Cursive at the crossroads

[MrBern]

everybody is typing or printing. Cursive is waning.
Penmanship no longer counts....

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15213845/?frak

 

[Nathan Flowers]

.

I started practicing mine several years ago. Still looks bad, but better than it did.

There are times when longhand really needs to be used, such as in a thank you letter, or cards to people. It is a lost art.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

There is also a much more simplified 'version' of cursive that they teach, when they bother to teach it...."cursive with no tears" or something silly like that.

Its ugly.....

 

[Nathan Flowers]

Ugly is right.

Just looked that up. Cursive without tears makes me want to cry.

 

[Sunny]

I noticed this in college. When I'd borrow notes, or glance at a classmate's stuff to get a point I'd missed, they'd always be printed. My penpals' letters were printed as well.

I've always done my writing in cursive, ever since I learned how. My printing is messy and uneven, and I usually end up connecting letters anyway or making them cursive-style. Cursive is much faster, besides being more attractive. It was very useful for timed essay-writing as well as note-taking.

What I really need to practice is writing with a dip pen. Very difficult for a left-hander - I end up pushing the point into the fibers of the paper. It might be easier just to learn Spencerian with my right hand. As a lefty, I've had to be fairly dextrous with my right hand. If my mother taught me something, she taught me right-handed: crocheting, knitting, ironing, using a knife to cut. But I use a needle with my left hand.

 

[MrBern]

There was a time when secretarial training included calligraphy. A handwritten in an excellent cursive was far more professional than a printed scrawl.
But those are the days of carbon paper, before white out.
Do kids even know what carbon paper is anymore?

 

[carebear]

I print for clarity, with all caps, Capitalized letters are full height, lower-case are half the size. I've done it for years. With practice it is equally as fast as cursive and, unlike cursive, block letters have no "personality" to make it less than legible to another reader. Important when you are tired, cold and uncomfortable and someone else has to read it later.

I recently read where some hospitals are spending the money to hire teachers to reteach doctors penmanship in order to make their records and prescriptions more legible to prevent errors. :eusa_doh:

Simply requiring printing would have saved the expense and time with lives on the line. A capital print "A" looks like nothing else, a capitalized cursive "A" written with "personality" can look like an "O" a "D" or a "G" with ease. Throw in stress and weariness and the natural tendency to scribble lower case letters and even the best penmanship devolves.

 

[Nathan Flowers]

.

True, Mr. Carberry. I found that I could print more quickly and with more clarity (and in 3 colors) while taking notes from fast-talking professors in college. However, in many cases, cursive is just better looking and more appropriate to use, in my opinion. Quality printing definitely has its place, and was appreciated by those I shared notes with.

 

[carebear]

I prefer it for personal correspondence, when I have time and presentation is an issue. Didn't use it in school for assignments nor for work materials. Again, I want absolute legibility.

My secret shame is that, although I had to take it in elementary school, through non-use my penmanship has gone to heck and I occasionally have to go look up how to properly write certain letters. :eusa_doh:

Because I don't send enough personal correspondence anymore.

 

[Polka Dot]

I feel lucky that I was taught cursive by a teacher who really thought it was important to have neat penmanship. It's unfortunate that schools no longer see the value of teaching it. Test scores have become the only thing that matters, to the point that I recently read that some schools will put a child in nothing but reading and math classes to improve his or her standardized test scores.

Before I learned cursive, my second grade teacher decided to teach us "D'Nealian" printing. My parents thought it was worthless, and looking back I think so too. Who needs a manuscript/cursive hybrid? Check out this photo:

If I remember correctly, we weren't supposed to connect the letters, the result being extra curlicues that led nowhere.

I'd like to think there's a middle ground between hours of Palmer or Spencerian drills and a complete lack of teaching handwriting skills. In other countries, and here France comes to mind, proper penmanship is stressed to the point that by the equivalent of the fourth grade, all students write their notes in cursive with a fountain pen. Even more impressive is the fact that the style is nearly uniform from person to person; there is no room for "personality" in letter formation.

 

[Sefton]

I almost always print when writing anything. It's not that I don't appreciate cursive, I do. The main reason is that I'm left handed and when I write something in cursive I always end up smearing what I've just written. The second reason is that I've been a life long cartoonist (for fun,not profession) and I use printing in that. I may try it right handed although I expect it'll come out looking like chicken skratch!

 

[ITG]

How interesting-We were having this same conversation in the teacher's lounge today! When I taught 4th grade, we required ALL of our kids to write in cursive.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

I find cursive intensely difficult to read cursive script because i was never taught it. When alphabetising exams, i consistently put people with surnames beginning G in the D pile. The capital G just looks like a D. perhaps this is because the cursive i'm reading is badly done.

The decline of cursive seems like a pretty unimportant loss in the grand scheme of things.

bk

 

[Maj.Nick Danger]

Handwriting style has become progressively simpler throughout history.

Only a hundred years ago or so it was even harder to decipher. It's a wonder people could read all those letters they used to communicate with each other.
But according to this, with a little practice we can read old writing today. http://amberskyline.com/treasuremaps/oldhand.html

 

[The Wingnut]

My printing is so bad that I should've been a doctor. My cursive isn't all that great, but it's a sight better than most of what I've seen.

Much of what's not automated, mass-processed or digitized is falling by the wayside. Common arts that were once a part and parcel of daily life are now considered antiquated, quaint or useless, and not due to the fact that they are such, but due to the increasing availability of supposedly easier and faster methods of doing the same thing. In the case of cursive, this is erroneous thinking. It's faster and easier to write in cursive if you're used to it, because there is no lift or pause between each letter. Text flows quickly and allows the writer to think word by word instead of letter by letter. The only way to make it attractive is to practice, practice, practice which most consider inconvenient.

I write all of my checks in cursive because it's next to impossible to duplicate someone else's writing in cursive, and it looks far more elegant. A letter carefully written in cursive will appear far more professional than a letter written using print, and adds a personal air to it.

Progress doesn't necessarily mean 'better'.

 

[MissQueenie]

So let's see it! Shall we post photos or scans of our writing?

Only rule is that it has to be pre-written...not written out specifically to post!

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

I wonder what will become of the world once things like this spread to anything and everything. I asked a student in my former high school if he'd ever written a letter and sent it through the post office. He said, "uhh, no, I prefer email". He also stated he doesn't use his computer much.

Very depressing indeed, not only for cursive but for writing with a pencil in general.

 

[Tony in Tarzana]

So let's see it! Shall we post photos or scans of our writing?

Only rule is that it has to be pre-written...not written out specifically to post!

Oh my Lord, no.

lol

 

[Rosie]

I am one of those teachers with the thinking that cursive is important. I've been told I write quite nicely in cursive and my students and I practice everyday for about 20 minutes after lunch (it's good for them and helps calm them down after being in the rowdy lunch room or after recess amps them up. A little Mozart, Beethoven and cursive gets them settled.) When I get home, I'll scan something I've written and let you guys be the judge.

We are told to tell children to write in block printed letters when taking tests so that the graders don't get confused by anything they have written. Some people can't read cursive and some can't read others individual "style" of cursive.

 

[scotrace]

I've been told I write quite nicely in cursive

Yes, you surely do!