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I’d love to see a guide like this that correlates the shape of the sword with combat styles.
For some reason I can't see the image, so no idea what swords it has listed, but here goes...
In general the fighting style with curved swords would be very cut centric. With straight swords it depends but your average straight sword (arming sword, longsword etc) would be cut&thrust as it would be good at both. Now the narrower (and usually also longer) the blade, the more thrust centric it gets - think rapier, which is mostly thrust centric (though could be able to cut in some cases I think - but that's in a same way a curved sword could thrust - possible, but not designed for that). Then you also have straight swords with thicker blades that were pretty much cut only like falchion as they were heavy at the tip, or katzbargler (hope I'm at least close to the actual name) which had blades like "regular" swords but rounded tips (the tips had an edge)
Now keep in mind there were no design standards so while the above applies for the average sword in the category, these categories and names were usually applied by us after the fact to categorize already existing examples.
Now while the usage of a particular sword would have more or less the same basics, there might be differences. Some would be dictated by how the sword was made, but there were different schools (literally and figuratively) of combat styles. For example the two most prominent longsword styles would be German school (Lichtenauer) and Italian (Fiore) - at least those are I think the most prominent today in the HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts) circles. Of course these two fencing masters were not the only one, as I'm sure the German and Italian schools were notnthe only one (and as with sword classification the lines were most likely blurry) but we have many surviving sources on these. I don't have experience with Fiore, but I'd say the basics are the same but the techniques are different.
Not exactly a guide (much less a cool one), but hopefuly enough to make a general idea :)
There's a big difference between sabre and longsword cutting techniques though, no? From what I've seen sabre fights just look like crazy slashing contests.
Of course. I just wanted to give general info, don't think I'd be able to give details on nuances of different styles based on weapon. I'm also not an expert, my background is predominantly longsword, dabbled in one handed sword + buckler, rapier and epee. Never fenced with sabre, though I long have plans to try it one day as it looks hella fun. Life keeps throwing wrenches into my HEMA though.
The difference is (I think) however mainly dictated by sabre being so cut centric - if you attack, it will be a cut, oponents riposte will be a cut, your counter-riposte will be a cut etc - so you get the fun slashing galore.
Longsword on another hand if you attack with a cut, riposte can be a thrust which you counter with a cut but oponent deflects it, but you go for a thrust.
The difference us also in longsword being a two-handed weapon while sabre is one handed. Fencing with an arming sword can be more similar looking to sabre - but this may also depend on a fencer because today people could be familiar with sabre, so when given an arming sword they could use it more like a sabre because it is similar enough (one handed weapon which can cut) to what they are used to.