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Why Johnny Can't Handwrite
theodp writes "Handwriting experts fear that the wild popularity of e-mail and IM, particularly among kids, could erase cursive within a few decades. With 90 percent of Americans between the ages of 5 and 17 using computers, it's not uncommon for kids to type 20-30 WPM by the time they leave elementary school. Keyboards, joysticks and cell-phone touch pads have ruined kids' ability to hold a pencil properly, let alone write legibly, says the former president of the International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting."
I heard something on the BBC about IM on mobile phones becoming so popular in the UK that the next generation will be using their thumbs to do things we would use our index finger for, like ringing a doorbell. I already don't write in cursive, although I did learn in school and could probably manage if I really wanted to try.
If you want kids to be able to write by hand, you just have to force them to do it in school. If you let them type everything, they will. Of course, this isn't likely to happen on a wide scale; educators don't get paid enough to care.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Perhaps we are just training more kids to be doctors these days...
I think cursive is a solution for a problem that is going away. I know cursive.. most of it. Actually, I'm not really sure what a capitla 'Q' looks like. If I had to figure it out, I'd probably go get a cursive font and type 'Q' and see what it did.
Back on topic, who cares if kids can't write in cursive? I'd far rather have a kid who can touch type and doesn't know cursive rather than the opposite.
This is people who can't take change whining that their niche is going away.
Good riddance to those pesky writing implements, I say.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
I'd really be concerned if our spelling and math were slipping. Um, hold on a minute....
It takes much longer than typing (I can type 70WPM, but I bet I can't write in cursive at even 15-20 WPM.) For me it's about what is more efficient. With typing I can at least know that if I hand someone a typed note they will understand it, while if I hand them a hasitly written postit I have to sit there and make sure they can understand what I wrote.
(My handwriting was terrible even before I started working on computers...)
Do you Gentoo!?
For communication purposes isn't it better if everyone can read and understand what you are saying. If a typed letter does that, then all the better.
But as far as actually writing your own notes, one should still be able to write on paper and be able to understand their own handwriting. I don't see the art of physically writing going away anytime soon.
And in related news, experts at the United States Center for Equestrian Activities have grown increasingly concerned that the automobile will cause a sharp reduction in the horse riding skills of the average American.
There doesn't really seem to be a practical use for cursive. I learned it in elementary school, and can still read it, but remembering how some of the capital letters are written is beyond me.
It seems more difficult to read handwritten papers that are written with cursive. I guess I never really saw a speed advantage in cursive, and add the fact that I can type much faster on the keyboard than I can write by hand, this hardly seems like a surprise.
I can't really say I feel my education would have been compromised if cursive had been left out.
Ive never ever used cursive. EVER. Papers are typed, or if handwritten they are printed. Letters? Typed. Cursive is useless. Am I clueless, or what exactly is the use?
Evolve or die. Im sorry your penmanship organization is now going to be useless. Continue to teach the kids to print, that won't be going away all too soon.
In fact, one of the next revolutions in comp use is handwriting recognition.
Anyways, my point is. Cursive is useless. I know no one who actually uses it, in a professional common manner. NOT writing letters, notes. Something that REQUIRES it. Or is BETTERED by it.
Cursive is:
a) hard to learn,
b) hard to use, and
c) (usually) hard to read.
It looks nice, sure, but how many people do you see out bemoaning the loss of caligraphy? (Which looks a lot better than cursive IMO)
It's good for signatures and the occasional fancy invitation and such but that's about it.
So fancy hand writing is a lost art, big deal. All you need is print anyways. Leave cursive up to the artsy folks and hand writing hobbyists. *Handwriting is dying.
Studies have found that kids today can't even point to a sliderule in a room, let alone use one.
Cursive isn't important, and if it died, we would be none the poorer for it.
to avoid the "not even able to hold a pencil", incorporate chopstick usage into the kid's diet.
If you're unfamiliar with chopsticks, one of the two sticks is held essentially the same as a pencil. Getting decent with chopsticks uses some of the same dexerity skills, and if kid's aren't writing much on paper, at least it'll keep them from being completely atrophied in this regard.
just a thought...
.
Last I checked, almost every elementary school, at least in the US, requires handwriting classes, and every school all the way up to university requires at least some handwritten homework or exams. It's not hard to learn cursive, and even harder to forget it.
That said, cursive looks nice and all, but it's a lot more difficult to read it than it is to read plain print. I still remember my cursive (for thank you notes and letters to grandparents, etc.) but when writing anything by hand I just use print -- and of course it's not as if I never need to write anything. A sticky note on my alarm clock is much more useful than a sticky note on my computer desktop. Either way, I don't think there's going to be a mass exodus away from use of the pencil anytime soon.
-- shayborg
There's nothing wrong with losing the ability to write in cursive. It is difficult to read and the only reasons later in life to use it is for taking notes, writing checks, and signing your name. I have to think for a minute when writing checks but I don't consider this a bad thing.
I'm 32 now, but I was required to turn in all assignments in the 4th grade in cursive. As soon as 4th grade was over, I stopped, as it took me 3-4 times longer to write in cursive than in plain text. My signature is all that remains, and I'd have to think long and hard about how to write in script using letters that aren't in my name.
It was two more years before we got the TI 99/4A at home, so they can't blame the computer for me.
"Common Sense Ain't" -Unknown
Besides, handwriting survived the introduction of the typewriter...
What concerns me is not that typing is becoming more popular, but that kids are learning to write on the Internet, to the point where kids hand in assignments with 'internet shorthand' in them, LOL. Wait, not LOL. WTF.
dinosaur comics
The only thing you need cursive for is to sign your paycheck.
TODO: Insert witty sig
Okay, so kids are soon not going to be able to write cursive. So what? Very few kids these days know how to use a calligraphy pen properly, yet these were mandatory while I was in grade school (1978 on, in England). And you know what, I don't care. While I can still write using my calligraphy pen (and that means using it properly, writing in a typeface suited to it), I don't. It is, for me, a dead art. There's no call for it, not for me in my day-to-day life. Same, I suspect, with cursive writing.
So yeah, maybe it will die out. But the question really is should we care?
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
From the article:
"The truth is, boys and girls, even if you write a lot of e-mail on the computer, you will always need to write things down on paper at some point in your life," Boell says. "The letters you write to people are beautiful, and they'll cherish them forever. Have any of you ever received an e-mail that you cherished?"
I find this attitude strange. I have years of old e-mails saved. I cherish many of them, and rereading them brings back memories. I have the first e-mails I got from my girlfriend (going to be my wife soon) and they're saved in my USB keychain. (We met online, too!)
I know that's hokey, sentimental stuff, but it's true. You can have an emotional attachment to an e-mail. In the end, it's not the media, but (to coin a cliche) it's the thought that counts.
If writing is actually not being used enough so that kids can't write, why do we need it? And cursive in the first place isn't that great of an idea. Go read someone else's printed writing. Now go try to read their cursive. Hard, isn't it? It seems to me that if cursive is needed, it will still be learned, and if it isn't needed, you'll just forget it anyway. I actually don't use cursive anymore except for my signature. I don't need it, and nobody else can read it anyway.
And this is a bad thing why?
I started using a computer about mid high school. The same semester I took a six week typing class. I have been using the keyboard about 70 WPM ever since.
I typed everything for school that used to require handwriting. When I got into college, I did the same, but I used a computer unlike most students who used a typewriter.
Now here we are in the 21st century and I can't handwrite worth a crap. I use a Palm OS device with graffiti regularly with decent accuracy. I can sign my name. I can block-print reasonably fast.
But I haven't been able to write cursive since, say, about 1980. Do you know how much impact this has had on my life?
About zip.
We used to require people to know how to take square roots by hand, do long division, or use a slide rule. We don't require these skills anymore? Pocket calculators are everywhere, ubiqutious and disposable. (Not that I don't think it is important to get the basic concepts in grade school.) My point is that what once might have been an important skill may not be in the future.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
"it's not uncommon for kids to type 20-30 WPM by the time they leave elementary school"
Bah, I can type way faster than that. At least 40 WPM.
Kids are slow. They're probably dumb too.
Yea, and I'll bet most kids today can read or write shorthand either.
I remember going to a special remedial handwriting class when I was in elementary school. My teacher finally gave up and taught me how to type.
Particularly in 6th grade, cursive was heralded as "the Script of God" (I'm paraphrashing). All assignments in sixth grade had to be turned in in cursive to "prepare" us for junior high and high school, where, supposedly, teachers' expectations were similar. Wa-bam, we hit junior high, and I haven't used cursive since. Incidentally, I now take the very laptop I'm writing this on to school as a faster, neater method of taking notes. (high school, not college)
-insert a witty something-
When I entered the public school ranks at grade 3, I was already behind in handwriting, and was never able to catch up. I can type at a sustained 90+WPM now with no errors, while I can only write by hand at something around 15-20 WPM - much slower than I can think. Additionally, since I pretty much had to teach myself to use a pencil, I apparently use it in a bad way and get painful hand cramps after an hour of writing.
As more and more kids are learning to type and word process earlier (and as more schools insist on typed reports and/or have computers in the classroom) it seems quite apparent that handwriting skills will decline.
So, what's the problem with this? I can still write well enough to take notes for my own purposes, and if I'm writing something for someone else, I'm going to type it up (and email it, or even just write up a memo). I don't necessarily see the decline of handwriting as a horrible tragedy, simply a shift to new methods - consider, calligraphy died out years ago (except among artists) and no one shed a tear.
-T
I'm not surprised. Cursive writing was for people in a hurry. Now we have a better method. And now the so-called Master Penmen are upset that their little hobby will be archived next to the hurricane oil lamp and the carrier pidgeon. I bet the society of telegraph engineers were very upset about the telephone as well, but there's still a few out there using it.
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Handwriting just hasn't been the same since Quill pens were replaced. Nobody knows how to trim a quill pen anymore.
A great loss.
I'm 29, and I graduated from highschool in 1991. I was taught forcibly to write cursive, because computers were not yet so pervasive as they are now.
I could never write legibly.
Frankly, I think people are just grasping for excuses. Now, we have people using computers as the reason for illegible writing. What was it before computers were so common? Laziness? Lack of talent? Why aren't those still the reasons?
"International Association of Master Penmen, Engrossers and Teachers of Handwriting"
Wow... there is such an organization? Oh man, I thought that I was a dork...
The last time I used cursive was taking the SATs. I had to copy the honor pledge in cursive and sign it.
I ended up just printing it and going back and connecting the letters randomly because it was so much faster and looked plausable enough anyways -- better than taking the time to try and write proper cursive.
Even my signature is *barely* cursive...only about half of the letters are real "cursive" letters, and maybe 2-3 of the connections are done properly. And I don't even have a very long name...it's 8 letters total in my signature, first AND last names.
Disclaimer: No, I didn't read the article, I'm just ranting.
I can't say I'm surprised such observations can be made. Nor am I upset about it. People will gain the skills they require, and if being able to write by hand legibly isn't a must we simply won't be very good at it. I expect that making words stick will be done by other methods than pencil and paper in the future, and the ability to write will be no more a requirement than it is for us to manouver a horse today.
Perhaps in a few decades writing by hand will be more of an art-form than something everyone needs to do.
I've found that in this "globalized" economy, clearly written English is extremely important to communicate with English-as-n > 1-language speakers. The block style eliminates confusion between letters; the letters are the same as those on a typewriter.
Suffice it to say that I think cursive is pretty useless.
That's funny. Is the reverse true? Do people that can properly hold pencils mash cell phone keypads, pull keys off keyboards, and gnaw on joysticks?
Bah. I recall some similar, "frightening" studies involving kids being unable to tie their shoes (or learn knots in general) due to the popularity of this "Velcro" stuff on shoes.
As near as I can tell, Civilization hasn't collapsed yet. Screw handwriting.
With the advent of mechanical/disposable pens, the skill required to use quills and ink wells is not tought in handwriting class anymore.
Point being, pens are tools to convey our thoughts and feelings. They are also being replaced by the personal computer.
It would definitely be a shame for people to miss out on a lot of history. A lot of works (written in English nonetheless) were written in cursive and our kids won't have any idea what they're reading. It will all be Greek to them. Granted I don't write in cursive much either, unless I'm writing a nice letter to someone, but the inability to read it would be quite detrimental.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
buh? uniquely american? surely cursive script wasn t invented here? do other countries have cursive handwriting?
I'm 25, and I stopped using cursive back in high school. Printing is so much neater, and it can be just as personalized as cursive.
Obviously, some sort of writing-by-hand is still a necessary skill. If you're trying to take notes in class or a presentation which include diagrams, tables, complex equations, etc., I haven't found a computer interface that can match a pen and paper for speed and expressiveness. And post-it notes will always be around (how many times have you seen one stuck to a computer screen?). The teacher's point about handwritten letters being much more meaningful is a good one.
But bad handwriting isn't some new problem that has been introduced by widespread computer use. Worsened, perhaps, but I have ancient joke collection books that have the one about a doctor's prescription note being used for its intended purpose, then as a train pass for a year, and finally played on the violin.
There are plenty of people that just weren't going to have good handwriting anyway, and then there are people like my friend's father, who labels floppies using careful Medieval calligraphy (inkwell and all, IIRC). It will continue to be like that. The sort of people who send handwritten letters because they mean more will continue to do so.
Writing should and doubtless will still be taught, but I don't think it's a problem if it's slightly de-emphasized in favor of keyboarding skills, which are more relevant. When I was in elementary school, no one was typing their papers, but now almost everyone is (in this part of the U.S., anyway). The bulk of communications will probably be done via a keyboard (or some newer device) rather than handwriting. And not without reason; some of the kids' quotes in that article are dead on. Rough drafts in pencil (and rewriting twice in ink) royally sucked.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I think Samuel Pepys would care about the end of writing.
There are so many concerns about digitizing documents and what format to choose because readers may not be available even five years after the project, let alone 400.
Meanwhile, thanks to the ability to handwrite, we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, Hammurabi's Laws, the Rosetta Stone.
And as the CNN version of this story mentions, which is more significant to you? The handwritten letter that you received from your relative just he or she died, or that quick email saying "Call me" you got and deleted?
What?
As long as kids can PRINT the letters, who cares if they can write cursive or not?
I was always told that writing cursive is faster than printing, which I now hear has been pretty much disproven. Most people will do a form of cursive-ish writing when printing something quickly, and it's faster because they aren't tied down by a bunch of meaningless codified rules that tell them what's fastest for them to write.
Cursive is a moronic system. I've always hated it. The sooner it's abolished from everything except the hobbiest's view, the better.
Actually, I'm not really sure what a capitla 'Q' looks like. If I had to figure it out, I'd probably go get a cursive font and type 'Q' and see what it did.
It looks, illogically enough, like a '2'.
who cares if kids can't write in cursive?
It's true that, after grade school, students pretty much adopt their own style of handwriting, which tends to be an efficient mix of print and cursive (rather like the "print cursive" mentioned in the article, I imagine, except far more improvised). I say "efficient" because, as experience has shown, neither pure print nor pure cursive is the most efficient way for writing anything longhand. People tend to write quickly; if either print or cursive were the path to rapidity, they'd be commonly used, don't you think? We do our "print cursives" because our brains have told our hands without us realizing it that this is the quickest way of getting stuff written down.
But the reason people can even read each others' impromptu scrawls (doctors excepted) is because all those "print cursives" have their basis in common foundations: regular print and the Palmer Method. We take the gold standards of penmanship and unconsciously adopt them over many years to whatever speed needs arise--but the standards had to be in place first.
The coolest voice ever.
And I'm not even talking about cursive. I mean ordinary printing. I type virtually everything, and have for about 15 years now - and shortly after I learned Palm Graffiti for my III in '98 or so, I found I started making my printed letters like Palm graffiti - and now, I can really barely read my own writing. Writing legibly takes TREMENDOUS effort, and it's so gawdawfully slow.
I look back at high school papers I wrote by hand, and I can barely believe how far I've fallen in 20 years. Handwriting is a long-lost art, for me.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
[...] computers are speeding the demise of a uniquely American form of expression [...]
Begging your pardon ? Cursive writing is "Uniquely American" ??
Ich werde nie wieder denken
educators don't get paid enough to care
Should they even care? I really fail to understand how this is a bad thing. I learned cursive in school but don't use it anymore, because I can type faster and print more far legibly... the only thing that I use cursive for is my signature. And I don't miss it one bit.
Students today need cursive to succeed in society about as much as I need Morse code to listen to NPR during drive time... They are both skills that will be kept up by small numbers of enthusiasts, and society at large will have only a passing knowledge of the subject, and will be no worse off for it...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I went to Catholic school for ten years, forced to write in script. Like eating those disgusting communion wafers and wearing an awful school uniform, the mere thought of it brings up anger tempered by the relief that nobody will ever be able to force me to do it again.
How happy to read that the world is rising up against at least one of the three.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Beyond the very few times writing in cursive is required, signatures being the only one I can think of, printing is as fast or faster and typing just plain leaves both in its dust.
I seem to recall the existence of cursive came about because of the writing devices of the time, ink well + stylus, in which writing using a style that didn't lift the stylus reduced drips and smudges, looking "pretty" was a side effect.
Use Blackadder font in Word, it does wonders for my writing ;)
Seriously though, handwriting is a technology and an art, it must be practiced to be improved and maintained. I would argue however that there is still a shred of hope for improving handwriting; through the growth of handwriting recognition software on pda's and tablet pcs. Ah, just makes me wax nostalgia at my (sometimes) tortorous handwriting classes in grade school. Do they even teach handwriting in school anymore? Albeit it was an English school, as in London England. IMO the only place where handwriting has a clear edge over computers is for taking notes at university lectures. Computers still can't handle imputing raw notes containing quickly drawn graphs, charts, doodles, mindmaps, and little doodles with any of the efficiency and elegence of a pen and paper. Long live handwriting!
Chatspeak and cursive serve the same purpose: confusing the hell out of people with barely legible gibberish. So it's really just a new standard of illegibility.
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musings on politics and technol
The protypes of these kids are people like me. I got my first computer when I was ~6, could easily touch type before I left primary school, and can probably beat 50 WPM easily, even in C - let alone English. (Not including debugging time, regrettably.)
On the other hand I can write very fast and pretty accuratly as well. It takes me under 10 minutes to fill a side of A4 (~500 words or so) with words that make sense - a skill I _had_ to develop for exams. One of my economics A level papers required about 8 sides of answers in two hours. (That seriously kills your hands folks!) I was perfectly capable of writing in cursive before leaving primary school however, spending several hours a day playing with computers didn't make me forget what I had been taught.
If these kids can't write in cursive however, because they are too stupid to learn it or remember it, what can they possibly write that will be of any use?
At least with the proliferation of computers kids are _reading_ and practicing reading - a far more useful thing than writing. After all, if you can learn to read you can find a book that tells you how to write.
What shouldn't be allowed is the continuing trivialisation of computers - the idea that they are there for nothing but entertainment. There are people in this world who don't actually realise that the black box they use every day can be hacked to make it do far more interesting and fun things, to make it do what you want better or faster. Common perception of people who do hack around is that they are doing something wrong, not something right! This IMO is far more dangerous than any slip in percieved handwriting ability in children and corrected as soon as possible..
Beep beep.
Worldwide cuneriform literacy down 99.999999999%!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The coolest voice ever.
Sure it is. It's part of a cultural history that is being lost. Much as we have Ebooks or Audio Books, there is nothing quite like sitting down with a good hardcover book. The same could be said for emails and a nice handwritten letter. Which says "I care" more?
For me printing has always been faster - even when I write legibly (admittedly less often than not). All the curlicues and squiggles just to have your writing look like the Declaration of Independence? There's exactly zero (0) point to it.
sulli
RTFJ.
Does "in-class essay" mean anything anymore?
There's no way to use a computer on those things.
And then the AP tests -- those HAVE to be handwritten.
In AP US we were reading Xeroxes of past year's essays -- the ones that were harder to read were the ones in cursive, simply because of the damn loops.
I've noticed the loss of cursive, however. In taking the SAT some months ago, when asked to copy the honor phrase ("I certify that this is my test" stuff), with the explicit order "DO NOT PRINT" in the box, the whole room broke out in a self-concious laughter, as we had to think carefully on how to write in cursive, as opposed to printing.
And, because I hate to do it on the computer, all my MATH homework is done by hand. (equations are still icky to set up. Much nicer just to draw the damn integral)
The upshoot of it all?
Handwriting is a huge facet in the lives of high school students. It will stay that way.
Do I bemoan the loss of cursive? No.
Do I fear a loss of handwriting? No.
Is there a problem here? No.
Case closed.
(and who in the world liked that D'Nealian or whatever that my grade school taught before cursive? *shudder*)
I don't think it's all surprising. We used to draw pictures, but then we moved on to letters. It's a much more efficient way of communicating than cursive. When was the last time you purchased an entirely handwritten book? Probably not since the Guttenberg days...
When I started work about 15 years ago, we had to give a handwritten spec to a typist who would enter it into a word processor, print it, return it and I would proof read it and then return it with corrections. She would then photocopy it and distribute it to everyone on the list.
Making an amendment was a similar process. Now, I can change the spec myself and circulate it by email.
I think I spent longer proofreading than it takes me to make the changes now.
I'm 29 years old.. and my handwriting has always been of the messy type. All through school, I was the messy handwriter. Now, it wasn't that I had some dysfunction.. I mean I could write, I have superb hand eye coordination.. but anything involving drawing, I have trouble doing neatly.
My current "handwriting" If you want to call it that, like most people, is an individual style, developed as a mix between what I can read again later, and what's most comfortable to write. It would certainly flunk me out of any penmanship class.. but most people could read it without too much difficulty, especially if I intend it to be for them.
I never write a capital E properly.. it looks more like a backwards 3 with a little leading curl on top... my capital D has no proper slanted lines.. just curves. And so on... Many of the letters don't fall into any known official writing system, but I guarantee you would recognize them anyway.
I guess what I'm saying is, in the end, there are two types of handwriters in our society: those who write for the sake of reading it back later, who invariably develop their own style, and those who adhere to an official writing standard.
For instance, a while back I took it upon myself to improve my handwriting. It's going okay, it just takes lots of practice. I picked up a Spencerian Handwriting tutorial.. now Spencerian is not the Italic or Cursive or whatever we were taught in school. it's what our grandfathers and great grandfathers were taught in school. And you know what? It's NOT hard! Yes, I struggle with it, but that's due to my aforementioned difficulties with pen and paper... It's extremely logical, and it's a system.. where every letter is composed of more or less seven basic skills (curves, lines, etc). It becomes easy to remember the logical way to make any letter, and the eye can tell if it actually looks right when written. If you havent' seen it, properly written spencerian is both easy to read and very pleasing to the eye. It's also designed for a fountain pen with a spencerian nib.. but I actaully find it easier to write with a fountain pen than a ballpoint, I just like the way it actually lets me feel the texture of the paper, I think.
So it got me thinking: From what I recall of learning to handwrite at an early age, it was boring. They didn't tell us anything about different styles, or that there was more than one way to write, or that in the future it woudln't even matter.. they just went ahead and showed us one thing. Now.. why don't we get back and take penmahship seriously? When you start teaching handwriting, pick something like spencerian. Teach them to write beautifully, not just to write. Or at least put people through a mandatory course in highschool, even just a couple days a week, on penmanship. Let them pick what style they want, but make them study it.
And then I think, does it matter? I do 90% of my work on computers, the only writing I do is a note to myself throughout the day on a notepad, or a quick post-it to someone else. And I type around 100wpm.... so writing serves no real practical purpose, other than as a hobby, I guess.
Now, my writing still sucks, but it's getting there.
to keep the left-handed man down! Don't listen to this handwriting propaganda. Typing sets you free!
I cross my 7's, my Z's. I put a slash through it if it's a zero. It's generally very neat, consistently universal. It is not however perfectly suited to graph paper like his. Mine is adapted well to legal pads, which I became a fiend of in business school. He was a mechanical engineer.
I learned cursive but abandoned it in favor of block print. Our cursie was "Daneelean??" and very suited to being a 3rd grader, but I didn't feel it was...professional.
By the time I'd reached high school I had given up writing in cursive. Too many loops, too messy, too hard to read. I didn't see the point. I don't think I was old enough that I was signing things yet.
At some point when I had to start signing things, I would just sign printed. It was fine for a while, btu at some point someone told me I had to write it in cursive. I said, "but then its not my signature." They disagreed and said it legally had to be in cursive. I said, "well that's stupid," then proceeded to labor through trying to write my name in cursive (just for kicks, I asked the person to show me how to write a capital G so I could make a legal signature).
After that my signature diminished to my first and last initials with little squiggly lines after each. You know, like celebrities sign autographs...
Last year when I was signing papers to buy my house, I signed the first page and the notary almost had a fit. She said I couldn't sign that way or it wouldn't be legal. I protested for a bit, but she wouldn't budge, and she was the one with the stamp, so i reluctantly labored through it again for a few pages, then slowly reverted back to my regular signature (so many pages!).
Signatures are supposed to be personal, like fingerprints. The way I sign my name is supposed to be unique to me. If Joe Dumbass Lawyer can't read my signature, that shouldn't matter. If someone were to hold up a page with my alleged signature, and I can't identify it as mine (or it doesn't match my signature on other documents), it shouldn't be legally binding. For someone to instruct me that I have to use proper penmanship for it to be legal is ridiculous.
But i digress.
blog
A very good point actually.
I never had neat handwriting, ever... But since getting a PDA (IPaq 3950), with what I thing is very good recognition software, my handwriting has improved immensely. In fact it is now legible, and still improving.
Mike
Ctrl-Z
Once, I was asking a third-grade teacher why in the heck she taught the students cursive? I learned it but I never used it after the sixth grade.
Her response was that students don't learn it because its useful or because they NEED to know it. It's taught in order to help develop kids' motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
From my experience, there is still a very useful place for hand-writing, but not necessarily for cursive. However, if writing in cursive is helpful in developing motor skills in children, I'm all for it. There's a distinct difference in motor skill difficulty between typing and writing. Writing certainly aids much more than typing in the motor skill development, as it requires quite a bit more concentration and hand-stability.
I have been involved in drafting since I was a little little kid. I was given an engineering text book by my grandfather when I was young, that same book turned out to be my text book in High School drafting classes.
By the time I had gotten to high school I had drawn every last thing in that book many many times.
During all this time - learning drafting - I perfected manually writing at 1/8" text.
I haven't been able to write in cursive since grade or middle school. I can ONLY write in block text.
I can actually write each individual letter in cursive still - although I just am terrible at getting them to connect well.
so its not just computers and such, but more how you actually practice writing for the forative years that will have impact.
No, a unique scribble which represents a given individual is standard for a signature. Seriously, how many signatures have you seen which are actual, recognizable cursive? Very few, in my experience...
Then stop writing your name in cursive for your signature. You don't need to.
Your legal signature is simply a symbol or mark by which you can be known. Any symbol will do as long as it is relatively unique and you use it consistently.
Look at your average doctor or lawyer... they've got signatures that are nothing more than a squigly line. But when you compare it, the squigles are the same from instance to instance. Mine is the same way, my name is entirely too long to write cursively, so I make a few loops and a few sqiggles, takes about 1/2 second to make my signature for a name with 20 characters (not spelling out my middle name).
Whatever you choose to use as your signature, be sure to get your government issued IDs re-issued with your new signature in case anyone questions you about your it.
Most Americans have been taught that a signature is your name written in cursive, but then again, most Americans are taught that the government is a Democracy and that the seasons are caused by our distance from The Sun. Educators are not perfect, and some of what they teach is for convienence instead of accuracy.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
We don't seem to bemoan the fact that we don't know how to light a fire with a cinder, or even say, light a fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, or the fact that most Americans don't know how to ride a horse, or most of us don't know how to drive a carriage, etc etc.
The only possible threat I see to this tech-dependence is the possible threat of massive power failures. But honestly, we don't even need to be literate to have fun in life, and I doubt those power failures would last long anyhow. At least the kids will continue to draw. No technology will take away that interest from them, nor any current or near-future fansy new input devices can replace paper and pen yet (yeah, there's the Wacom tablets, but it's not the same, most importantly, the fashion of art doesn't necessarily evolve that way).
-N
The Cycle of Violence is to be seen as the invisible hand that maintains the balance of Man and Nature on earth.--M
How many diagnoses of ADD (or ADHD or whatever) are we seeing nowadays? Our problem as a nation is that we don't know when the fuck to say when, whether it's with food, or TV, or computers. I'll admit I was pushing the troll button with the "ban Doom" comment, because I still chuckle when I see these talking heads on TV using that as their strawman for society's ills, but the reason why Johnny can't handwrite is because society could care less about Johnny unless he's a consumer.
Learning for its own sake is frowned upon in this country, as is picking up an Asimov novel or respecting your neighbor. Thinking for oneself has gone out the fucking window because there's no money or self-gratification in it. Our American idols are cookie-cutter pop singers. Our schoolbooks are being revised to be gender/race/creed neutral, and to hell with history. We're so uptight about Johnny forgetting cursive when the phrase "Founding Fathers" is being redacted.
Our next generation is going to be (in aggregate, there are of course a few bright bulbs) our stupidest ever. Mark my words. A diet of intellectual sugar is just as damaging in the long run as swilling soft drinks and cramming super-sized fast food daily. In moderation it's all good, but there's no money in moderation.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I learned cursive writing in the regular Canadian school system. Back in my grade 4-6 days I was always getting bad marks on cursive writing so my parents requested that the school give me extra exercises on that subject. As a result, I developed very legible, artful cursive writing. It's many years later now and I'm in university (Engineering), but if I pick up a nice Sanford Uni-Ball Vision Micro pen, I can still do it.
I am also a serious user of typing. As a side effect of learning the alphabet through computer games (thanks to a techie dad), I learned to type before I learned to do regular printing in grade 1. Another side effect was that early on, I could type the alphabet but not know how to pronounce any of the letters. Even as I was learning to write cursively, I could type much more rapidly and accurately than people twice my age: 30 wpm by age 6, 50 wpm by age 12, now 100+ wpm in university (assuming I'm in the groove where I can think at 100 wpm.)
Why I prefer Cursive:
Cursive writing is more of an artform to me as well as a tool to enforce certain frames of mind. If I am in a class that requires right brain thought (typically anything that requires critical thought in relation to someone else's non-technical writing) I will use the cursive. It helps keep me in the right-brained frame of mind. My thoughts flow onto the page. When I write something in cursive, it's flowing onto a piece of paper from my pen. It's written there in stone and you can't erase it. (No, white-out does not count.) What I have written there is a reflection of myself that is expressed through words and the physical characteristics of what I have put down onto the paper. Because cursive is like art, a lot more thought goes into what I stroke down onto the paper. It makes me think at a higher level and use my brain more effectively.
And Now The Case For Typing:
Typing is incredibly useful to me because of its utility and flexibility. As the girl in the article mentioned, you can easily fix mistakes with a backspace ( or ^H ;-). The main benefit of typing is that whatever you create is infinitely replicable. If your dog eats your homework, you print off another copy. It can be instantly formatted, transmitted, stored, replicated, processed and so on. The difference between handwriting and typing is like the difference between a Band's Live Performance and the CD. You can't perfectly duplicate that piece of paper with your personal pen strokes on it. But you can copy that OpenOffice file to a web server. (And yes, I do use OO.org.)
The main thing that you lose with typing is the separation of personal effort from the results of that effort. You don't see the emotion and streaks of ink on your word processor. It's the difference between sending a "Blue Mountain E-Card" where you personally wrote the greeting for someone's birthday, and sending a Personally Written Hallmark Card with the same greeting. The effort and thoughtfulness comes through with physical card but not the e-card.
The Moral of the Story. (According To Me, Anyway.)
I say that the typing separates emotion/effort from content but with the added value of making something highly utilitarian. You can't replicate the paper, but that makes it all the more precious.
I say that the purposes for writing and typing do not entirely overlap, and thus neither will cancel out the other any time soon.
I'll say this: in much of Asia handwriting skills are still important.
This is especially true in China and Japan, where both languages uses thousands of unique characters for the written language. Because of this situation, these two languages are not easily adopted for computer use, though the Japanese have tried with special keyboards and the JIS, Shift-JIS and EUC character sets. Is it small wonder why low-coast fax machines first took off in popularity in Asia, because it was in many ways faster to write up a handwritten note in Japanese and fax it to another location than to use a Japanese language keyboard to create the characters and then send the message electronically?
Besides, writing Chinese and Japanese characters is still considered a revered art form in Asia. That's why a lot of art exhibitions in China and Japan show the masterful art of calligraphy, especially writing characters with brushes.
My wife learned about denelian writing when she did her student teaching this past spring. It is almost cursive writing but the letters aren't connected. The letters slant as well. Just trying to make it easier for the kids to learn cursive I guess..
there are not that many people left that can write on clay tablets either. nor are there many people around that can memorize entire books. when something stops being useful it will disappear quickly.
Exactly. Damn cursive handwriting. I sucked at it in elementary school, and my mom would make me spend all this time outside of class practicing it. Who really gives a damn? I've been in the job world for over 10 years now, and never ONCE have I seen a cursive letter sent by ANYONE.
So cursive goes the way of the microfiche? Good riddance. I'll be happy the day they take it out of schools, and start using that time to teach kids something useful with it instead. (I mean, not like they will, but there's always hope, right?) Typing is faster, easier to read, and takes far less time to learn.
Good luck finding new jobs, all ye who work at the Society for Cursive Writing.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
The rest of the worlds handwriting will be as bad as my doctors!!
My family moved to another school district that taught regular print, and I was suddenly failing my handwriting classes because I was writing my letters with curly-cues!! So, I suddenly had to re-learn how to write in print. I never really learned cursive very well, because I was still struggling with printing! Thankfully, once I reached Junior High, I was allowed to bring in typed papers instead of writing them in cursive. I've been typing since I was 5, and we were always one of the few families who actually had a computer growing up.
When we had to do essays in class, I was screwed. I was marked down all the time for my handwriting up through high school. I haven't used cursive since. For quite a while, I even printed my name instead of signing in cursive. My print is STILL horrible by most people's standards.
So damn you, Mr. Denelian!!
i'm the jedidiahmarkfoster your parents warned you about
Are you southern, Canadian, or southern Canadian?
I'm the same age, and my handwriting sucked as well. Why?
a) I'm lazy, and didn't care
b) I don't have a natural aptitude for it
c) They didn't teach it in a way that interested me.
Now, they can just blame it on computers.
A year ago I started studying penmanship. I can sit down and slowly write some half decent spencerian. It takes effort and concentration, and some hand muscles and movements I'm not used to.. but it looks great. And it shows up in my normal writing now, too.
So really, if you want kids to write well, teach them to write well. Pretty simple.
School needs to be more integrated. We had classes where the teachers demanded handwritten assignments, not typewritten. THe idea is that in one class, you practice skills from another.
It's dumb for, say, math class to give you problems to solve that relate to nonsensical things like "If a blue star is 5000 degrees C, and a red star is 3000 degrees C, how many degree is 3 blue stars and 4 red stars?". Sure, anyone can derive a forumla out of it.. bu tother than the pure math, the question is nonsense.. you don't add up temperatrues like that, it has no meaning in the real world. Why not ask a question about somethign MEANINGFUL, related to chemistry, or physics.. even if you haven't taught the concepts yet. School needs to tie together more closely, handwriting included.
What you've been told is a bunch of bullshit. For one thing, it's illegal to discriminate against someone just because they're illiterate. Hence, signing 'X' on a contract is perfectly legal, if that's how you sign your name.
:)
People that force you to use cursive to write your signature are just so unhappy with their lives that they need to exert what little power they have in order to get through their day.
(This coming from someone who signs only the first initial of his first name. Hey, I signed something like 500 letters a day for several years, and it's a hard habit to break
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Cursive writing was invented, to the best of my knowledge, in order to speed up the ordeal of getting things on paper; for most people, writing out each letter is tediously slow. "Lettering" (such as that found in fancy documents, ala The Declaration of Independence) was relegated to more formal tasks, while today's "text" was for labeling things, ease of use understanding, and every-day use (such as on signs and notes on the washboard for Mom).
Now, with a nearly universal advent of computers, there's little need for 'cursive', as you can type many, many times faster and more legibly than you can write in cursive. Cursive is an anachronism.
Personally, I'm glad cursive is on its way out. In grade school, I always hated it - I could write faster with my handwriting (which was more of a script anyway, but it wasn't "cursive"), and would cramp my hand like a mofo. As soon as they stopped forcing us to use it, I was done and through with it. Now I use it for is my name, relegating any handwriting to either palm grafiti (on paper, yes - at least something closely approximating it) for my own personal scribblings, or simple engineer's lettering (those of you that don't know what that is, it's basically blocky, all-capital letters).
If you need something fancy, that's what laserjets are for. Sure, there's still room for things like caligraphy, but that sure as hell isn't cursive.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I hope not (27 here too). Yeah, I had essay questions, and I always printed. For me it was faster than cursive and I don't recall significant discomfort.
Cursive was specifically invented to allow people to write entire words without lifting the pen off the page. You have nice fluid motion that really is much nicer on your wrist and hands. And it's much faster to boot.
It wasn't faster for me (perhaps it could have been had I done it more), and I question the motion benefits. The pen stays on the page, but you have to make lots of tiny and relatively precise loops and curves. Meanwhile print is mostly straight lines and circles (and therefore usually much more readable), and I don't see why it's so bad to raise the pen slightly between letters.
Cursive really is much faster than printing. Same when I take notes at the physics seminars here at my university, cursive note-taking is really much much faster than printing. and much easier on my hands.
Use whatever works for you. I find the opposite is true for me, and as the article points out many people use a combination of print and cursive.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Wow, it looks like people on /. hate cursive more than SCO and Microsoft! Every bitch rant gets modded up, unlike many anti-M$ rants.
Now I will post the phone number and address of my 3rd grade teacher...
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
I seem to be in the minority here. I find cursive to be much faster than block lettering. As a matter of fact, I've lost my lowercase character set when block printing, and I have to "render" them as "graphics" (in other words, I have to think about how they are written, rather than it just being automatic). If I have to do a lot of handwriting, I find that I get cramps faster when block printing, than using cursive.
What I find more disturbing is that I occasionally find myself using Graffiti symbols instead of the actual block letters.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
Frankly, I'm not sure being able to write with a pen is likely to matter too much longer. (I prefer writing over typing for making notes, but I was born before ARPAnet, much less personal computers and PDAs.)
What is disturbing is the steep decline in actual language skills. Most of my coworkers are unable to spell properly or form grammatical sentences. Many of them are unable to think clearly enough to communicate effectively even within the context of the pidgin dialect they speak. Granted, I work for a rather small and idiosyncratic company, but this was no less true when I was an Intel contractor.
Personally, it doesn't matter to me that my coworkers are semiliterate clods; it's actually an advantage for me. On the other hand, the general decline is making it harder for me to ensure that my daughter gets a decent education in the public schools, and I shudder to think that these people are voting, driving, and registering handguns.
As far as cursive is concerned, if you do plan to write with pen and paper, it's worth learning. Provided you practice enough to be good at it, you can write much faster in cursive than in regular script, which is why cursive was invented in the first place. I'm inclined to note that manual writing has a number of other advantages, but I doubt that they would appeal to anyone for whom those advantages are not self-evident.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
And most of us don't know how to throw a spear at a woolly mammoth either...
Some skills used to be important, but not anymore. I've read some very plausible sci-fi with advanced civilizations where most people don't know how to read or write at all, but it's not a problem.
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
We read slashdot, so we did not get your joke. You'll have to explain.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"Keyboards, joysticks and cell-phone touch pads have ruined kids' ability to hold a pencil properly, let alone write legibly"
This is rediculous bullshiite. That's about as valid as saying that listening to rock music diminishes one's ability to appreciate classical music.
It's not that typing hurts their writing skill. It's that they type instead of writing, therefore one gets better and the other atrophes. I can't even state in good faith in a passive context that "typing and cellphones have ruined my ability to write legibly." If I can't write legibly, it's because I don't try to.
What a freaking whiner. As for text not having the passion of cursive, who gives a damn? The passion is in the words. As for cursive being more arty or beautiful, hogwash. Well placed text on a nice website can be freaking gorgeous. Someday humanity will get over the disease of nostalgia. I can't wait. Things change. They always have. I hope they always will.
As for the methods younger people, and older people employ to write, who cares again? Again, language changes and English is certainly the most mutatable language in the world. It's supposed to change.
Has anyone noticed that no one writes an f as the first s in any word? No. Who cares? Other than the President of that association.
-
R.I.P. -- Cursive, Zapf Chancery, and Tekton
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
There are no tiger attacks in my area and it's all because this rock I'm holding keeps the tigers away.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: Cursive is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered handwriting community when IAMPETH confirmed that the cursive market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all children. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that cursive has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Cursive is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in a recent comprehensive literary test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] to predict cursive's future. The hand writing (printed) is on the wall: cursive faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for cursive because cursive is dying. Things are looking very bad for cursive. As many of us are already aware, cursive continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Calligraphy is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core penmen. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time calligraphers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: calligraphy is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Handwriting leader Theo states that there are 7000 literate people. How many users of cursive are there? Let's see. The number of literate versus cursive posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 cursive users. Cursive posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of printed posts. Therefore there are only about 700 users of cursive. A recent article put cursive at about 80 percent of the cursive market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 cursive writers. This is consistent with the number of Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, Cursive Handwriting Lessons went out of business and was taken over by Write Cursive Good, who sell another troubled writing style. Now WCG is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that cursive has steadily declined in market share. cursive is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If cursive is to survive at all it will be among writing dilettante dabblers. cursive continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, cursive is dead.
Fact: cursive is dying
Educators are also worried that kids aren't learning proper spear-making technique.
Shockingly, no one gives a fuck.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Your notary sounds clueless about her "job", which is to validate that *you* signed the document. If signatures intrinsically meant anything, she'd have no function.
I had a notary refuse to sign an letter-of-authorization allowing my wife to take our child on vacation out of the country. "It is not a legal document", she claimed. Er, yes, it is. I wrote it, and it grants a specific, limited power to my wife. It also happens to be a required piece of documentation in that circumstance. But to her, a "legal document" is written on a form or letterhead. The barrier-to-entry for a notary seems to be far too low for (my) comfort.
American cursive writing was created by the American educational system. The cursive script was taken from script from a silver engraver. Somehow this style of writing was adopted by the American educational system as the standard. Unfortunately, this style of writing is awkward and unnatural. Originally, Europeans wrote in a script called "italic". It was based on a writing style from Italian monks who perfected ergonomic writing thru years of transcribing manuscripts. This style is marked by curves and ligatures that are more natural to a human's style of writing. Studies have shown that people who forget the cursive style that they learned in school and gravitiate to what comes natural starting with printing as a base, write much faster and more legibly than those who adhere to the "cursive" style forced on them in school. I myself, after years of illegible handwriting, researched this and came across some wonderful books about he subject. These are: "Write Now" and "Italic Letters". These books opened my eyes to what I had intuitively come to realize: American cursive is unnatural and slow and people who define their own styles using natural human tendencies write more legibly and faster. I hope someday, that students will be taught the ergonomic "italic" style of writing in schools. They will learn to write much faster with less effort. I still remember in 5th grade a boy who had handwriting that looked like a seismigraph. The teacher would get so frustrated with him because he wouldn't write the traditional "American cursive" way. The teacher ended up giving him an "F" in writing. This is just ridiculous. Teachers should let children write in a style that is natural to each individual child instead of forcing them into an ornate, complicated, unnatural way of writing.
The best handwriting was (and still is, IMHO) from the renaissance. Various forms of "italic" hand were developed by people who's names later became typefaces, such as Palatino.
The interesting thing is, if you write with an italic hand, even with a monoline ballpoint, your writing becomes a bit more angular, but a bit neater and easier to read, and (alors!) faster. It *is* faster to write italic than palmer, because there are far fewer strokes involved.
I'm as much of a computer geek as the rest, but I also have a passion for calligraphy. It is an amazing practice that should never die.
RR
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Just to put some perspective on my background, I've taken calligraphy courses, both for Roman alphabets and for Chinese. I admire beautiful, clear handwriting as much as next person, and I believe that writing letters "the old fashioned" way has something to be said for it in terms of "romance".
But we don't send kids to school to teach them to write because of the "romance" of hand lettering. We teach them it because it is a valuable communication skill.
First of all, let's examine the legibility of cursive writing. I'm sure we have all got a relative whose writing is absolutely illegible, and odds are they were writing cursive. Cursive is simply harder to read. That should be evident by its near total absence from any kind of print media. If cursive writing were easier to read, you can bet that all the paperback books that you see would be typeset with cursive fonts. You don't see that, and the reason is obvious: you'd take a dull spoon to your eyes and gouge them out after only a few pages.
So if it's hard to read, then why bother learning to write that way? Well, the justification is usually that it is faster. The reality is that most people can only write cursive letters about 10% faster than they can print them. I know that I can print very nearly as fast as I can write cursive, and more importantly, you can decipher my printing, even when I am in a hurry, even when you have to read pages of it.
If we really were interested in teaching children to write fast, we'd have them learning any of a number of shorthand systems.
You want to do kids a favor? Get them typing. They will have neater work with less effort and fatigue. They'll produce work faster. They'll have more time to concentrate on what they write rather than how they write.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
... complain about times changing. News at 11.
I too fail to see what the big deal is, although the source of the moaning, as well as some button-pushing (since when is calligraphy a "unique form of American expression"?) tells me this has more to do with certain teachers afraid to lose their jobs as the skill they teach becomes irrelevant, than with the real consequences this could have.
Notice the lack of studies of any kind. There's a lot of "some say", "few statistics", "many adults", etc. No numbers, and no solid source.
Nor are there any quotes (much less trace of concern) by someone in the position to deal with this as a "problem". It's not that the Department of Education has to go out and say something about it, it's that it's interesting that no one asked anyone but a "teacher fighting the trend" and "a 54-year-old artist" who's former President of an Association of People Who Make A Living Writing And Teaching Cursive.
The only other people complaining apparently "parents who pride themselves on their penmanship", "bemoaning" that their kids don't write as they do. The tone is the same the mother might use to "bemoan" their daugther not taking the same piano lessons, the same ballerina classes, or perhaps having the debutante ball she had at X age. All that was so "character-defining".
This is a "social interest" story with no substance, not even as little as would be expected from the subject.
Considering the deficiencies in basic math and language skills present in US education (not to mention geography, history, literature and all that useless "general culture"), I would think there are more important things to worry about in education than whether Little Jimmy pens or types his homework. For example: whether he can actually do his homework, and learn something from it.
If they want to teach children an artistic skill that shows "your inner being, your core" and "it's not translated into dollars, like computer skills", I'm sure private lessons could be accomodated somewhere between tap-dancing and archery.
It proves nothing, shows nothing, says nothing, except that some people like penmanship so much they forgot why schools teach the Palmer Method of Business Writing in the first place: as a business skill.
Freedom is the freedom to say 2+2=4, everything else follows...
My handwriting sucked to begin with. I'm also one of those people who can think faster than they can communicate (which makes for some interesting word combinations, like today when I read a "cyst and decease" letter aloud). Typing, on the other hand, allows me to quickly express complete thoughts in fluid form, and even edit those thoughts on the fly (ala the Backspace key).
So...fuck handwriting...
Mr Doyle: So, you never learned cursive?
Bart: Well, I know hell, damn, bit...
Mr Doyle: Cursive handwriting, script. Do you know the multiplication tables? Long division?
Bart: I know of them.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
Disruptive technologies have emerged throughout history making inferior technologies obsolete:
Written language -> cave drawing
Sail boats -> manual row boats
Ball point pen -> quill feather
Automobile -> horse and buggy
Tractor -> ox and plow
And on and on....
Why should this trend stop now with handwriting? Really, how many people actually hand write anything of substance? In school, I remember teachers that reduced grades on hand-written papers to encourage proficient typing skills.
Future disruptive technologies:
Typing -> hand writing
Internet -> newspapers
Internet -> television
Internet -> telephone
Internet -> sex (just kidding on this one).
-ted
Cursive DOES have a purpose, and that is to provide an easier way to write than 'printing'. It is FASTER and MORE FLUID than printing is.
Faster and more fluid to write, but quite a bit harder to read (in most cases I've encountered).
Since the ultimate goal of "writing" in any format is to communicate, wouldn't the easiest to read be most important? Wouldn't it make sense that the harder to read a given medium is, the less popular it would become over time?
Survival of the fittest.
Any non-USAsians want to question this claim? I was under the impression that people in Europe knew cursive too.
Another handicap when writing is left-handedness. Because our language is written left-to-right, left-handed people tend to require much more time to write than right handed people do (and I should know because I am one). Does this mean that we should require all left-handed people to start writing with their right hands? (I'm assuming that you will think this is as absurd as I do, otherwise you're going to have to tell me why it makes sense).
A lot of people can write more legibly when printing, and this is often more important in creating the impression of a good writer (and when you're writing for someone who is grading 90 papers, the impression can be as important as the writing itself - especially if the actual writing isn't that good), just as good grammar and spelling do.
Not that this particularly will matter. Typing is more efficient and easier to read. I can't think of any reason why computers won't replace pen and paper for essay examinations; it would certainly make it easier on everybody. Possibly the only reason that this has not yet happened is because the cost isn't low enough - but it will certainly be low enough in the fullness of time.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
If your prose is so bland that only your penmanship can lend it a cherished style then it's lucky you're good with your hands. At least you can tickle her fancy.
In terms of keyboard efficiency, it's my understanding that the QWERTY keyboard is intentionally inefficient. The earliest typewriters had problems with they type bars jamming. To prevent this, the keyboard was laid out in a patter that would slow the typist down.
Unfortunately, we are stuck with it not because it's better, but because it's what everybody uses. Just like M$ Word, VHS, and gasoline powered internal combustion engines.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
The more that people can't write, the less grafitti will be covering all the walls. Oh wait, now they're cracking into web sites and plastering them with HTML. Nevermind.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
When I was in grade seven a friend of mine could not write but instead printed everything. That was in 1977. I thought it was interesting, particularly since he printed faster than most people wrote. I thought I'd give it a try and found that I was much more legible. Twenty-six years later I still print or type everything, and like my friend of long ago, I am pretty fast at it. I have no regrets.
What really freaks me out, though, is the number of teenagers who have probably never tied shoelaces. Young kids wear slip-ons and shoes with velcro straps. Older kids have coiled elastic laces. Then there's the floppy-skateboard-shoe stage where the shoes have laces but they are permanently knotted loose enough to just slip on and off. Now basketball shoes come with zippers and skates all use cantilever or ratchet fittings. I guess they'll get Mom to tie their dress shoes when they graduate from college.... :-P
This looks like as good a place as any to make a really braindead observation that everyone else seems to have missed.
"Cursive" handwriting is not the only form of "joined up" handwriting. 100 years ago everyone learned a different type of script, and I had to struggle to understand anything written by my late grandmother. Once educators get a clue, our current cursive will be just as alien to our kids.
The key issue with "hand printing" is that young children are taught to write letters with only downstrokes. They don't have the fine motor control for making well-controlled motions in both directions, and pushing kids into "cursive" too soon will result in a lifetime of poor penmanship.
But there's absolutely no reason why teens and adults can't do "hand printing" in both directions. That means an "A" is two strokes, not three. More importantly, you can start a lot of letters with either an up or downstroke - "B," "n," "m," "r," etc. You'll lose the small serifs, but the letters are still easily recognized.
It doesn't take long for letters to flow together - they're still "printed," but the pen either never leaves the paper or is briefly lifted just off the surface. With practice you can print just as fast as another person can write cursively... and it's a hell of a lot easier to mix in equations, foreign and mathematical symbols, chemical notations, etc.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Same here. My elementary school report cards are filled with "needs improvement" grades for penmanship. It's a good thing I eventually learned cursive. I believe it is the sole reason I have been able to finish graduate school. My ability to ask questions, analyze, research, type...all that is merely incidental. In all seriousness, though, my younger sister, who is in her mid-20s, learned to write on a VIC 20. When she got to kindergarten, we had a heck of a time convincing her not to print her name in all caps. And, to top it off, she managed to avoid learning to tell time on a non-digital clock until she was in her early teens. With a VCR (not flashing 12:00), microwave, stove, and digital watches, she never needed to learn how to read an old-fashioned clockface. I just wrote out all my wedding thank you cards. I think my printing sometimes slipped into a semi-cursive style, but that's the closest I've come to long-hand in years!
-- SYS 64738 --
It's supposedly slightly faster to write in, but it's certainly a whole lot slower to read!
*ducks*
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
when I was a teen (14 or so), I was taught to write down morse code (as I copied it) in ALL UPPERCASE. the military does this (I was told) and it was due to speed in writing. you can write in all uppercase block letters faster than in upper/lower and cursive just doesn't cut it when copying morse code at 40words per minute.
;-) weird to think that's the only reason for me to still know cursive. of course I type well over 100wpm - but handwriting is worse than a doctor, at this point.
so at a very early age, I started to lose my ability to handwrite. then a few years later I got my first computer (trs 80) and from then on, even my schoolwork was done with a printer (dot matrix!) and very little was hand-written.
I'm now over 40 and still have to think about how to write those checks out - where you have to -write- the amount of the check in cursive
well, its trading one skill for another. I don't mind all that much - but it is interesting to see such a big change in skillsets in such a short amount of time.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
About the 6th grade, I was getting bad marks because my papers were hard to read. This angered me, so I decided to print even though the educators at the time recommended remedial writing classes. (got into a lot of trouble over that)
The school made a *big* deal about this. Said, I would not be able to write a check, sign legal documents and other things. They said my writing would be slower. Nothing but FUD directed at preserving something that does not need to be preserved.
I did not agree and decided to do a little research. Found out that we didn't need cursive then. We sure as heck don't need it now.
The appearance of ones handwriting has a lot to do with their internal wiring. How we all do it depends on how we are built.
I spent the better part of that year learning about handwriting in all its forms in my spare time. Looked at writing from famous people, read their bio. Looked at different styles and related the use of same by different types of people. Looked at documents and fonts. The proper use of these can convey many things not directly contained in the actual words used.
I reached the following conclusions.
- There is no need to handwrite anything using a cursive script. --Nothing.
- You can extend this to the lower-case characters as well. Not needed for anything.
- Knowing these two things makes learning the art of writing a lot easier. (I had not yet used a computer or typewriter at the time.) Less hassle. The effect on me was a better ability to focus on what it is that I was writing instead of how it was written.
For a young child trying to understand the use of language, this is huge. Good educators should be encouraging this instead of clinging to the old ways. Why spend years working hard at a manual skill that one is not well adapted to? That time could be used to better the use of language and structure.
- Trying to make someone write in perfect copy book style who is not pre-disposed to doing so is a direct assult on their being. Could that assult do harm to a young person who might otherwise enjoy the art of writing?
It almost did exactly that for me.
So, the end result?
Some yelling, punishment and poor marks for another 6 months until I was able to better articulate what made me angry about cursive writing. My parents were told I would have problems later in life. I was told, I was not working to get a good education. Bullshit. I could tell them more about writing then they could tell me!
I never wrote that way again and am *way* better for it. Humans tend to evolve. We are seeing this now. Cursive will never die because there are people out there that are well adapted to its use.
Schools will eventually understand the things I learned long ago. They will learn to classify and improve their students writing strengths and provide them with good tools to improve them rather than force everyone into a style of expression that does not fit them.
Blogging because I can...
Take a look at letters and such written by 8-11 year olds back in the 1800's, esp. the latter part. You will find that in many cases, those children of yesteryear were able to write and compose stories better than many contemporary adults, let alone children. I tend to wonder what this shift in ability says about where today's society is, and where it is heading...?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Amazingly, the loseriest group ever mentioned on slashdot isn't a computer group.
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
Everybody could write in cursive. Writing in individual letters was a thing of the past, reserved for pre-revolutionary times and people who draw a cross instead of signing their name. I honestly don't understand what is so difficult about cursive. And despite the educational system being totally fucked up today, writing in cursive is still not a problem for the Russian kids.
I must admit, though, that my own cursive skills are somewhat lucking. When I use handwriting, I tend to use Palm Graffiti instead...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Handwriting began with scratching runes into rock with a piece of bone.
Perhaps its time to move on.
Or put another way, not many people really know how to make fire with two sticks, or a piece of flint. Should we lament the loss of archaic skills, or look forward to the next leap?
Why is it "a uniquely American form of expression". What we don't use it in the rest of the world. hmmmm
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
I've been happy since then, never looked back. Handwriting can never approach the keyboard. Handwriting is way too slow, even for the best of them. No worries folks, you only need to learn basic handwriting and then you should concentrate (and I mean concentrate, don't be sloppy about it) on learning touch typing. If you end up as a programmer it'll take your productivity to a totally different level.
But when people are forced to slow down, they have more time to think about what they're writing rather than just writing about what they think. The advantages of word processing - speed and being able to edit what you've written - are double-edged swords. When you've become used to writing up everything on a computer, you forget how to plan and construct a document from the start -- instead you (or at least I) tend to put down a mishmash of ideas and then slowly work them into shape.
Now I don't doubt that for most written work, I end up with a better result the word-processed way. And many people never need to write anything longer than a birthday card by hand. But the mental skill of being able to develop a proper argument as you go along is essential in many other ways. I'm thinking of SPEAKING.
Maybe I'm just an old fogey (and I'm not even 30) but it seems to me that kids today have a much harder time having a proper conversation than they used to. They seem to have a 5-word cap on sentences. ("And he was like, yes. And I was like, no. So I said, hi. You what? Oh My God!") Now I'm studying law and I need to be able to stand up in court and make an improvised speech that will persuade a judge and jury, so I'm having to learn those skills back over.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.
Even before I learned Qwerty my handwriting was atrocious. If it wasn't for learning how to type in elementary school, I'd probably be creating indecypherable codes for the Allies. Of course kids need to be able to write, but this article stinks of Luddites and FUD. Must be Bic and the other writing instrument monopolies banding together to stomp out computers - "Did you know that typing leads to poor grades and bad dental hygiene? Take away your kid's computer and give them a pen!"
Oh, and my spelling sucks too.
-Ryan
First the bullshit:
"'They've got good handwriting now, and they love cursive,' Bolton says as her students filter in from recess."
--I haven't met a child that likes cursive. That's a load of crock.
And the brainwashing:
"The truth is, boys and girls, even if you write a lot of e-mail on the computer, you will always need to write things down on paper at some point in your life," Boell says. "The letters you write to people are beautiful, and they'll cherish them forever. Have any of you ever received an e-mail that you cherished?"
The students eagerly shout, "No!" and return to loops and curves.
--Hey; I have e-mails saved from years ago that I cherish. I have them in an imap folder or printed out.
A better conversation, perhaps, is how kids can't spell anymore becuase spellcheck (and particularly autocorrect type things) make it unnecessary to do so. If I type nieghbor instead of neighbor and it gets automatically and invisibly changed each and every time, I'm not a slave to the red wavy underline and have no reason to realize or correct my false use of the i before e rule. What should be done about that?
Perhaps a plug in into Word and clones that proactively helps correct the spelling of the user not just the document. I'm serious about this.
I haven't posted in so long, my sig is out of date.
And the only way I can really write, as opposed to rewriting or editing, is to write on notebook paper with pencil, in cursive. That's really the only time I use it, but I'm glad I know it. And I want my progeny to know it, too, if only because more knowledge is never a bad thing.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
I wonder if they're seeing a drop in cursive writing in Russia? Probably not as much, since the Cyrillic alphabet is too unwieldy to block-print. And if you think our cursive is hard to read, try learning to read handwritten Cyrillic script. Argh! It often looks like a bunch of lowercase M's, U's, and E's strung together. Cyrillic is a perfect example of why linguists should NOT be allowed to develop alphabets.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm glad cursive is dying.
It is vestigial, useful only for signatures. This is the only time in my life, since elementary school, that I have used cursive writing.
There are lots of good reasons that have already been posted. It is very difficult to read. It is not very faster than printing. It serves no use.
My grandmother used to be a shorthand expert (worked decades as a secretary, in the age before dictation machines). Shorthand is now dead. It has been made obsolete. Cursive will soon follow.
In elementary school, in the early 1980's, there was a fad that swept through, with yet another writing system: Denelian! This was some kind of hybrid between printing and cursive. It was supposed to be easier to learn than cursive, used as a stepping stone after children learned printing. Instead, it combined the disadvantages of both! Fortunately this fad died out after a few years.
Standard printing is easy to read and easy to write. It is easy to learn. It is just as effective at communicating information as cursive, if not more so. Isn't that what writing is supposed to do?
I dance on the grave of cursive!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!