Roman cursive

The letter "b" in Roman cursive contains a semicircular protuberance on its left side; this design feature may have been added in an attempt to conform to the needs of ligatures.

[2] The distinctive writing style of Roman cursive emerged as the design of letters became simplified in colloquial contexts.

Throughout the progression of Roman cursive, the number of strokes required to inscribe differing letters was significantly reduced.

The angles of standard letters were written as curves in Roman cursive due to ease of tracing curvatures with contemporary calligraphy tools.

This process continued until scribes had adopted a uniform, professional cursive script utilized by them around the 2nd to 3rd centuries.

This style of cursive uses letterforms that are more recognizable to modern readers: "a", "b", "d", and "e" have taken a more familiar shape, and the other letters are proportionate to each other rather than varying wildly in size and placement on the line.