Dry cutting
Cutting the hair dry, as it will be worn, often curl by curl for curly hair.
Also: curl-by-curl cutting
Dry cutting means cutting hair when it is dry and styled as it is usually worn, instead of wet. It lets the stylist see where each curl or wave falls and how much it shrinks, which is hard to judge on wet, stretched hair. Many curl specialists cut one curl at a time this way. Dry cutting is also used to refine a wet cut after drying, to check the line of a bob or to detail a fringe.