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26 Years Old and Can't Write In Cursive
theodp writes "Back in 1942, Chicago mail-order house Spiegel's looked to handwriting analysis to identify inconsistent, unreliable, poorly adjusted people. Ah, those were the days. TIME reports we are witnessing the death of handwriting, noting that Gen Y struggles with cursive and the group following them has even less of a need for good penmanship. And while the knee-jerk explanation is that computers are to blame for our increasingly illegible scrawl, literacy prof Steve Graham explains that kids haven't learned to write neatly because no one has forced them to. 'Writing is just not part of the national agenda anymore,' he says. So much for 100 Years of Handwriting Success!"
If we let cursive die, calligraphy could be next to go!
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
26 year old people are just old enough to have learned to write before computers. If they can't, it's the school, not the keyboard.
Nothing in the real world uses cursive. It's all manuscript. Cursive is far harder to read, has more person to person variation, and isn't really faster to write. In addition, there's plenty of evidence that teaching it harms children's education by confusing them. So long as they can still read and write script, there's nothing to be concerned about here.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I'm nearly 40 and haven't used cursive since high school. How is this a Gen Y thing again?
M.e.h.
Just wait 50 years: "That's right kids, grampa used to use his hands to program computers!"
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
I grew up in an era when cursive was still common but I struggled with it right through until the end of High School. It was always terrible. When I got to college I abandoned it in favor of printing and it was a great relief. Now and then I use cursive for a letter because it still is the most personal way to write but it looks as awful as ever.
Cursive still has a place as a form of expression and as such should still be taught, but for the cursive challenged like me I understand its abandonment.
There's no correlation between cursive writing and intelligence. It''s a skill and it can be learned by most anyone who is motivated to do so.
Well done hand writing is really quite beautiful, but it may be that since no one tends to write hand written letters much, or converse via letters, that the ability to write beautifully has lost some of its stature? It used to be that folks were judged by the recipient of a letter or note on how well the letters were formed. My parents and teachers forced me to write in cursive quite a lot, and already at 6 my son can write pretty well, but the cursive will wait for him for a few more years. Maybe if society put a premium back on it things would change. I honestly so rarely even handwrite anything anymore, that when I pick a pen up, my hands are shaky, and the letters are forced.. God.. I need to do some homework!
I'm almost 40 and I can't write nor read cursive. It makes me feel illiterate when I have to hand something written in cursive to someone else and ask if they can read it to me. But, honestly, people are using cursive less and less these days and I've discovered that I'm not the only one who has trouble reading it.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
Righting in cursive isn't important anymore. Who ever did this study should of looked to see if peoples grammer abilities are any worst then before. From what ive seen, I don't think their.
I tried to recall how to make all the letters, upper and lower case in cursive, and I cannot recall them all. I think the only cursive I've used out side of grade school is when I have to sign my name.
There's exactly one profession that requires cursive handwriting skills.
Third grade teachers.
Seriously, except letter for a job candidature or a post card, I never use handwriting anymore. And even for the job search , I really do think that hand writing is utter useless, except maybe as a useless filter (can't read his handwriting / can read). Everything I have to do, I do in block writing (official forms, bank receipt etc...) or with printer.
The hand writing is going the way of the draw-cariage with horse. Plainly and simply. Hand writing is QUAINT that is it.
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Cursive is uncomfortable on the hands, slow to write, and difficult to read. Teachers make you use it for a while to force you to learn it, but it really doesn't need to exist.
Anyway, don't 26-year-olds still fall under "Generation X"?
The SAT has a paragraph that has to be written in cursive. I saw many people (including me) struggling to write it. To make things worse, the proctors would usually only say "write not print", and a lot of people did not know that that meant cursive.
Hell I'm 36 and write in all block letters. Even though I can do cursive, years of drafting has trained my muscle memory to write in block letters.
The only cursive I use, oh, since high school, is to write my signature. And I hardly even bother with that any more either. I just put down a squiggle.
-Matt
I used to only write cursive up till my sophmore year of high school. I, on seperate occasions, broke my ring finger and pinky finger on my dominant hand. So for a good portion of the year, anything i wrote i printed. Haven't been able to write script since aside from signing my name.
... a time when people can't read "John Hancock" or the rest of the declaration of independence.
Seriously. The answer is easy.
The whole thing on the 'decline of handwriting' is just silly. Anceint Greek isn't taught in most schools either - should we lament the 'decline of 26 year olds being able to understand Ancient Greek'? Of course not.
They can't write in cursive because cursive is either not taught at all, or taught poorly at best - and /nobody cares/ whether or not you can write well.
I hate cursive. It's a pain in the ass to remember half the stupid letters, and it takes longer to read than standard print. If I'm writing something that I expect anyone else to ever have to read, I print. If it's just notes for myself, then I use a quick blend of sloppy print & half-assed cursive. Only some of cursive is actually easier and quicker to write anyway.
However, if I'm doing anything important, it gets typed. Why is this even relevant? As said above, cursive is strictly the domain of third-grade elementary teachers. And even there, they should be spending that time teaching something useful, like typing or reading comprehension.
Meryl Streep's character in Doubt had it absolutely right. Ball-point pens are to blame. People in my parent's generation who learned to write with fountain pens always seemed to have better handwriting than me. I always struggled with cursive in school: my writing was very slow and messy.
A few years ago I bought my first fountain pen, and now, writing is a pleasure. I still don't write terribly neatly; it seems whatever pen you learn to write with determines your handwriting for life. But I can write in cursive much faster and my penmanship has improved a bit. If you have never tried a fountain pen, I urge you to. I never thought writing cursive could be a pleasure.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
As a 25 year old, I was taught good handwriting and cursive when I was in grade school. However, after elementary, I found it pointless to write in cursive anymore. As a matter of fact, in my generation, most people's cursive is worse than their "regular" handwriting. To complicate matters, when we see a cursive "n", we often misread it as "m".
Other things I noticed about our generation is that we have a harder time seeing hyphenated words (as they often appear in newspapers, but almost never on a computer) and we tend like our san-serif fonts more than the regular serif font.
By "cursive" English writing learned in school, most people probably got taught the Palmer Method or possibly D'Nealian. While it was considered to be aesthetically pleasing, it was really hard to do right. I learned it in 3rd grade and never was any good at it. Not only that, but the Palmerian style was the one you lefties like me hated, either because they forced you to use your right hand or just because you could never get the slant right and still form all the letters while staying on the baseline. On the other hand (haha), writing by hand neatly and legibly still has value, and if you like working with your hands its worth looking at something like Getty-Dubay or other modern italic handwriting style. I re-taught myself from a couple of books over a summer a few years ago. In any case, if we are losing the ability to do Palmer Method writing, who cares? It's not even that easy to read when written well. BTW this is very Western alphabet-centric. Arabic, Hebrew, and most asian languages still have a strong handwriting grounding.
Need I say more?
... the death of Blackletter.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I learned to write in cursive while I was in school. Then I entered the real world and have never had any use for it since.
I've been trying to learn to write italics from this website recently. Although I don't write very much, I think it's (or it can be) a beautiful form of expression.
I'm 19, by the way, and while I can write in cursive, I have to think about it, while with printing I don't, so I tend to print almost everywhere. I'm trying to get to the same point with italics.
Why do we need cursive writing to begin with? While I think that there should be some attention paid to penmanship I don't see the need to write in two fashions anymore than I see a need to learn two systems of measurement.
Maybe one of the reasons American children are falling behind is because the curriculum is filed with crap that is outdated or never needed to exist in the first place.
We'd be best off to get rid of cursive writing and the Imperial measurement system from society and save ourselves the trouble. I'm sure there is more nostalgic and idiotic fat that can be cut from the studies of children. Especially since these two wastes of time are taught in a period of the child's development that bears a ton more fruit per hour invested than it does 8-10 years later when we're teaching high science and math.
I know I dropped cursive writing from my skill set the moment I was no longer penalized for not using it.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Just use handwriting in a CAPTCHA to filter out the twentysomethings!
To put a witty saying into 120 characters, jst rmv ll th vwls.
Cursive is harder to read than print anyway.
Personally I think it's an excessively flowery style that does more for the writer's artistic ego than it does the reader's comprehension.
Though I'd much rather see "doctor print" go away first.
I'm 26 and I've struggled with poor handwriting my entire life. And that was not because my teachers didn't try. In my early years, handwriting was graded curriculum- Thus, despite straight A's for everything else, my performance always looked mediocre because of the C's and D's I'd get in the handwriting portion. I can still remember that wide-ruled shitty tan paper that tore if you used an eraser. Line after line of cursive A's and V's, then the next week O's and B's. And on and on, when I could have been learning something useful.
My handwriting now looks identical to my handwriting from at least as far back as 6th grade. And those were the days before we ever typed anything. In high school I hand-wrote papers and notes literally by the ream, and my writing never improved.
Interestingly, my handwriting is very close to my father's, and I saw very little of his writing as I was growing up. We do share some psychological issues which are almost certainly genetic (runs throughout his side of the family), but making a connection between handwriting->psyche issues would be dubious.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
I've never understood why joined-up writing is suppose to be better.
For several years, that's what I did just coz it's what I was taught. Then, while at uni, I realised that my illegible handwriting was making my revision almost impossible, and resolved to change it. I did a lot of experimentation, and discovered that 'printing' (i.e. writing each letter separately) was pretty much the same speed, much neater, and remained easier to read even when writing in a desperate hurry. (I.e. it degraded much more gracefully.)
(Another useful thing I found was that most of the information is in the central parts of the letters, not in the ascenders or descenders; so reducing the ascenders and descenders almost to nothing and making the central parts relatively large helps too. And, like another poster, I find a fountain pen or fibre-tip far more conducive to good writing than a ball-point or roller-ball.)
Ever since, that's how I've written. And several people have complimented me on my writing. It may not look especially refined, but it's neat and clear and easy to read, which is the intent.
So: why all this fuss about joined-up writing? Why is it seen as superior, when (in my case at least), it's clearly less successful? Why is it even a requirement, tested for in some schools?
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This story really make me think that handwritting *will* one day not be teached. We have to assume that one day when full portable computer will be around 20$, there will be absolutly no need to ever try to write anything, except small note where anyone can write in it's own cursive or simply full letters. Speech recognition with search capability would also nearly remove the need to ever write something. For my part, I've been using computer since 7 yo and I'm now 34, and I can tell you that I'm writing probably 4-5 times faster with a keyboard than with a pencil, and it's 10 times more easy to re-read myself (this is when I'm able read back what I've written, but that's another story).
Cursive handwriting, even good cursive handwriting, is much more difficult to read than printed text. If an individual can write faster in cursive, then good for them. I personally believe that the past popularity of cursive writing had more to do with the writing instruments that were used - quills and fountain pens - rather than speed of writing or attractiveness of script. Writing with a fountain pen is much easier (in my experience) when you don't take the tip off of the paper. When you lift a fountain pen off of the paper, ink starts to pool at the tip, when you start to write again, you get a big blot if you're not careful. I imagine that quills operate in the same way. Ballpoint pens don't have that disadvantage, although they do require the user to push down on the paper.
My mother was a professional calligrapher. Am I sorry that computers put her out of a job? No. I'm dysgraphic, thank you very much.
Good cursive handwriting today can be used to impress people, it's technically difficult and requires practice and a steady hand, but I don't think anyone should lament that it isn't being taught in most schools today. One of my girlfriend's coworkers can catch rabbits with his bare hands. It's impressive, but I don't think anyone is upset that we don't teach that in school. Besides, people are still using ham radios and Morse code, I'm sure that clubs and hobbyists will keep cursive writing alive.
Edit: Not learning enough HTML to fix Slashdot's comment system is something I do regret.
We're not quite there yet, but I think literacy might become a special skill for scholars and scribes and arithmetics skills will be the specialty of accountants. The masses will recognize symbols, icons and pictures and they will study with lectures and audio and video recordings. User instructions are already done as cartoon strips with barely any English words in them. Computer program help will be given as video clips much like aircraft safety presentations.
I am twice that age and I have almost never used cursive hand writing since leaving high school. If I have to write by hand, I use block letters. The advantage is that most people can actually read it.
Cursive can be deadly. Doctor's prescriptions were frequently misinterpreted. Computers solved that problem.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
First, I grew up in Hong Kong but we learned cursive since grade 3, and it's throughout the elementary school, we are forced to write in cursive, for homework, for exam, etc.
Then since middle school, I discovered printing is much easy to write, requires less concentration, so and so...so who cares cursive anymore.
Cursive looks beautiful when done right, but IMHO it's not practical...if it's not done right, it's hard for someone to read...print/block letters have a much higher "error tolerance."
Same thing for Chinese Calligraphy, It's taught in the elementary school, but if you ask, no one care about it anymore. It which requires brush pen to write. so it's not even practical for everyday works, in this sense it's even worse then cursive. And it has become an art. I think someday (or today) people who will do cursive because it's an art, but not for any practical use.
I seriously have no idea why we burden kids by making them sit for hours on end filling books with written alphabets that need to be 'just so', when they could be learning so much more - like reading and comprehension perhaps (a skill I believe is much more valuable as a gateway to knowledge - and sadly not given more importance, possibly because it is tougher to test?). I absolutely hated my writing classes, and can honestly say I am now worse off for it (as an engineer, most of my work is either programming and mathematics).
Instead, to develop fine motor skill, may I suggest painting? Or juggling? Or any of the myriad fun activities that develop motor skills that are fun as well. When they have motor skills, they can learn to write in a snap, especially if they know how to read.
So who really cares about handwriting? I have -terrible- handwriting to the point that in elementary school a lot of my teachers couldn't read it. Most of the problem resulted from two things, one was I was pretty much ambidextrous at a young age, however my Kindergarten teacher decided that there was no way that she was going to have a student that could use both hands to write, so she made me write using only my right hand so that became normal, however, I think I was more or less born left-handed and because of that my handwriting is quite messy and the other reason is that I didn't and still don't really write much on paper. I've been using computers since I was 4 or 5 and my typing speed is much better than my handwriting speed. I struggled through cursive for a few reasons, one being that I (correctly) knew that it really didn't matter in the real world because everyone would type everything important. Today all the things that teachers would tell you that you just -had- to learn to write in cursive for letters (can't remember the last hand-written letter I've done), checks (I've used my debit card, more secure and easier than checks, plus no possibility of accidentally overdrawing your account) and they thinking that I would need to use it always in high school and college. Well, in high school I printed everything that had to be written (and I have very messy print too) and typed up anything that was really important to no complaints. And in college I haven't had to write anything save for notes and taking an old netbook to classes to type them up is just as easy and more readable/search-able.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It's all worthless to me now. At the end, they taught us to type in qwerty on Windows, but I use colemak and Ubuntu now, so even that's of no use to me. If none of the girls I met at school marry me, I may consider it to have been a waste of my time.
Get rid of public schools, give us free internet instead. Curiosity has always been the most powerful learning force, and it always will be.
>except letter for a job candidature
Maybe where you live. My wife works at a job placement agency and she says that they tell candidaites that it has to be typed.
She sees tons of resumes that get thrown straight in the garbage if isnt typed.
I stopped writing cursive in eighth grade (1978?), not by accident nor out of laziness but as a subconscious decision. I realized years later that I had subconsciously concluded that cursive was too "personal", imprecise, and non-discrete, so I quit using it. Manuscript, as TFA describes it, just suits my Vulcan-ish neurology much better. Of course with the ubiquity of computers and printers I don't do much handwriting these days anyway, which suits me just fine. I always strove for perfect readability, and mechanically printing my words is more readable than even my OCD-controlled hands could produce.
If readability is or was ever a goal, we shouldn't be mourning the death of cursive or handwriting in general, we should be celebrating it!
to the point of taking notes in classes was pretty much useless. Fortunately I have a good memory. Strike that, great memory. I used to take history classes in college to boost the GPA because they were easy. Names, dates, and events always came naturally to me. Generally speaking, I could either pay attention to the lectures or take notes, not do both. So generally I paid attention to the lectures and managed to well enough (3.4 undergrad GPA, 3.8 Grad School). There were a few classes it did hurt me in, Economics and fiance mainly, but over all not that badly.
Something my dad taught me as I started filling out applications was to use block letters. Once I did, my handwriting became much clearer to read. Other than my signature, I can't think of anything I write in script. In the business world, everything I do is via a digital device of some type, either computer or iPhone.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I'm 29, and an southpaw.
When growing up, I never learnt to write with my hand contorted at an strange angle. So, because my hand would always touch the letters I'd just written, all of my handwritten script suffered from terrible smudging problems..
Back then an certain percentage of your exam results were linked to your handwriting. You were marked down for smudges, as much as 5% (iirc).
Cursive was always an step to far: sure, I could write fast in it, but it'd be completly unreadable even to me. Especially when forced to write with an foutain-tipped pen (as we had to back then).
Thankfully the computer came and fixed everything. I can type faster than I can write, it's always neat and my (terrible) spelling is automatically corrected. Plus, I'm as handicaped as an right hander.
In second grade they taught us cursive, claiming that we would use it for the rest of our life and without it we would never get a job. When we switched over to middle school none of our teachers used cursive, and none of them would accept papers written in cursive either.
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I'm Russian and in Russia writing in cursive is considered a basic skill. And almost everyone use it for handwriting (because it's nice and flowing), even though it's not very similar to printed letters.
I always wonder why cursive is so unpopular in the USA. Is it a cultural thing?
I was forced to use cursive. I sucked at it and had to teach myself how to print.
My elementary school taught cursive. Period. Students transferring in from other districts who knew how to print had their grades docked until they learned cursive - no matter how awful it looked. While my elementary school was quite insistent, my high school (no middle school, district was too small) didn't care either way... and because my cursive was hideously illegible and years of forced "practice" hadn't improved it at all, I spent all of seventh grade and most of eighth teaching myself how to print.
Almost two decades later and my self-taught handwriting style is still legible. Early samples are a bit weird (the cursive "I" took a long time to shake, for example), and if I'm rushed you can't tell my 5s from my Ss, my e's from my c's from my g's from my l's, but it works extremely well for me - I print faster than I was ever able to write in cursive, my writing is more legible, and most importantly, it was self taught. The public education system was absolutely no help in this regard, and for the first six years of my public school career the system offered no help or support - and in fact penalized - students who wanted to write but just couldn't deal with cursive.
Good penmanship is certainly an art form, but I really think the majority of society will happily settle for a lettered populace that can simply write legibly. Print, in my experience, is a hell of a lot more legible than cursive - there's a reason that every post-it note or hand-written message that lands on my desk at work is printed - so I can read it.
Make "penmanship" an elective. Teach the kids print - everything - everything - we read is printed or displayed that way... why should we be forced to learn an antiquated writing system that bears only the vaguest of relations to the type we read every day... unless we want to?
Screw cursive - that's six years of docked grades, extra coursework, and being GROUNDED and forced to practice for hours and hours in the parental and school district-al hopes that operant conditioning will produce their demanded assembly-line results. Six years I could have spent learning hand printing and how to type - both of which are things I had to teach myself later in life.
...and I don't use it anymore either. It's just not needed. Grew up with it, all school papers and tests (and penmanship was part of the grade always) and snail mail letters in cursive, but since around the mid 90s or so, with having a decent enough machine with a printer, I can't recall actually writing anything long and involved in cursive, and before that going back to the 70s, most everything I wrote longer than a thankyou note was typed on a manual typewriter anyway. Not all, but most. I can still do it of course, and it remains legible..but I would agree, it's going the way of the dodo. It is faster for me than block writing though, by a considerable degree.
I can't really say if this is overall good or bad, it's a learned skill, but I can't see it as being terribly useful for much longer outside of treating it more like art than a day to day necessity. Electronic communications has been a huge game changer.
I think you can see something similar with languages and immigration. Folks from nation A move to B, they struggle to learn the new language, and even if they do, retain an obvious foreign accent forever. By the second generation, the new language is prominent, but the old language is still understood at home with the family. By the third generation it is mostly gone except for a few words and phrases. Significant change doesn't take very long.
I'm 38 and have the same "problem" I haven't tried to write in cursive in a LONG time, and basically print whenever I need to. I still have a cursive signature of course. I'm a little embarrased about it at times but.. meh.
This is mostly true. With the advent of no child left behind, they all are. Writing and cursive in general are no longer part of the curriculum. Though cursive is no longer a necessary skill unless you're planning on a career in the literary or graphic arts.
I'm more concerned about this generations' general inability to form complete sentences. They haven't learned their language mostly because it wasn't taught to them.
Children who have attended elementary in the last ten years are at the most disadvantaged. They haven't learned proper language skills. Their writing is being taught in template format. They will never be effective communicators. Educators all knew better and were silenced by the administration at every level. Now teachers just don't care. Children still aren't learning proper language skills.
Who should we blame when other children around the world have better second language skills in English than our childrens' first language skills?
They're using their grammar skills there.
Write cursive?! I can't even read that sort of illegible scrawl.
I'm 28. I learned cursive in the third grade and have not used it since -- unless you count signing my name. In my case, you probably shouldn't given that I sign my name with one initial + scribble and a second initial + scribble. My signature isn't even close to legible, but nobody cares.
It's not an easy skill to learn, but it was incredibly easy one to forget. We really probably shouldn't be wasting Kids time with this -- I don't see what the practical value is in teaching kids how to write cursive these days. Other than reading letters from my Great Grandmother, now dead, or the original copy of the Declaration of Independence or perhaps various signatures (in as much as they could be read) I can't really even see the value in learning to read cursive either.
But I could at least still read it. I say, so what if it goes the way of greek?
Ellinika Glossa: 15 million speakers can't be wrong.
I remember in 1st and 2nd grades looking forward to 3rd grade when I could learn to write cursive. Then, by the end of 3rd grade all I looked forward to was 5th grade, when we were allowed to choose how to write, and then entire class promptly went back to printing.
What does that make me? Boomer-Y? ;-) In my case it might be due to lack of hand-eye coordination, but I suspect in part it's due to being too impatient to write when I can type faster...
dave
I'm 27, and I cannot recall a pre-computer writing age. For elementary school in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I wrote my essays in AppleWriter for the Apple ][ and printed them out on a nice loud dot-matrix printer to turn in. Just about the only time I actually wrote anything more than brief notes by hand was when we were required to do in-class essays for one reason or another, which were rarely longer than 2-3 pages.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
There's exactly one profession that requires cursive handwriting skills.
Third grade teachers.
And doctors.
You're not giving your "M.D." status until you can write in illegible cursive.
Cursive was one of the most useless things taught to me in school. When I hit 6th grade I realized typing my assignments was much faster. All through out middle school I had teachers telling me to handwrite my assignment and would down grade me for not doing so. I would write in the most illegible cursive ever imaginable! I think I was the one who got the last laugh. I had one of those teachers in 8th grade that would consistantly lose my assignments. I believe it happened at least 8 times. 7 of those times it was a matter of reprinting the last assignment!
I hate handwriting anything. I regularly can reach 60-70 wpm which is consistent with how fast I can think up what to say. My little brother is in 3rd grade and is sadly being taught this useless skill. I say trim it out of the curriculum and fill it with some more reading.
Today, only the punch card can satisfy the information density required by today's programming languages
What did you use to punch a card? If I remember my computer history classes correctly, it was a keyboard. Punch cards were just an early keyboard interface, to be replaced by electronic interfaces such as serial ports, AT and PS/2, and eventually USB.
I am one of the many people who remember learning cursive but now never do it (and I'm 39). Every once in a while when bored I will write out the alphabet, just to prove I remember it.
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
My handwriting is almost illegible, so I went into the only career path where it is acceptable. I start medschool in September,
I'm Australian and I've recently come to Europe. I write in something that could be called cursive (it's based on Victorian Modern Cursive, and it's often joined up just because I'm too lazy to lift the pen, but it has the aesthetics of modern print handwriting). Europeans often have trouble decyphering certain letters, like a v, which has a round bottom for me, so Europeans think it's a u. Because I always put in the down-stroke of a u (it'd be a v otherwise!), sometimes Europeans think it looks like a messy n. In these cases, I'm writing exactly how I was taught in school.[1]
Also, I have trouble with certain European letters: in particular, many Germans write a small d as a backwards b (i.e. starting from top, going down, and doing an anti-clockwise loop at the bottom). I'm bad at distinguishing left-to-right from right-to-left, so it looks identical to a b for me. (I don't know why that doesn't happen in print.) I also can never understand what counts as an "r" for some people here.
So maybe it's not such a bad thing that handwriting is becoming more print-like...
[1]: Fortunately, the English orthography is designed to assume u and v are identical and that u and n are hard to distinguish. It's why very few words end in -v (think "give", "have", which have a short vowel but a silent -e), and why lots of words have a long o that's pronounced like a short u (think "come", "love").
Look out!
7000 lives could have been saved EVERY YEAR if not for the poor penmanship by doctors: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1578074,00.html
A lot of doctors have real bad handwriting and drug stores can read them that well.
First of all this article seems like their trying to troll a little.
Next, they know how to write, but they choose not to due to it being an more inferior form of record keeping and is not as portable as other forms, such as typing.
I personally have not found anyone's whose writing can keep up with my typing speeds.
The point is, let go of the old way, it is important, but it is not very important.
Cursive was always meant to be a form of cheat writing anyway.
I'm 38, and have been loathing cursive for a good 30 of those years myself :).
In the Portland Public Schools, we had some crazy oscillation between cursive and "italic" - I vividly remember a school or district-wide switch from the cursive we'd been learning for a few years to a new italic form of writing that I found much preferable. Probably 4th-5th grade? And then when I got to middle school everyone else was still doing cursive and it threw me for a loop.
Wikipedia may have solved the mystery for me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getty-Dubay
The Getty-Dubay handwriting method was developed in 1976 at Portland State. We must have been a test location or something.
Anyway, I was a bit of an outlier. In 5th grade I was simultaneous in TAG and advanced English and math classes while doing special ed for spelling and handwriting. I've also been prone to hand cramping trying to push the pencil down so hard. It was a 10th grade math teacher who came up with the idea of trying other writing implements. I found that a fine-point felt tipped pen was much more legible and much less tiring. And I was able to apply a calligraphy class I'd taken before, which made a huge difference. Erasers are one of those good-only-in-theory things anyway; just crossing out a mistake worked fine. And a calligraphic technique, since it felt more like art than a burden, slowed be down enough to not be so sloppy, which probably sped things up on net. "Make haste slowly" is an important lesson I've been trying to teach my own kids :).
My 9 year old son's in a similar boat, in a TAG magnet school, but well below grade level in handwriting. Since he's quite good at drawing, I'm hoping to get him interested in calligraphy as a way to apply those skills and thoughtfulness to handwriting, instead of treating it as a burden he's racing through to get over.
My parents had gone to Reed in the mid 60's when they had a famous calligraphy teacher, and my father has continued to use that as his formal handwriting style since. On a trip to Europe he bought me a nice Lamy italic nib fountain pen, which really did nicely for calligraphy, and I started using it for everything. It kind of wigged out my physics teachers when I started turning in exams and homework that looked like an illustrated manuscript, but it sure was much more legible than cursive pencil ever could have been.
For all the time I spent learning handwriting, and the many classes I actually enjoyed, I have to say the single most valuable class I took in all of school was typing in the 6th grade. I do a good 120-130 words a minute these days, which sometimes is an almost linear productivity gain.
My video compression blog
My wife and I were asked to write a (handwritten) character reference for someone a couple years ago. My father had provided a letter for reference that he had written, beautifully of course, in cursive. Since my wife also has excellent cursive handwriting I sat down taking my time to write as neatly as possible, and took an hour to write a page of script. I wrote many letters in my youth but had a really hard time getting the flow after 30 plus years - since engineering school over 25 years ago I have written all caps when handwriting so my writing is legible, and I had an amazingly hard time doing joined-up writing again. And had to google how to write a capital Q. And when I was done my wife asked what took my so long. When I showed her my letter she _laughed_. She had printed hers.
We're too busy teaching children about sex in our schools to bother with art, music or literacy.
But seriously, teaching kids to touch type is massively more important than teaching them cursive. But either skill can be learned at any stage of life. I think in our 20s and 30s we could easily learn/relearn cursive if we want. And the same goes for typing, get some touch type software and/or a book and have at it. Neither necessary has to be taught in a public school, but if I could only pick one that most students in the 21st century learn, I'd say typing is going to be more generally useful and directly applicable to future employment.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
26 Years Old and Can't Write In Cursive
Twelve boys broke loose in '73
From Milhaven remedial elementary
Twelve pictures lined up across the front page
seems the teachers had a summertime war to wage
The principal told the kids they had nothing to fear
The last thing they'd wanna do is hang around here
They mostly came from towns with long French names
But one of the dozen was a hometown shame
Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall
Been one seat empty 18 years in all
Freezing slow time away from the world
He's 26 years old, can't write in cursive
He's 26 years old, can't write in cursive
We were sitting round table, heard the telephone ring
Father said he'd tell me if he saw anything
Heard the tap on the window in the middle of the night
Held back the curtains for my older brother Mike
See my sister got mooned, so a kid got a wedgie
Local boy went to detention, kid's hanging on the fence
Folks went back to normal when they closed the case
They still stare at their shoes when they pass our place
My mother cried "The horror has finally ceased"
He whispered "yeah, for the time being, at least"
Over his shoulder, on the school bus megaphone
Said "Let's go Michael, son, we're taking you home"
Same pattern on the table, same clock on the wall
Been one seat empty 18 years in all
Freezing slow time away from the world
He's 26 years old, can't write in cursive
He's 26 years old, can't write in cursive
First Slashdot post that I read and think "Shit, that's me."
Send your spendthrift head of state this
I'm 22 years old, and I think the last time I was required to write in cursive was in 3rd or 4th grade. It really has been that long since since I have. Starting in middle school, typing on computers was either encouraged or required, and since we had a computer in my home, that was the end of that. I'm tempted to go find a piece of paper and write some sentences to see if I can actually remember every single letter in cursive. I don't think I could. Of course, I can't personally see any inherent value in cursive writing, and I don't see its relation to writing/grammar in general. It's a writing style. Sometimes it looks purty. Nothing more.
I learned cursive in the 3rd grade. I haven't had to use it since. The only cursive I know is how to write my signature. I'm 21 so I did not come of age before computers.
if reading things in cursive was beneficial, we'd all be using cursive fonts all over the place on computers. I dont think I've seen anyone use a cursive font on a computer that made things better in any way ever, so I can only conclude that reading cursive sucks compared to a nice clean (preferably san serif) font.
now there's the personal preference aspect, that you may prefer to hand write something; but having established that reading cursive is inferior to pretty much any decent font, you're not doing anyone any favors by opting to handwrite things.
in short, good riddance.
TIAEAE!
the most common use for manual writing is filling in forms... where cursive is undesirable anyway
Wish I could have convinced my last escrow officer that was true! We were moving to a new area and my spouse couldn't make it to the closing on our new house. So she gave me POA for the closing papers. Guess what? My block-letter initials were fine because that's what I've always used, consistently. But they told me I had to use script for my spouse's signature and initials, even though my version would never match. By now, the only cursive I know well is embedded in my signature, and that's illegible. So the first several pages of paperwork was a struggle as I remembered. And it's those capital letters that are least used, too.
I stopped using script just as soon as my elementary school teachers stopped enforcing it; probably 6th grade.
My handwriting is literally illegible to anyone but me however I can write extremely fast. I literally have my own alphabet now. Why you ask? All thanks to my 6-8th grade private school teacher Mr Boyette. I have no idea how many thousands of pages of hierarchical outline notes I must have taken from those damn classes. He graded solely by the notes we take in his class and we were forced to write down every single thing he said. He was insanely organized and I think he might have been schizophrenic.
I also moved between second and third grade. The school where I moved from taught cursive in the third grade, the school where I moved to taught it in second. I remember that summer as kind of miserable, having to do homework all summer long to relearn the frickin' alphabet.
Personally, I'd be perfectly content if cursive writing simply went away forever. Keep a record of what it looks like for historical information, and let it die. From third through sixth grade, I was constantly berated by my teachers for my bad handwriting, most likely because I didn't learn cursive like everyone else did and I hated it so badly. In sixth grade, I told my teacher that I wrote so badly because I hate cursive writing. He looked at me like I was crazy and finally said, "Then don't! I don't care what you write in, as long as I can understand it."
The only problem I had after that was when I got to be a junior in high school, and my teacher failed me on the first essay I wrote because it wasn't in cursive. What an idiot. Every essay I wrote for her after that took me twice as long as the other kids, because I had to sit there thinking, "Shit, how do you make a cursive F?" That was the one and only class, though. In everything else, I write normal letters, and I'm actually quite neat at it.
I don't understand the comments from people who say that cursive writing is faster or that your hand tires out less. Sounds like a bunch of BS to me. While printing requires that you pick up your pencil more, cursive requires more strokes and longer periods of pressure on the page. I can write plenty fast enough, thank you, and neatly, without tiring, too.
I honestly think it's idiotic that in the English language, we have four glyphs for each letter that kids are forced to memorize, upper- and lower-case variations for both print and cursive writing. 104 symbols to represent 26 letters. As if we don't force our kids to jump through enough hoops without really learning anything. As for me, I won't be forcing any kids to learn cursive.
Late 30s, learned cursive in primary school, have NEVER willingly used it and am glad its dead. It's ugly and horrible and near-illegible and one of the most pointless inventions ever. It sacrifices all regularity and readability for a marginal speed improvement and there are no professional situations I know of where it's acceptable to use; you'd be better off learning how to write clearly on a whiteboard, at least those are in use.
Now, Palm Graffiti 1 (sadly mourned)... now that stood a serious chance of permanently rewriting my *printing* skills until I couldn't remember how to write a 't'.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Pupils are not taught any other script, period. That inability to read hand-written texts and write legible messages sounds like a very US-centry problem.
If the death of cursive could force the demise of the pseudoscience of handwriting analysis, it would be a very good thing.
I am 26 year old, I write cursive everyday for taking notes, for the list of thing to buy/do, ...
Note that french cursive ( http://fr.fotolia.com/id/4441443 ) is a bit different from english one.
I just did a little experiment. I wrote down, as best as I could remember (I'm 22, learned cursive at 7 and haven't used it regularly since), the cursive alphabet in upper and lower case, then checked them against the correct way of doing things online. Of a possible 52, I was able to remember and write 36 correctly. The funny part is that some of the letters I got wrong are ones I use all the time in my signature.
This sig is false.
I'm 20 years old and back in Elementary school they forced cursive on us; always telling us, "You need to learn this now, if you don't write your papers in cursive when you get older then they'll give you an F." After I got out of elementary school cursive was never mentioned again. Three years ago when I had to take the SAT we had to write a sort of contract statement and it had to be written in cursive, but no one in the room knew how to write in cursive except for the teacher, she had to write the letters up on the board because we didn't even know what they looked like. Cursive is definitely dead.
I'm 50 years old and the product of private Jewish schools. Penmanship was a requirement in grades 2 through 6, if I remember correctly and, yes, I was taught the Palmer method with a fountain pen. Ball point pens were forbidden. I high school I reverted to block printing with a ball point and my penmanship sucked. During my career as a software engineer I have worked a number of places that required us to keep notes in a hard bond notebook. When the notebook was full they were turned over to the company lawyers who reviewed them for anything that could be patented. I got so sick and tired of having to go down to their office and translate my handwriting that went out and bought a few used fountain pens and forced myself to relearn good penmanship.
Oh, the reason that writing with a fountain pens often produces better handwriting is the fact that it requires a certain technique and discipline that writing with a bell point does not require.
Yes, I know it is archaic but cursive writing does have its uses. Do you ever write to your congress person? Any damn fool can send an email but a hand written letter gets their attention. They get so few of them they are treated as special especially by those on their staff who have never hand written a letter before.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
The only time in the past decade I've had to write in cursive was on the GRE. For some reason they had us copy a honor statement in cursive before we took the test. I wasted about 10 minutes on that stupid thing, my head trying to control my hand, which kept slipping back into how I normally write (I stopped using even lowercase letters back in 8th grade, trying to copy my Dad's blueprint-style handwriting).
Eventually I gave up and just wrote as I normally do but just didn't move the pen off the page between letters. Of course no one ever looked at it and I never heard anything about it.
I wonder if it's not some devious psychological trick to throw the test taker off his game. My fellow grad school students also had to do the same thing, they were all were confused and annoyed by it and eventually gave up like I did. Preparation for the frustration and pointlessness of grad school life maybe.
Good Riddance. My mother, a baby boomer, writes me cursive notes. Her handwriting is atrocious. I often can't read half of it. This is classical. By the way, I have beautiful cursive, in many styles, because I studied it and did calligraphy for years. Its a great way to earn money. The problem is too many people pretend to write cursive and are actually scribbling garbage. They should type.
If you are seeing my handwriting it is for one of three reasons.
1) I'm filling out an application.
2) You are reading my signature.
3) You are reading my notes.
In any of those instances I could actually careless if you can read my handwriting. I hate cursive I always have. I remember my grandmother used to write me letters in cursive. I just stopped reading them because it wasn't worth the eye strain.
I don't know what good reason there is for writing in cursive. I've never heard of one. It just seems to be something that is anachronistic and has no place in a modern society.
To all the dinosaurs who still insist that writing in cursive is important: You can think that but I'm never going to bother read anything you write.
IMAGE VERIFICATION IS EVIL!
Does anybody know why doctors still mostly hand write prescriptions? They are (to me) almost illegible. Wouldn't printing in block letters reduce the risk of a pharmacist mis-reading a prescription with possibly serious negative consequences. Is it tradition, resistance to change, some sort of medieval security by obscurity? I am genuinely curious to know.
Anceint Greek isn't taught in most schools either - should we lament the 'decline of 26 year olds being able to understand Ancient Greek'? Of course not.
I wish I could read ancient greek :(
You can't take the sky from me...
Instead of cursive, anyway. When I got to college they spent our first quarter teaching everyone how to write again.
It's a whole "typeface" (ha) designed entirely to be legible no matter how bad your handwriting is. Sounds like it meets all the modern needs of handwriting pretty well.
I never found any of the "benefits" of cursive to really help me - the extra motion in the letters always canceled out the benefits of a smoother stroke.
On my Windows Mobile touchscreen phones/PDAs, the Transcriber handwriting recognizer works much better when I write in cursive than with printing... so Microsoft is also part of the cursive writing conspiracy. ;-)
Also most people seem to ignore the fact that printing is supposed for everyday use, but cursive is/was the script to be used for formal on-paper correspondence. I guess since nobody sends snail mail letters to anybody anymore, cursive is used less and less.
... all the engineers who have spent years on developing handwriting recognition software say collectively "frell".
51 years old. Can't write in cursive. Printing and keyboard only.
Next subject...
Seriously. If you can't read well written cursive then you shouldn't just "feel" illiterate, you should acknowledge that you are, in fact, not literate. At least in my opinion.
illiterate - 2.a. Marked by inferiority to an expected standard of familiarity with language and literature. (Source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/illiterate)
This leads to the discussion of whether or not reading and writing in cursive is an "expected standard of familiarity." I believe that it is. It might be argued, however, that our society either no longer expects -- or expects but no longer requires -- the capability to read and write script. Perhaps it is most accurate to say that true English language literacy (both using cursive and spelling as examples) is no longer required for adequate social acceptance and job performance due to the capability of our machines to be literate for us.
With the cost of personal computers dropping like rocks and the speed in which people can type vs writing handwriting is becoming more and more obsolete. Hand written text is difficult for humans and computer to read and most importantly is not in a digital format which most companies and people use today.
I only use handwriting for sticky notes and on a quick memo pad and at that its printed not in cursive.
The way our society communicates has evolved. People use the mail less frequently and e-mail is more popular. Is anybody using cursive script to post messages on Slashdot? I think not . If your writing on your computer screen we don't see it sorry.
and it has probably been 30 years since I've written in cursive. My penmanship was always atrocious, in either print or cursive. I have decent enough motor control, but not for handwriting.
We learned typing in 8th or 9th grade. That was my salvation. After that, I think I wrote a few long letters to my parents in college, but that was about it for actually hand writing anything.
Personally, I think this is a completely negligible loss.
American schools teach writing with a pencil and then a ballpoint pen and neither of these implements is suited for cursive (because of pressure and angle required), cursive is natural with a nib pen, which is not allowed in schools since 80s.
Or
HERPES CREAM
I'm pretty sure they do it for privacy.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
My office-mates were discussing this. Apparently, some professor on the radio was complaining that kids would be unable to read older documents written in cursive. And that seemed the best argument he could come up with.
Honestly, I think that's silly. They don't teach gothic script (Sütterlinschrift or Fraktur) in Germany anymore. Those who need it just LEARN it. This is no different from learning to read Chinese, Hebrew or particularly Arabic. They're not THAT hard to learn when you need them.
But maybe that's just me. Do most people have a really hard time learning to interpret a foreign script? It seems to me that it should be particularly easy if it's just a "code" for the same letters and words you use in your native language.
I'm also 26, have a profession, and a Bachelor's degree. I still don't know how to:
1. Tie a bow tie
2. Ride a horse
3. Drive a stick (although I want to learn)
4. Use a telegraph or send Morse code
Except for 3, I don't think I've ever been denied an opportunity I wanted because I didn't know those things. Oh add cursive to that list too. Last time I tried was when I was in a meeting and was very, very bored.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
I always hated cursive. Not sure why. I ended up teaching myself Chancery Italic instead. Kinda hurt my grades in school, but I have found it much better suited to occasional writing in a typing world. It's neat and lacks some of the stranger specialty letter forms that seem to have been added to cursive to speed up writing (r,s...). Writing fast and neatly made sense in the 20th century, but now I think students are better served by something simpler and clearer plus hardcore typing instruction through all of high school.
Computer Science is all about trying to find the right wrench to bang in the right screw. -T.Cumbo?
Outside of signing something, I can't remember the last time I had to write something in cursive. Maybe in 2nd grade? I never liked it anyways.
Sincerely, Your Dread Lord CyberSkull Un-Certified Looney, Heretic @ Large, etc. . .
My reply
How dare you put cursive and blacksmithing into the same group... blacksmithing is far more usefull in today's society. How many jobs can you get solely based on good cursive script? None. But I can get a job as a ferrier or artisan blacksmith, bladesmith etc.
I learned to type before I could handwrite, and to this day doing anything more than writing a few notes on a whiteboard or filling out a 1-page form is difficult and my hand cramps up, and my writing is almost always horrid.
I am 26. My father got a C64 right before I turned two. I wanted to start playing with it immediately, but of course to do so often required some very basic typing (LOAD * 8,1). My father also worked at a company that was fairly early in having everyone with a terminal on their desk with an AS/400 style mainframe system. I remember when I was 4 having him show me how to send network messages to his terminal (yes, I was basically IM'ing my dad from another room in 1986 when I was 4). I clearly remember running to another room asking him how to spell eat, because I wanted to type "Go Eat Worms" but at first typed "Go Ate Worms" and it didn't look quite right to me. We got our first x86 system when I was 6, and by this time I was already very proficient typing and could probably get 30-45wpm depending on if I knew how to spell the words or not (hey, I was 6!).
Consequently, I barely ever learned to write. Yea, I forced myself to do some of it in grade-school because I had to, but it was never neat and I always much preferred to type things when I could. Learning cursive seemed backwards. Why weren't the other students being taught how to type at the time instead? It didn't make sense to me. In high school I started carrying a laptop frequently to class- running Zipslack.
To this day I hate writing by hand. The only real downside is that I'm starting to feel the pain from typing for ~24 years and my wrists and thumbs and hurting.
Tibbon
tibbon.com
I'm in my late 30's and I'm also going to vote that this notion that cursive has some place still in a curriculum is needed. All I use it for, as has been said so many times in this topic, is my signature. And as with many others it's more a bunch of squiggles rather than anything resembling my name. My printed name would actually be more useful as it still would have my unique penmanship while actually being readable.
It would be much better for young students to learn typing in place of cursive. I'd go so far as to say we should be debating what keyboard layout we should be teaching vs lamenting the dying throws of cursive.
I personally took typing as soon as it was offered to me and of all the practical skills I have learned in school it has to rank up there in the top 3. I of course learned on a typewriter, a push-key one no less, and as such can adapt to nearly any keyboard to boot.
I could go on because like many others my cursive set me back, and then never even did anything for me!, while in school. I just never had the innate skill or desire to make my cursive viable for myself. That being said my printing works just fine and I even did very well in my manual drafting classes. Cursive is just not for everyone and since it's not a requirement for modern life it needs to go.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I'm 24 and I generally recieved poor marks in penmanship in grade school, we were graded on it up until the 6th grade or so. However, I use cursive quite frequently. When taking notes or an exam it is simply faster and keeps my hand from cramping up. With that being said, I do use regular print regularly in some instances, often for letters like X,S,H, etc.
Granted, as a PhD student I am a bit of a statistical outlyer, but I doubt cursive will die. If anything, it will become something quaint and exotic. We wouldn't expect a lay person to be able to read COBOL; perhaps in 20 years cursive will be the domain of academics and other quirky groups.
I learned writing at five, on my Dad's typewriter. I started copying articles from an encyclopedia (until my parents took it away from me because it was a medical encyclopedia and one of the first entries was "abortion"). I wrote little stories and was quite good at spelling and speed. I began to handwrite, the same clear letters that I knew from the typewriter, from street signs, everywhere.
Then came school. They didn't care that I could type and handwrite. According to them, my handwriting was all wrong, and there were no typewriters at school, let alone computers (early 70s). They wanted me to draw loops. Boring loops all over the page, for hours. They forced me to learn a new writing system that nobody out of school used and where sequences of 'i's, 'u's, 'm's and 'n's were undecipherable unless you counted the vertical lines. It was less legible, harder to write, and uglier. But I didn't have a choice, so I went along with it for some years, until they stopped insisting on cursive and I could go back to writing the letters that everybody else used, except doctors and teachers.
I say, good riddance.
My ability with a pen or pencil has always been an issue and I'm about to turn 65. Some people just have lousy hand writing and even making an effort to improve did little good throughout my school years and college. After going to a keyboard things got even worse as I used script less and less.
Frankly a keyboard is now so superior that going back to script seems like a rotten idea. Reading a doctor's prescription may be the ultimate example of why script should be avoided at all costs.
I'm 22 and was taught cursive in grade school but since I have Muscular Dystrophy, it got hard to write and made my hand fatique. So by the suggestions of teachers and my parents - I started to bring a recorder to school and instead of writing notes I just went over the tape and studied that. This was just before middle school. I started on computers at age 12 or 6th grade.
By middle school I was doing all my homework on my laptop or home computer. In High School I couldn't read handwriting for my life, I did all my homework on a laptop. Same with essays, and tests. I would just do "1. a b or c" choose one from 1-50 or so. It was faster, quicker and kept my hands from cramping since I type at around 100 wpm.
My hands are basically the only things I can still use, which is fine by me. I'm just glad computers exist. Handwriting going the way of the horse isn't a real problem. Let it go.
I've heard it described as a form of 'bastard copperplate'.
Learning cursive messed up my handwriting quite a bit, so I ditched it completely in my third last year of school in favor of legible printing (so that markers would be able to read my exams).
And you know what, I'm a successful, attractive, well paid adult perfectly capable of participating in modern society. And gosh darn it people like me.
Why are all standard fonts not script?
If it's inherently better, easier to read as some of you claim...
Because you are all wrong that's why.
Print is superior and that's that...
wants to say "screw it, who cares, i rarely handwrite anything anymore" but it feels like one of those nostalic things i might pick up again if i get bored...if only to flaunt it to a 19 year old.
Good people go to bed earlier.
How can we get anywhere if they are illiterate with brush in hand, or if they can't tell gyronny from verre or gules from sable... these are important skills for the modern scribe or herald!
No really, when you are going in for a surgery that is not an emergency situation, ask for a cursive handwriting sample. I know everyone Ha-Ha Te-Hes doctors handwriting, but as my friends who do medical transcription will attest; bad handwriting but amazingly consistent sizing. The fine motor control that a surgeon needs is demanding. Then, top it off with endurance. (My friend had a full mastectomy with a complete reconstruction. 14 hours on the table, reattaching arteries and veins and she now looks great. She really misses her girls but is happy to be cancer free and look the same as before it all started.) And here we have 300+ armchair slashdotters saying good riddance to cursive. Really, are you party to the same group that is getting rid of band in schools?
I consider handwriting when I hire someone. If their handwriting is illegible and their printing is ugly it is a mark against them. It shows an innate lack of grace and beauty. Any potential employee has long-term potential, one who has only developed in a couple of areas can't be relied on for the more interesting decisions. Years and experience will help a little, but if they are in their 20's or older and don't put the effort into small things, they aren't likely to change in the future.
I can't even read cursive :/
I'm in my forties. I've had a pretty good career to date, working as a tech, in management, and nowadays having my own company. I haven't used cursive since I was in grade school. Never really bothered mastering it, and today I don't use it beyond scrawling a signature.
What was much more useful was learning to type. I picked up enough speed at typing to get things done, and switched to a computer right when I went to college. Never looked back!
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Not only have I forgotten how to write in cursive, I've forgotten how to write in lower case.
I could never see the point of cursive. I still know how to do it but rarely use it. The only thing I still use cursive for of course is my signature. But even that, well, it's not the neatest in the world.
In school I regularly got dinged for penmanship but by 7th grade, home computers and more importantly inexpensive printers started happening. Why the hell did I even know how to write if I could type it?
I'm a leftie and my writing looks like absolute shit. The worse is writing on a whiteboard. I'll smudge the hell out of whatever it is I write.
When I first started college, I used to write all kinds of notes. Eventually I realized that 1) I could never read what I wrote down and 2) I never actually referred to what I wrote anyway. After that, I stopped writing down notes and started to pay attention to what the professor was saying. The grades on my finals didn't change a bit. I think the more you take notes, the less attention you actually pay in class. YMMV
Guess it is an American definition and seems to be the source of much confusion :-)
Cursive = That curvy, scripty looking junk where all the letters are connected. Think caligraphy.
"Whatever" = Print, I guess. You know. Normal handwriting where the letters aren't all connected. Not all caps; it is mixed case just like you'd expect. Just not all scripty looking garbage that is impossible to read and impossible for left-handers like me to write.
When you lift the nib off the paper and put it back down again (as in printing) a fountain pen tends to leave a sometimes large drop of ink. But cursive writing does not have the pen leave the page for each and every letter or for that matter the independent strokes for each letter. Hence cursive writing's purpose. Since people rarely use fountain pens or quill pens but rather use ball point pens (which are supposed to control the flow of ink and prevent the drops from forming when pressing and lifting the pen from the page) there is little reason for cursive writing save for the pedants who confuse the appearance of style with substance.
I too make weird hybrid words. I think my hand doesn't have any practice writing out words and has to revert back to "thinking" about each letter of a word. Just like when you were learning to type and had to think about every letter--with practice you typed in words, not letters. Probably the same kind of deal with handwriting--when you practice, your arm and fingers memorize all the strokes required to draw out each word or syllable.
I wonder, if you watched us write by hand, if our patterns mimicked somebody who was just learning to write. It might help prove my theory right.
I am 68, and when my Nokia N95 stopped charging, as it happened because the SMT to battery mount solder had failed, a VERY common fault for this model, I fixed it with some BlueTak, Araldite, a 15w soldering iron and a frying pan, some thought, and a lot of care. Including re-designing the 3 prong SMD to battery interface so that it wouldn't fail again.
Hint, with SMD keep things warm, solder melt-30C, use glue, Araldite sets in about 7 seconds, if very warm, to stabalise what you will solder. Pre-heat frying pan, use upside down to keep PCB warm, solder quickly and properly, easy. I have removed and replaced a gull wing i486 with 180+ legs using a solder sucker, warm air and a lot of patience. Can be done.
You are the guy who doesn't know what the modulo operator is and writes crazy batches of if{} statements rather then doing a simple modulo.
For example, if it is 12 at night, what time will it be 45 hours from now?
Easy:
45hr % 24hr = 21hr
What about AM/PM?
45hr % 12hr = 9hr
AM or PM?
Easy. Watch this little proof:
45hr - 12hr = 33hr
33hr % 24hr = 9hr
33hr % 12hr = 9hr
Since 9 = 9, must be AM.
In the 45 case, 9 != 21, so 45 hours out it must be 9PM.
You'd only be able to solve this if you learned at least a little bit about division and remainders. Many basic check digits use modulo arithmatic to compute their values as well. I've seen code that did exactly what I did above, only with huge if{} statements or worse, huge for() loops...
Personally, I think it is a brilliant interview question.
Are you from a southern state, perchance?
Because not many people I know talk slower than the fastest typist I know. And if you hear spanish or (especially) italian speakers going hell for leather, well, they're in a league of their own... :-D
On the other hand, if people could type on a QWERTY-board faster than most folks could take, what need would there be for stenotype machines?
In my case, it was 1st and 2nd.
My dad got tranferred to Boston in the middle of my first grade year (spring 1969). When I proudly printed my name for my new teacher, I was informed that they used handwriting.
When we moved back to SoCal a year later (middle of 2nd grade), the exact reverse happened.
I blame that whole mess for my illegible cursive.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I had to learned to write in cursive in grade school. It was a private school and we were even graded on "penmanship." Sissy-man-ship if you ask me. As soon as I was allowed I switched back to printing. I even took drafting in high school (before CAD was prevalent) and lettering was graded but it was block printing. Later, during my time in the military, my job required me to transcribe radio live transmissions. Most of us printed and didn't have too much trouble keeping up with speakers. A large part of our transcription was numbers though and last I checked there were no cursive numbers. If cursive was all that important there would be cursive numbers. BAH!
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
I wonder how many youngsters today cannot even read cursive? I hadn't even really thought about it but I suppose it would look rather foreign and confusing if you were never taught.
I don't use cursive, haven't used cursive since I was 10. I learned the old cursive, then I went to a new school and it had a different variation of cursive which I learned, then I changed schools again and yet again cursive changed. At this point I wasn't in one of those years where they forced you to learn it so I just said bugger it and refused to learn it yet again. Since my teachers couldn't actually read my cursive, I printed, no one ever cared. Add to that the fact that so many of the things we write in these days are forms with limited available space and that cursive, at least in my experience takes up more space, and you've got yet another reason to print.
Being able to write legibly is of course necessary, even if you have to take some extra time to do it, but who the hell cares about cursive anymore and why should they? It's an anachronism. It was once necessary, if you've ever tried to write with a nib pen or a fountain pen you'll understand why, keeping the pen on the paper and moving is kind of vital to that kind of writing. No one uses those things anymore though, or at least they only use them by choice.
When and if the day comes that people can't actually write at all anymore then we have a problem. Kid's not being able to use cursive. I really don't give a damn.
I can write cursive! fuck shit bitch hell damn. see?
I am 35 and I quit writing in cursive a long time ago and now I cant do it anymore. People really need to stop writing in cursive when someone else needs to read what they write.
I dropped my cursive handwriting several years ago when I went to the German equivalent of Highschool Senior Year. I had been taught a curvy flowing writing style from primary school onwards and was required to write like that even though I found it exhausting. Then people started expecting me to write half a dozen pages or more in under 90 minutes for class tests which subsequently were graded badly because ... heck ... how am I supposed to write legibly in that amount of time when the style of writing I was taught looks like a curvy mess. I specifically remember my English teacher one day handing a class exam back to me which got an "F" because he couldn't read the 13 pages I had to squeeze into the 80 minute exam time, ironically the same guy a few years later told me that he couldn't give me anything but straigt "A"s in his classes. The difference between an "F" and an "A" -grade wise- for me that's enough reason to think Fuck Cursive. My primary school teachers and the idiots writing the curriculum obviously didn't take into account that some day kids would have to complete real life tasks with that crappy writing. Thus started a lengthy process retraining myself to "print" style writing. After all, what good is a handwriting nobody else can read. It might be fun for literary scholars or archaelogists but my employers and teachers have been more than glad to see me drop that cursive hyroglyphics. A year of cramps and wasted trees later my grades got (significantly) better. Nine years later I can finally decipher things I wrote in a hurry months ago and for really long texts nobody can expect me to avoid typing it anyway anymore. Those that find a romantic spark in writing books and letters in wriggly bible font are welcome to learn how to do it. Just don't expect me to do it if it's detrimental to my everyday requirements. I maintain two seperate keyboard layouts (QWERTY and DVORAK Type 2) on full 10 finger typing speed. That should be enough writing geekery for me.
1. It is a myth that cursive is faster than printing. "Fluid" printing (not the block letters taught in the first grades) uses far fewer strokes. Jumping from letter to letter instead of dragging the pen between letters also uses fewer strokes and is more direct, and is thus faster.
2. Cursive is harder to read than printed letters. Some proofs of this fact: (1) the ubiquitous instruction "please print" on forms, (2) the rarity of continuous-cursive forms in typefaces used in publishing, (3) the difficulty one has in reading supposedly stellar examples of cursive penmanship, such as the US Declaration of Independence.
3. Cursive is much harder to learn than printing. Of course, for this reason it is inflicted upon schoolchildren after they have a chance to master printing, since many never succeed at it.
4. The "Palmer Method" (for example) of cursive pedagogy stifles a child's developing a personal and distinctive style of handwriting. Within reasonable limits of legibility, printing leaves more freedom for this artistic outlet.
5. The techniques of cursive handwriting are filled with self-contradictions. A "slant" is dictated as a matter of efficiency, when there is no apparent anatomical justification for this practice. Left-handers (when tolerated) are taught to mirror the slant by tipping the paper to the left instead of to the right, but the inclination of the paper has everything to do with the slant of the writing (to the right whether executed right- or left-handed) and nothing to do with which hand is manipulating the stylus.
The mindless regimentation typically used to teach cursive is antithetical to the development of studious, inquiring minds. Unlike the rote of, say, multiplication tables, the diktat of cursive handwriting is not rooted in a useful natural principle. It is most popular in cultures such as the old German and Chinese, which value rote and regimentation to a degree usually held to be extreme by, say, Americans.
In light of the above points, why does this hideous art exist at all?
6. The only justifiable reason for commonly using cursive is obsolete. People traditionally wrote in cursive from ancient times because the quill pen technology penalized you for lifting the pen from the paper. The capillary action of the ink is lost when contact is interrupted, and restoring the ink trail is not reliable, so gaps often result. This is not a factor with modern pencils, fountain pens, ball-point pens, or fiber-tip pens.
7. Therefore it is a foolish pedagogy that continues to maintain the archaic art of cursive penmanship. This subject should be eliminated from the primary school curriculum, and filed away in the universities' classics departments, where it belongs.
The cheap ballpoint pens really are more painful to write with, especially if you do not use them regularly. Printing or cursive is definitely easier with a pencil, my only comparison as I do not have a fountain pen with a good nib.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
I have magnificent Catholic-school penmanship--that I learned 40 years ago at St. Ray's in the Bronx. We had to use a cartridge (fountain) pen and could only use a pencil for math. It was a graded subject back then. The years have changed my writing some; it's more relaxed but it's still perfectly legible and looks rather nice on a hand-addressed envelope :P
I still love to hand-write letters--I correspond that way with a few people who refuse to use a computer. I took copious notes in college and grad school, in script, in fountain pen. I have beautiful writing papers and some beautiful fountain pens, too--people are fascinated with them, if they see me using one--they're not familiar with them at all and always ask to try my pen :)
There's always going to be a need to write legibly--I guess purpose and function are the name of the game now, making printing the way to go, for most. Even some printing isn't legible, though.
NCLB has pushed away several things that used to be taught in schools to young children. Sad part is, all the money going to the schools isn't really making that much of an improvement.
Not being able to write cursively has never hindered me. I made a conscious decision in my early years to forget cursive and write fixed letters. My handwriting is neat, legible and has been commented on by various people over time as having a nice aesthetic. BUT, having handwriting so poor you can't read it is a disaster. I have to get people to write their passwords down and it amazes me the number of people who can't read back to me what they've written! It also seems to me that spelling is getting markedly poorer over the last 10 years. I see spelling mistakes in national newspapers, not to mention company emails, signs, you name it..
Printing, cursive handwritten text, or computer (text print or digital) are three different means of expression. Which I try to use, try due to slowly degrading skills, depends upon what type of message I am conveying.
Either very quick or very formal communications I type on a computer. Typing is faster. Digital allows the recipient to change the font, format, or whatever they want, and gets me better results than I could ever dream of with a typewriter. This is the most flexible one.
Printing, all block caps, is used for professional writing to colleagues, writing that is technical. When done in ink, there is no editing afterwards, no changing your text. There is no touch to modify attributes, like there is with digital copies, no changing of system time to hide an edit.
Cursive is the most expressive communication next to voice. With cursive, you may communicate not just the words, but also the tone of voice and depth of emotion.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
Maybe it is just the general change, or is it a decline; where cheap and easily replaced quantity is more important than rarer quality. We don't want furniture that will last 100 years, but some particle board stuff that might last 5, something like that.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
One of the reasons, I got into computers was, that I could not read my own handwriting anymore, seriously. Back in my chemistry studies we had to deliver weekly reports about our experiments in second class (organic chemistry). This around '92 or so. After a while, I was annoyed by my own doodle, that I swore to myself I would by a computer the next semester. Not everyone of my fellow students had a computer back then. The majority delivered their homework in handwriting.
When I learnt to 'running-write' (as we call it in Australia) we were NOT allowed to learn 'cursive' - instead we HAD TO learn a modified form that had NO LOOPS. The teacher was quite adamant that we would NOT loop the y or g or l or b or any other letter. I actually wanted to learn proper cursive - I thought it looked swell, and so I would always use it for my own private writings. In class, though, no loops allowed. It took me a while to get my pen license (~4th grade, about the same time as learning running writing) and my writing was pretty bad until about year 7 (sorry, 7th grade) when I modified my writing (incorporated a few loops here and there) and formed what is my current style (which I really like). By year 7 they couldn't force you to change your writing, but we were definitely taught a particular style (can't think of what it was called, don't care to look it up).
As a leftie, I taught myself to write backwards in cursive, and I find it really nice and fluid, which I believe is the point of cursive - though a lot of you here seem to find it cramping. To each their own I guess..
For you, for me its totally different. If I need to communicate to a colleague I send them an e-mail or call them. I see no need in hand-writing or using a typewriter for anything technical, its a heck of a lot easier to use a computer. A lot less mistakes too. Add with the fact that I can copy+paste names or odd words and not have to worry about spelling them all the time makes it also better.
My response to getting something in cursive is mostly "Why didn't you just e-mail this to me?" and it seems to be the response of most people. All my cursive and a bunch of other people's cursive says is "Hey, I suck at penmanship". Myself I'd rather have a few e-mails, a phone call or an IM conversation than communicate via letters.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
There are still plenty of pseudo-scientific techniques available including lie detection, tea leaves, and palmistry.
I'm 33 and haven't used cursive since high school, unless you count when I sign my name.
I don't have a use for it and frankly don't see the point. And after decades of deciphering my family's various peculiar handwriting styles, I'd be more than glad to be rid of it.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
My primary school taught longhand, slightly different looking from the one you Yanks use btw, and that was OK and legible. I'd have been 6 or 7 at the time.
Then after a couple of years of that I moved schools where they wanted everying "printed" that is in Block capitals and separate letters, which I had almost forgotten how to do. This actually knackered my handwriting and from that day on it suffered.
Trying to write fast notes in class and particularly in college sealed the death of legibility for me.
Haven't seen Doubt, but I do recall that the Streep character was an extremely conservative nun, the sort of person who thinks of all change as evil. I don't think her attitudes were being held up as something to emulate
The problem with your argument is that you don't say how you think ballpoint pens cause bad penmanship. Without some hypothetical mechanism all you've got is just another post hoc argument. You could just as easily claim that the decline in penmanship was caused by the invention of TV, the construction of the Interstate Highway System, or fluoridation. That last one is probably very popular in some circles.
Here's a much simpler mechanism: when skills stop being valuable, people stop learning them. What's the value of handwriting? Well, if your business correspondence is handwritten, then you better make sure that whoever writes out the "fair copy" has really good handwriting. And indeed, there used to be professional scriveners whose sole job skill was extremely good penmanship.
But businesses stopped hiring scriveners after typewriters became common about 125 years ago. There are other uses for handwriting, but they've been gradually eaten away by technology. Nowadays, ability to hack out text on a QWERTY keyboard is a lot more valuable than good penmanship. And that's the skill people have.
Incidentally, a certain politician is considered to have pretty good penmanship, despite having grown up after the decline of the fountain pen. Judging from his autobiography, I suspect his achievement-oriented mother stood over him as he practiced it. Which is the only way you can get a kid to acquire such a skill.
And notice from the document that I link: the dude writes with a felt tip!!!
I give you this to chew on.
When I was young I took handwriting classes, now granted my handwriting was crap, and I was issues a special pen with a spring metal brace to help me hold the pen "correctly". yet throughout high school we had to hand in typed papers. So why did I spend so much time learning to "write".
PS My handwriting still sucks
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
When I took the GRE, they made you write this big long pledge in cursive ("DO NOT PRINT"). It took me forever. It hurt my hand It hurt my arm. It was incredibly frustrating because I knew, they knew, everyone knew, that this form was just going to be turned into a checkbox and then thrown away. I hated every minute of it.
But what really prompted me to post this was seeing the eights in the 8th grade Zaner Bloser assignment linked to in the blurb. The '8' was absolutely horrible. Seeing that horrible version of the S-slash, made me think back to the first grade. Until then, I always wrote my eights as two circles, one over the other one. Then my first grade teacher started marking me, and everyone else who made eights like that, down. I can still see her in that damn salmon colored suit standing there saying, "Some of you are making eights like they're snowmen. That's wrong. The correct way is to make an S, and then draw a line connecting the ends, like this. Practice it. For now on you will make eights the right way, or they will be marked wrong."
And so I changed the way I made my eights. 25 years, I've made eights with the s-slash, mostly without even thinking. Occasionally I remember how I used to make them, and try to reclaim my eight. It never lasts long. I inevitably fall back to the s-slash. My "slave eight" if you will, and when I realize it, I die a little.
Fuck you Mrs. Scheffer. Rot in your fucking grave.
When I was a kid I *hated* having to learn how to write in cursive. I told my parents print was far easier and perfectly acceptable. They wouldn't hear it... I was forced to practice my letters every day (I still have the scratch-books filled with nothing but a a a a a a a a... b b b b b b b b b b...) And I wasn't allowed to print, ever, despite begging and pleading, not to mention my well reasoned argument that cursive was totally pointless. (ok, maybe not well reasoned, I just told them it was pointless, but it's rather axiomatic I think.)
Now, after having been forced to abandon the ease of printing before I could even finish learning it, I can *only* write in cursive. It's really embarrassing when I try to fill out a job application, and I'm specifically directed to use print, not cursive. I can't do it. I can't even recall what half the lowercase letters are supposed to look like in print (even though I read them that way either in a book or on a computer screen most of the day, every day. Lower case 'a' is especially hard for me to remember.) I end up having to print it in all caps since those are the only print forms I can manage. And even then they are slightly crooked and at slightly different levels and angles... it seriously looks like a three year old filled out the form.
On the other hand, my cursive is quite legible. Too bad I'm never allowed to use it.
Moral of the story: Your kids are smarter than you. Shut up and listen to them when they tell you they know better. (Can you tell I'm still a tad peeved about it?)
And you know what... The sad thing is I'm only half joking about that moral. People were always telling me my whole childhood that as a kid you think you know everything, and then when you grow up you realize how little you knew and how very wise your parents and elders always were... I look back on my life and I think, "Wow. I was right the entire time, and all my life experience has only served verify and validate my stance on all these different things". Maybe I'm unique, I don't know, but I still think I was wiser and more mature and responsible at 10 years old than most of the adults I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. Even today I feel more comfortable around kids and make friends with them more easily than adults, and I think they're better people in general. Something seems to happen to people as they grow up that is just the opposite of the wise old man image. For the most part I just see fools.
Hmm, so that was off on a tangent...
I'm 29, in elementary school we had a subject that was called "schoonschrift" (translates roughly as "beautiful handwriting"). It was tough, 4 years in a row, we had to fill copy-book after copy-book and had to copy chalk board after chalk board. Later on, our homework was always in handwriting, all our papers had to be in handwriting. Teachers just wouldn't accept typed out homework. Even in university, almost none of my co-students used a laptop to take notes. I loved it and I still love it. I experience my handwriting as an extension of my personality now. As much as I work with computers, I still prefer to write texts in a copy-book over typing them on my laptop. Young children in Belgium still have to go through the whole "schoonschrift" thing. Even though there are computers in every classroom in Belgium, and they have computer lessons in elementary school now.
... why ballpoint pens replaced fountain pens....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
To me a hand written note means that somebody could not be arsed to turn on their computer and print something that is legible.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My wife is a doctor. Lives hinge on the accuracy of her notes.
Her writing is almost completely illegible. Seriously, I can't even read a shopping list written by her with any degree of reliability. Even she can't read it.
You can't blame typing either, she hates computers. She's 35, so she should have no excuse.
My writing isn't good, but you can read my cursive. I also used to be a doctor. My writing was never good.
Seriously, I mostly blame ballpoint and fibre-tip pens. Because they allow you to scrawl at extremely high speed with very little care. A pen like this does not require any skill to write with it, it will tolerate a wide range of pressure, movement speeds, angles, etc. A fountain pen requires a narrow range of angle and pressure to write successfully, and with that consistency comes an improvement in your writing - because you are forced to learn to physically control the nib quite precisely just to get the thing to make a mark. We weren't allowed fountain pens in the younger years at school (possibly because the cheap absorbent paper in the exercise books would soak up the ink like a sponge), and I swear my handwriting (and my grades) suffered immensely because of it.
Yes, they are a PITA to maintain, even with ink cartridges. But they produce a superior line and superior handwriting.
The other implement I write well with is a propelling pencil - again, you require control, because otherwise you'll snap that delicate little pencil lead.
I write in a bastard combination of cursive and print when I'm just writing for myself to read - I would like to write in all cursive but as a leftie, handwriting was something I struggled with a lot in class, writing left to right is just plain awkward with that hand, as evidenced by my father (also lefthanded) who uses print for everything while my rightie mother has beautiful cursive handwriting. These days when almost everything I do is typed I think being lefthanded may be a plus - the most common letters seem to be more on the left side of they keyboard or reachable with the lefthand - A E R S T H for example (yes, I still type in QWERTY).
So what !? My mother 70 yo now used to learn french cursive, German cursive and the standard Portuguese cursive. I only learned the Portuguese kind, and it useless now. I do believe that learning cursive is good to give the kids agility in their hand and control over fine movement but of litle less use than that. Today whe I have to hand write i use a mix of style, mut its easy to read by any one ! Jorge
Seriously, good riddance! (I'm 26 years old) ... my handwriting is perfectly legible because when I write a letter I *don't* write it in cursive unlike my grandmother who's hands are so stricken with arthritis that her virtually illegible (albeit very pretty looking) cursive handwriting causes her a great deal of pain. She should be smoking pot for it but (and some other things) but nooooooo! In fact, we're trying to get her a computer because she's discovered that typing her letters is actually much less painful.
Cursive shouldn't just die, it should be made illegal. Speaking of illegal, the same people who think cursive is so freaking important are the one's keeping pot illegal even though it could be helping them treat an almost endless list of ailments from cancer (shrinks tumors) to ugh, well ... cancer! (eases nausea)
When my generation is running this country things are going to be so much better than they are now assuming you old weirdos don't brainwash them all into being blind little sheople. We will have to fix what the baby boomers and Gen-X left in *ruins*. You stupid old people need to smoke some pot and write a letter to your spoiled rotten grand children! Honestly ... you should be ashamed of yourselves! Take "modesty" and "racism" with you when you die, will ya? Maybe my generation would have the grace and decency to take care of you instead of dumping you in a home like you did to your parents without having to live in fear of your God's vengeful wrath! This Victorian era nonsense, some imbred psychotic's idea of "manners" and "etiquette", has got to go too!
Our day is coming and I for one look forward to it! Who knows, maybe we'll build things to last! That'd be a first! ... the nerve of some people.
*pissed off*
I have noticed that we are also no longer teaching hieroglyphs to our children.
This travesty must be stopped. Just because it is no longer useful doesn't
mean that children shouldn't waste their time learning it. I'm very happy that
I was taught hieroglyphs. That knowledge has come in handy a zero of times.
signed, ,wiggly line)
Christian (basket, lips, feather, cane, top half circle,feather, eagle
He is both older and younger at the same time - c.f. the Schroedinger cat paradox
The death of cursive can also be attributed to what we are writing. Modern business is full of acronyms, trademarked names derived from various languages, code, formula's etc.
Anybody tried writing pseudo code in cursive?? Imagine reading AnandTech in cursive? It would be a complete mess.
Also who do most people write to? Myself its 100% to myself, as notes.
----- I refuse to have an argument with an unarmed person
I work in IT but still take hand written notes at meetings. No smudging with a biro though (ballpoint pen proabaly to US ppl).
My handwriting was horrible for most of my life--I'm twenty-seven--until the last two years when I became interested in improving it. (One of my motivations was that I am an ESL teacher. My students only know English printing, not cursive. They can't read the answers in my books!) Now, Instead of having horrible print, I have reasonably good cursive handwriting. As a result of my work, my print has improved as well.
The reason handwriting is so painful is because at some point, approximately fifty years ago I believe, the way handwriting is taught was changed. Years ago, students learned to use their shoulders to generate the up and down motion, and used finger and wrist movements as little as possible. Devices were even sold to tie the fingers, so that they couldn't move at all! The hand was not rested on the desk, but floated lightly. To most people today, this seems ridiculous to make such small movements with such big muscles, but it's very effective (as I have learned).
Later (possibly because it was thought to be easier?) students were allowed to rest their hand heavily on the desk, and use the wrist and fingers to make the letters. The result is that the hand works like a compass, with the wrist as the center point. The word starts on the line, then moves up and back down, making a rough circle. Then the wrist is lifted and reset for the next word.
The switch from using large muscles to small is probably why most people today can't write well, and why it hurts for so many people to write. If you ask older people how they write, you will probably find that grandparent aged folks write with their shoulders, while younger people write with their fingers and wrists.
I'm 33 and haven't written anything in cursive besides my signature in 25 years. That is to say I stopped using it the day they stopped giving tests on it in 3rd grade. Doesn't seem like any kind of loss to me. The only negative effect I can remember was it took me longer to fill out a stupid verification section on the SAT than most of the rest of the test (the section was required to be written in cursive)
Dislocated right middle finger Friday, so touch typing (in Dvorak, on a DAS Keyboard) is a bit interesting. Amazing how many words use R, N or W...
Learned cursive in the late 60's, L.A. public school, 4th grade. As the only lefty in the room, I followed teacher & classmate's lead, straight across, none of that upside-down stuff I've seen other southpaw's employ.
Result? Absolutely horrid handwriting, constant smears on palm from dragging it over the just-laid-down words. By 6th I'd resigned myself to a form of blocky printing. These days, the only time I use a pen is for signatures or birthday cards.
Side note: Grampa's cursive was fair, but he had to use his right hand as they tied the 'real' one behind his back. At least 60 years had improved our society's educational policies that much...
...who cares???
Is for signatures..
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
The GRE requires you to copy a paragraph into cursive before taking the test. It was the first time in 10 years that I wrote in cursive and the outcome wasn't pretty!
I'm 37 and I have horrible penmanship. Up through high school I had very good penmanship but since them, I haven't had to write. Everything is typed - personal communication (emails, letters, etc.), documentation, notes, banking, etc. You name it, I do it electronically. On the go? I have both Windows Mobile and iPhone for PDAs. If I am driving, I have voice recorders. I have little to no need to write English.
I do write a little in Hebrew, and it's weird - my Hebrew is actually neat. I can also draw. I just can't write English cursive. The problem is not that I can't, but that I won't be bothered to write neatly. Why should I when all of my banking, utilities, cable/itnernet, phone, and so forth can all be paid online, I can apply for loans online, and so on? What need or incentive is there for me to write neatly?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
You can't win there. If you email them, they ignore it because everyone emails them. If you write by hand and snail-mail it, they throw it away because you were eating powdered donuts and didn't wash your hands before writing the letter.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
It's the fault of the stupid nanny minded undereducated hippies teaching our children in the "dumbing down of the U.S." program ; public schools.
After all it's how Jr. and Missy feel about writing that really counts not how well they do. Why if we judged them on their talent they might get sad cry faces so we won't teach them filthy handwriting at all!
Practical solution: Execute and flay the entire NEA with promises to do the same to any teacher who follows their reccomendations for dumbing down students.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
and i dont give a flying fuck about cursive.
Read radical news here
Man, they were pissed too!
Got told all the usual stuff: not-professional, signatures needed for legal reasons, faster, etc...
My cursive sucked ass. I worked on it, and it really sucked ass. So I quit.
Everything after about the middle of that year was printed --and I also tossed the lower case too. Just make the caps bigger than the lower case, and everything is golden. Fewest number of shapes, round a thing here and there, and it's quick and always legible.
This was such a deal in my school, they actually had some kind of minor league intervention! Was hilarious! My concerned parents, teachers and some other people, who I to this day don't know why they were in the room, all tried to convince me I was making a mistake.
By the time I left High School, a very large chunk of the student population had abandoned cursive.
With printing, there are some variations too. Standard block lettering looks nice, but can be slow. I've noticed an evolution in printing with lower case over the years. An extra stroke here and there can pretty much keep the pen moving to make marks, and it's fast, and it's neat. Women tend to do this more, but it's not a gender specific thing. Just depends on one's style and inclinations.
I feel the same way about simple written structure and texting as the old guard does about cursive. Being 40 now (and for the record, getting old sucks), It's easy to see this as the passing trend that it is. We will adapt, nothing material will be lost, and we all move on.
Besides, those text happy souls all get bitch slapped in professional life, where those of us who just decided to print actually came out pretty good. The advent of computers meant much greater acceptance of printing, and the transition was natural.
Texting might go somewhat that way, but not the same. We actually need solid writing for many professions, so there will be push back.
One thing I do miss with the change is handwriting analysis. That's a fun hobby of mine for years. Always entertaining, not quite scientific, but fun all the same. Script has lots of elements to work with. Printing much less so. :(
Blogging because I can...
Dear Morons:
"can't write in cursive" does NOT make sense.
Please correct.
Yours In Uzbekistan,
Kilgore Trout
For it is said that in life our heart shall beat only so many times and our mortality forces us to cherish each beat. We strive to makes each beat of our heart count, to be worthwhile. Such then every breath should be accounted for, for mortality puts limits on how many times we can do any such task, however mundane.
Then let us pursue the craft of writing with such diligence for the intricacies of script forces the mind quiet and stills the errant while we forge a word well thought and penned such that we do not waste a single word written.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
In fact, I forgot how to do it by High School. My handwriting is bad with print as it is. When we learned cursive, it looked even worse. I eventually gave it up and forgot how to use it. I learned how to type in middleschool and did all of my papers on the computer from then on.
My father always wrote the same way he learned in the navy. Looked similar to the Technical font but it was ALL CAPS with the "lowercase" letters being just a bit smaller in size. It was actually easy to read, especially when etched into something; but not good for fast or heavy reading. Somehow it seemed to be better for directions; perhaps because it was a like a sign or headline or perhaps because he was a technical writer.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The Palmer style of cursive handwriting was a destructive educational fad. Teaching it should be regarded as a form of child abuse. The Palmer method was a contrived educational monstrosity that discarded the beauty of Spencerian flexible-pen script and lovely broad-nib hands such as Arrighi's Chancery style in favor of a horrendously ugly travesty that was both more difficult to write and more difficult to read.
In fact, there is no reason whatsoever to teach cursive. Since hardly anybody writes anything lengthy by hand, the advantage of teaching an efficient script is minimal. Printing is adequate for most purposes, and the time previously devoted to cursive is much better spent learning to use a keyboard. Anybody who learns printing and does much hand writing will naturally evolve an efficient personal cursive, and one that will almost certainly be more attractive and legible than Palmer (it would be hard to come up with anything worse). For those who would like to improve the attractiveness of their handwriting, electives could be provided in classical handwriting forms such as Spencerian and Chancery cursive.
I strongly agree. Any child with even a hint of taste instinctively rebells at being forced to write the atrociously ugly Palmer script, which took centuries of beautiful handwriting and stomped it into the dust. Most of the people I know with decent handwriting abandoned Palmer and went back to printing. After a few years they evolved their own, individual script that was faster, more legible, and more attractive than Palmer cursive.
No child should ever be taught cursive. It is a waste of precious school time, and needlessly tortures children who are still developing their hand coordination. With keyboards ubiquitous, hardly anybody needs to hand write fast anymore, and if you need to write really fast, you need shorthand, not cursive. If you want to write attractively, you are better off learning a classical script style like Chancery cursive.
WARNING: Contains jingoistic material
In those nation-states where the populace is shielded from market forces, people are not stressed and can take the time and patience to engage in such arcane matters such as cursive handwriting. The stereotype that socialism in Europe and other places makes for better art is grounded in this truth. However, it is no accident that such societies also have compulsory military service, limited civil liberties, rationed health care, and also play soccer. Remember the price that one may pay for that beautiful penmanship.
Submission as evidence constitutes plaintiff and/or prosecutorial misconduct.
The only thing about learning how to write over printing was squirting ink all over the place instead of loading it into the pen. You guys did that right? Stupid young people. Get off my lawn!
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
After watching my oldest son's handwriting get completely ruined by his moronic elementary school with their even more moronic D'Nealian handwriting program, which is intended to "better prepare students to move on to cursive writing", I'm more than a little soured on the whole cursive writing thing.
Those days are long over, people - the only thing the average person needs cursive for is to develop a signature, and a short session with each student can handle that. What's more important is working to ensure that a given student's PRINT writing is legible, not cursive that they'll never use.
All I know is, this D'Neal dude needs to go away, he's ruining a significant portion of the current student populace's writing.
There was a time when I actually had a handwriting/cursive class.
It was removed from the curriculum pretty early on in my educational career.
Not long after assignments were not allowed to be hand written.
The type-setting requirements of teachers became picky enough that the only way to write an assignment was with a computer.
It's sort of hard to test how long digital records will last and how recoverable they will be in the future. Paper and pen have already proven themselves: no special equipment is required to extract their data... only perhaps to maintain them after they reach a certain age.
Hence why I prefer to write my journals and notes by hand. I know they'll still be around when I'm just some ancient ancestor and they won't have to dig around EBay for an equally ancient x86 based computer and LCD display to read it.
I'm 27, and I know cursive, but probably have some gaps in capital letters. My handwriting has some glitches that crop up if I'm hurrying, like too many repetitions on [n, m, r, u]. This was because while I was forced to use cursive in grade school, the way we took notes was such a crazy frantic scramble to keep up, it usually amounted to little more than scrawling some bumpy lines on a page before the board was erased again.
I've since started to recover it because I actually like learning alphabets, and started to approach cursive like any foreign alphabet. While I'm still not the tidiest writer, I can easily write in Japanese, Korean, PalmOS Grafitti, non-cursive, and a few hands of English calligraphy. Cursive gave me problems though because I'd rushed it so often I was used to not paying attention to what letters I was writing, and not wasting time checking for mistakes. Now I use it deliberately, and try to accurately render each letter as if I were writing any other alphabet. ...though I can only imagine how hard it would be for someone in my situation who didn't give it any special effort, or wasn't into alphabets/languages... Still, I don't exactly lament its loss as long as you can write legibly with a pen somehow. I'm going to do some ranting if heavily-abbreviated misspelled txting speak becomes standard because that's too broken to be considered language...
"Spiegel's looked to handwriting analysis to identify inconsistent, unreliable, poorly adjusted people." That's what Facebook is for!
~Ami
Chicago Web Design
You can't measure handwriting ability on a standardized tests. Therefore teachers refuse to teach it. When I informed my daughter that I was going to teach her at home and asked her what should be in the ciriculum, one of her main requests was cursive writing. And this was from a 7-year old. One of the big mistakes we make as a society is assuming the schools are responsible for our children's education. They are not. We as parents are responsible. Want your children to learn cursive? Teach them. Cursive writing guides are plentiful and free on the web. My biggest problem was choosing which style to use -- apparently there are many different ways of making some letters. In the end, I chose the style that was closest to my own cursive writing (which I haven't used in 30 years, since it is much faster for me to type.)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This is just one data point I know, but my scrawl was illegible long before I ever used a computer. You should see what used to come back from the keypunch operators even when I was trying to write clearly in capital block letters.
Squirrel!
I doubt anyone will read this because there's 850 posts so far.
15 years ago they did a study to see if young students, already shifting to keyboards, learned general English skills as well as handrwiting students.
Answer: No.
It turns out the process of putting out words and letters "the hard way" adds a big chunk of written ability.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I can't even remember the cursive shape for a capital letter J in my own name. And I'm 40! I'm not sure anyone under the age of 60 should be allowed to write in cursive anyway.
What about shoe laces? Velcro has conquerored footware!
I'm 31 (32 in October) and grew up in southern California. Like most Americans my age, we learned to "print" in Kindergarten. (Well, I and many of my fellow students could already write our letters before we started school, but we were taught the "correct" way and had to practice it in Kindergarten and first grade.)
For you non-Americans who are still confused by the terminology, we use the word "print" to mean "write letters which look like Helvetica, but usually quite a bit messier." (Except for the lowercase "a" ... I guess a font like Futura would be a bit closer to what we were taught.) So if you see "please print" on a form, that doesn't mean you should stick it in your printer. Just write using your best impression of a sans serif font. :-) They just want each letter written separately so the OCR software can tell where each letter begins and ends. Usually it's best to use all uppercase on forms, just in case their OCR software is dumb. (The US Postal Service has magic OCR which can read anything, whether typed, printed, or written in cursive. But other government agencies don't get to use the USPS's OCR, and typically have complete crap instead.)
In second grade we were taught to type. (Did anyone here else learn to type with the Wonderful World of PAWS on an Apple //e? That was the one where you had to type in order to get the cat across the screen so it could reach the ball of yarn, or whatever.) I don't think learning to type before learning cursive had any effect, but maybe it did. I don't know.
Finally, in third or fourth grade (I can't remember which) they taught us cursive (what the teachers called it) or handwriting (what most students called it). Ours was an old-fashioned loopy kind. I can't find any examples of it online, but it was written on a long green strip of plastic, mounted above the chalkboard in all of our classrooms. Some of the capital letters are different from any of the modern samples I can find in Google image search. All the modern samples I've seen have a separate crossbar on the capital "F", for example, whereas ours had the swoosh in the bottom left continue across the stem, like the ones in the Declaration of Independence. No wonder so many people get confused by my "F"s.. I hadn't realized that most people don't write them that way anymore. Note that not all of our letters looked like they were from the Declaration. We didn't have those funny tall "s"es, for example. :-)
After they taught us cursive, we were supposed to start using it (pretty much overnight) and write everything in cursive using ballpoint pen. (In the lower grades we had to print everything in pencil.) That abrupt transition is probably why people hate it. Imagine learning to type on qwerty for 3 years and then having to switch to dvorak overnight. (Or the opposite.. the direction doesn't matter, it's the abrupt switch which people hate.) We'd all have better handwriting if they'd teach us one system and stick with it.
Most of us sucked at it. Some of the girls practiced it nonstop and ended up with pretty nice handwriting (except for those stupid hearts on their "i"s and "j"s, of course). The other girls and nearly all of the boys never developed very good handwriting. The 4th-6th grade teachers all insisted that we'd never be allowed to print again and that it was vital that we improve our cursive. But of course at the junior high (7th & 8th grades) only about half of the teachers cared. And in high school almost no teacher required cursive (aside from English teachers on the verge of retiring), so at least half of us reverted to printing for tests and such. By my junior year of high school we were expected to type all of our papers anyway.
In college I reverted to printing. College caused my printing to mutate quickly, as speed gained importance, as well as the ability to write while not looking down at the paper. As a result, it is illegible to most peopl
-- Tim Buchheim
Are you not backing up?
How do you back up dead trees?
Of course, after a while it became slightly different(without all those strict proportions), and interestingly enough, sometimes when I write quickly and forget to take the pen of the paper, the result is a beautifully done cursive letter :) (happens a lot with lowercase "s")
If you have to read all of your notes to search for something, then you are taking notes wrong. You should be able to flip through the pages and find what you are looking for pretty fast.
Yes, it's called a wiki, and it rhymes with quickie.
Even as a child in the 1970s, I was already a member of the digital age. My printed script was faster than my cursive script, and about 10x more legible. Unfortunately, my mind was still an order of magnitude faster than my hand, and letters from upcoming words (or sentences) would constantly spill out my fingers before whatever letter I had, fractions of second earlier, willed my fingers to transcribe at some dreadful sub-light speed.
I signed up for typing class at the first opportunity. My instructor's comment to my parents at the mid-term parent-teacher interview: the she-man types like a girl. I was doing 30 wpm on a manual Underwood six weeks into the course. Until then I was the kid whose cursive penmanship was so poor my teachers looked at me like I just crawled off the mitten-on-a-string short bus.
By the mid seventies (while still in elementary school) I had figured out that spelling only needed to be good enough to quickly and uniquely resolve to a single code-point (valid English word). I didn't know Shannon's theorem, but I knew enough to wait for it. I spelled homonyms correctly, and not much else. I knew that if Google could "suggest" the word 99 times out of a 100, the information content in my notes was sufficient to reconstruct the meaning. What I didn't know was that Google suggest was still two decades over the horizon.
When I enrolled in mathematics at university in the early 1980s, I essentially dropped out because it was not yet practical to transcribe math on a personal computer. I was more interested in programming anyway, but I wanted a solid background in information theory. TeX didn't run so well on an Osborne.
My hostility toward archival note-taking stayed with me until I set up my personal MediaWiki install three years ago. For the first time in my life, me and my note taking were on the same functional wavelength. It took about a year to generate enough content to be useful, and another year to work out the optimal structure.
Whenever I set out to learn a new skill, I shovel everything about the subject into my wiki like a bat out of hell. I'm gaining proficiency in new programming languages in half the time it used to take when I was younger and twice as sharp. Part of that is Google, part of that is the endless stream of breadcrumbs that tumble into belated structure.
Even better, I can learn a language in two weeks, finish a small program in another two weeks, not use the language again for another six months, and then return to the language and pick again at almost the same speed as I left off. It only takes about half a day for my wiki to regenerate the mental context I left behind, even if I've already forgotten the spelling of the assignment operator.
I sit here in slack-jawed amazement that anyone can function in a demanding capacity on a paper archival system. How could the human brain do that? Wonder of the world.
That was one of the jokes in the movie version of Russia House. They take it to the next level: the human anachronisms were using a chalk board. The movie doesn't show this, but I suspect their American counterparts were running most of their queries in COBOL and drowning in hard copy. Neither system at the time was what you'd call optimal.
To each his own, I guess. For me, 1975-2005 were the wilderness years. And then came my wiki. Somewhat perversely after all these years, my wiki gave me the first good reason to spell correctly (good reason = reason unrelated to the social grooming reflex). Last I looked, tsearch2 is not yet integrated with Google suggest, but even that might happen in due course.
When I need to brainstorm, I still sit down with a pen and a piece of paper.
Half the time I'll sketch
You may not be from 1860, but I wouldn't be shocked if the relevant law was.
Think you'll be able to find a USB port in 70 years? SATA or PATA?
Think you'll be able to find a USB port in 70 years? SATA or PATA?
Why would that matter? I don't have an 8" floppy drive (or a 5.25", or a 3.5") but I still have all my old files from when I used 8" floppies (including a lot of files I can't read because they were in proprietary formats).
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
One thing nobody's brought up is that when learning a new alphabet (Roman vs Cyrillic vs Greek for example), you get to learn three whole new letter sets: Uppercase, lowercase, and handwriting, and usually in that order. If your writing will be read by non-native speakers, then they will likely be more familiar with the block letters.
Sure, you *can* move your data from old storage as it's obsoleted, but that simply won't happen for most data. Especially if it's in some dusty file cabinet that only gets opened when it's needed.
Even more so when the person in charge of it is just a file clerk who barely knows what USB is and has no idea what those floppy plastic things are.
sorry all, I'm 42 and *never* learned how to write in cursive. I honestly don't remember how I avoided it but since I type almost everything, there hasn't been a need to use it in over 25 years. When I do handwritten notes, they are in block lettering.
However only for brief volumes, after a paragraph or two it degrades. Somewhat because of the physical strain it places on my 52 year old hands and wrists. I noticed before I became old and decrepit, it also tends to slip in consistent quality when my mental focus outruns the recording movements of my hand.
I create instructive documents, troubleshooting guides, emergency procedures and such. Mostly I type this for obvious reasons like spell checking :). Some of my draft material and my field notes would be considered horrible penmanship but since they are by preference for my eyes only this actually works pretty well. I also produce quite a bit of testing documentation of conditional or corrective action reports. In this case handwritten is almost always given weight over typed material and thus usually preferred or even required. In this case I use what I have learned as "engineering script". It is in all caps consistent in style,form, weight and size. It is very readable and comparatively easy on the body. It is my preferred method of writing.
matthew
I hardly ever handwrite anymore. I can go for months without using a pen, and most of the time it's only for my signature. Mind you, I am a technology worker. I spend most of my waking hours at or near a computer.
My handwriting has always been crap throughout my school years, but now it's absolutely horrendous. I never write in cursive form anymore, only detached letters, and to be frank I always thought cursive was weird and counter-productive - why make it "pretty" if you're not doing it for show? To me, handwriting is a fallback, for when a keyboard is not available or convenient. I can type at least 5 to 8 times faster than I can write, and frankly if we'd had laptops in high school, I probably would have fared better in regurgitation-heavy classes such as history and geography, simply because I couldn't keep up with all the boring writing.
-Billco, Fnarg.com