without lifting, go back up the stem until you reach the top line again.
4. Make the bowl. Curve over to the right and round down in a smooth bowl that fills the space above the midline.
5. Close on the stem. Bring the bowl back to the left so it ends against the stem at about the midline. That's the end of the letter, so lift your pencil.

How to Write Lowercase p in Cursive

1. Swing up from the baseline. Start on the baseline, or at the end of the previous letter, and make a slanted upstroke that reaches the dashed midline.
2. Drop below the line. From the midline, pull a straight stroke down through the baseline all the way to the dotted descender line.
3. Turn a narrow loop. At the bottom, curve around and come back up beside the stem. Keep this loop slim and close to the stem.
4. Swing out into the bowl. As you reach the baseline, keep climbing to the right and curve up to the midline, then round down to make a full bowl.
5. Close and exit. Bring the bowl back to the stem on the baseline, then sweep out to the right with a short stroke that joins the next letter.

Common Mistakes With Cursive P

These are the slips that make a cursive p hard to read, most of them in the cursive lowercase p.

• A short tail. If the stem stops at the baseline, the lowercase p looks like a small n or an a. It has to reach the descender line.
• Starting the stem too high. The lowercase p begins at the midline. Taking the upstroke to the top line makes it look like a capital.
• An open bowl. The bowl should come all the way back to the stem on the baseline. A gap there makes the p hard to tell from a cursive r.
• A fat descender loop. The loop below the line should be narrow. A wide one crowds the letters on the next line.
• Closing the capital too low. On the capital P, the bowl meets the stem near the midline. If it drops lower, the letter looks like a D.

How Cursive P Connects to Other Letters

In the traditional style, the capital P doesn't join the next letter. The bowl finishes against the stem, so lift your pencil and start the following letter on its own, close to the P, as in Peter and Paris.

The lowercase p does join, and it exits from the baseline. After the bowl closes, the stroke sweeps out to the right and rises into the next letter. Look at apple: the first p's exit climbs straight into the upstroke of the second p, so the double p reads as one smooth movement.

After o, w, v and b, the join arrives at the midline instead of the baseline, so it runs straight across into the top of the p's stem. You can see that in hope.

Copy and Paste Cursive P Symbols

These are Unicode symbols, not real handwriting. They look like script and paste into most apps, but each one is a separate character, so they won't join the way pen strokes do. Use them for names, bios and captions.

• 𝒫ℯ𝒶𝒸ℯCopy
• 𝒫𝓇ℯ𝓉𝓉𝓎Copy
• 𝒫𝒾𝓃𝓀Copy
• 𝒫𝓊𝓇ℯ 𝒥ℴ𝓎Copy

Words That Start With P

Practice the cursive small p in words where it's followed by different letters, and in words with a double p.

• Short words: pan, pen, pig, pot, pup, pin, pie, pay
• Longer words: pencil, purple, puppy, pocket, picnic, pillow, planet, people
• Double p and middle p: apple, happy, supper, pepper, hope, open, paper, sleepy
• Names and places: Peter, Paris, Paul, Penny, Peru, Poland, Phoenix, Pacific

Words like puppy and pepper put two or three p's close together. They're the quickest way to make the descender loops look even.