Texting in cursive on iPhone

From here into Messages

1. Type the message in the box above. Every style updates as you type.
2. Tap Copy on the style you want.
3. In Messages, tap the text field, tap it again and choose Paste. Add plain words before or after it as usual.

For something you send often, such as your name or a sign-off, save it once with Text Replacement in the keyboard settings: paste the cursive version as the Phrase and choose a short Shortcut that is not a real word. Typing the shortcut then offers the cursive text in Messages and every other app, with no copying. The cursive keyboard page covers why this beats installing a keyboard app.

Blue bubble or green bubble

The colour tells you how the message travelled, and that decides whether the rest of this page applies. A blue bubble is iMessage, which goes over Wi-Fi or mobile data to another Apple device. A green bubble is SMS, MMS or, since iOS 18 where the carrier supports it, RCS. iPhone sends green when the other person does not have an Apple device, or when iMessage is turned off or unavailable at either end.

iMessage is not SMS, so the text-message limits below do not apply to it. Cursive in a blue bubble is just text. In a green SMS bubble, the same letters change how the message is encoded, and that is the part worth knowing before you send a long one.

What cursive does to an SMS

A single SMS carries 140 bytes. With the standard GSM alphabet — English letters, digits, common punctuation and a few accented letters — that is room for 160 characters. Anything outside that alphabet, and every cursive letter is outside it, cannot be written in 7 bits, so phones usually switch the whole message to a 16-bit encoding instead, where the same 140 bytes hold 70 characters. One cursive letter in an otherwise plain message is enough.

Most cursive letters also sit outside the part of Unicode that fits in one 16-bit unit, so they take two. Android’s messaging code counts it that way: 𝓗 uses two of the 70. The exceptions are the eleven script letters Unicode keeps in its Letterlike Symbols block — ℬ ℰ ℱ ℋ ℐ ℒ ℳ ℛ ℯ ℊ ℴ — which take one; the A–Z page marks them. Apple does not publish how iPhone counts, so treat the numbers below as the Android count and a close guide for iPhone.

A message that runs past one SMS is split into parts, and each part gives up some room to a header that lets the receiving phone join them back together: 153 characters per part in the GSM alphabet, 67 in 16-bit. So 36 letters of bold cursive are already two messages, where the same letters in plain text had room to spare.

When it arrives as boxes

The characters you send are the characters that arrive. Whether they look like cursive is up to the fonts on the other phone. Most phones from recent years draw them; an old phone, a basic feature phone or an unusual device may not, and shows an empty box for each letter it has no font for. If a message matters, send the words in plain text and put the cursive around them. The box test checks any device it is opened on, and the converter turns a cursive message back into plain letters.