It's a bastardization of a very old form of cursive script. American cursive is like a lovechild between Copperplate, Spencerian, and Italics.

Here's a useful travel tip I've never encountered before in any guidebook: get to know the subtle differences between French cursive writing and your own. When in France it could help reading chalkboard menus, signs, a child's homework and who knows, maybe even romantic handwritten notes.

French children and those in French schools in the US learn to print capital letters, then around 4 1/2 or 5 they start learning cursive. Printing lowercase letters essentially never happens. This is made possible by the large amounts of time spent doing “exercises de graphisme” starting around age 3.

A short horizontal bar is sometimes used to cross the vertical in the middle, to distinguish the seven from a numeral one, especially in cultures (such as French) that write 1 with a very long upstroke. This form is used commonly throughout continental Europe, parts of the United States and frequently in Australia.

French cursive can be quite different from English cursive. The slant and loops in the letters of English cursive, also known as “italic” or “looped handwriting,” are more prominent. It has a consistent slant of around 45 degrees, and the connections between letters are usually more angular.