Love in cursive

The hardest part of love is the middle. After you close the o at the top, do not dip back down to the baseline. Pull a short, nearly flat bridge along the midline and start the v from there. The v then comes down to the baseline and climbs back up, finishing with a small check at the midline. From that check, swing straight into the e. If your o and v look like a u, the bridge sagged. Keep it level with the top of the o.

The l is the only tall letter in love, so it sets the look of the whole word. In the example it reaches the headline with an open loop, about twice the height of the o, v and e. A loop that is too narrow reads as a t without a cross, and one that is too short makes the word look cramped. Aim for a loop that is clearly open and leans the same way as the rest of the letters.

For a card or sign, write love large first on scrap paper and check the spacing between o, v and e. Uneven gaps show more at big sizes. For a tattoo, bring a handwritten or rendered sample to your artist rather than copied text, because the Unicode cursive you can paste is a set of font characters, not joined handwriting. It will not connect the letters the way the image does.