Wikipedia
D'Nealian is a style of writing and teaching cursive and print (block) handwriting for English. It is a derivative of the Palmer Method and was designed to ease the learning of cursive and print handwriting. D'Nealian was developed by Donald Thurber, who developed the system while teaching in a primary school, and was first introduced in 1978. The name of the script comes from Donald's first name contracted with his middle name ("Neal").
The system was designed as a method to alleviate the problems with teaching children the standard Zaner-Bloser script method and the subsequent difficulty transitioning to cursive writing. D'Nealian manuscript form has many similarities to the cursive version. In theory, it is easier for children to learn and acquire basic handwriting skills using this method than traditional cursive writing.