26 Years Old and Can't Write In Cursive 921
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!"
My cursive was always terrible (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
I can't read it either (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:26 years (Score:5, Interesting)
I was also considered a 'special case' at my school because my hand writing was terrible due to a fine motor disability. I was given a choice between physiotherapy and a laptop computer. Guess which I asked for?
Oh... and guess which I actually got. :P Really, I can't complain because it was probably better for me in the long run.
That also makes me wonder whether people are going to lose fine manual dexterity as a result. Already kids do less manual craft (like building models) in favour of computer games. I wonder if lack of fine motor training will result in a generation that is unable to do anything more accurate with their hands than push buttons.
The SAT (Score:1, Interesting)
Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:26 years (Score:5, Interesting)
Hell, the pressures of high school are probably as much to blame as computers, we were expected to create complex, deep essays within 50 minutes. At that point, there simply isn't enough time to worry about your handwriting.
Cursive vs. handwriting (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
I write essays on paper. Then I type it up. The reason I do this is to make sure I read it over twice, very carefully. And also because I can jot notes everywhere.
I'm 26, and... (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:3, Interesting)
I can read "leet speak" upside down and in a mirror at the same speed I read a typed page. I have a hell of a time deciphering most people's cursive script. What exactly is your point?
Why cursive? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:3, Interesting)
The prettiest cursive I ever saw in the real world was by an auto mechanic at a muffler shop. Looked just like they taught me in third grade.
Seriously. He apparently learned it and took it to heart, and it was textbook beautiful.
Re:Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:5, Interesting)
For us users who have never used a fountain pen without it scraping horribly along the page, could someone explain what's so great about them?
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
My family moved when I was at the end of second grade, from Iowa to Louisiana. Unfortunately Iowa taught cursive in third grade, while Louisiana did in second.
As a result, I moved in just in time to learn X, Y, and Z, and then the term was up. Next year and all the way through junior high (8th grade) I was expected to use cursive for all my written works.
In high school and college, of course, no one cared. I could write suitably fast, taking notes for myself that did, rather quickly, cramp my hand. (Timed essays such as AP tests in high school or some of my physics exams in college were very painful.)
Now that I've been full time in the workforce for almost a decade, it just doesn't matter. I use grid composition books to take meeting notes or to think on paper, but everything goes into the computer as soon as it's viable. Interestingly my typing skills have improved dramatically in the past decade; when I graduated from college I still had to look at the keyboard, but now I never do.
Thus, at this point, the only thing that I can write in cursive is my signature. =p
(Now, let me add that, had I ever learned shorthand, I would have been most grateful. My mother was a reporter for many many years and can take fully legible (to her) shorthand notes far faster than anyone else I know.)
Re:Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:3, Interesting)
Over here pretty much everyone in my generation learned to write with a fountain pen (mandatory for a while in elementary school).
I don't see any of us writing better than the new generation.
I for one used a fountain pen from almost when I started to learn to write until university, and I have a terrible, unreadable handwriting.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, cursive is slower than printing. John Holt looked at that. Cursive is just another timewaster the schooling system foists on kids.
Re:26 years (Score:3, Interesting)
Yep, I'm older than you, I remember well all those agonizing hours of the Palmer Method and the solid-dash-solid paper.
Today I can't write cursive at all, and I can barely print.
When I type, I go error-free 100wpm, and never need spell check.
When I try to write more than a couple sentences out by hand, I drop letters, make weird hybrid words, and even create symbols which are clearly not letters at all. The only time in 10 years I've had to write more than a few paragraphs was when making a police statement after witnessing a death. It was full of cross-outs and inserted letters; the detective probably thought I was traumatized or just plain stupid, but in fact it was simply a matter of my brain no longer squandering neurons on being connected to my hand in that way.
Other than the occasional third-world police statement, I hardly see why this is a problem. If all the computers suddenly disappear one day, my penmanship is going to be the least of our worries.
Re:What is the point of cursive? (Score:5, Interesting)
That can happen in printing too. Surely it's due to my geekiness, but in the newspaper, the word "modern" sometimes reads as "modem" to me.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Dave Barry wrote a funny (yet true) piece on the topic [google.com].
Screw cursive: let's have some legibility. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:What is the point of cursive? (Score:3, Interesting)
Have you ever received a letter, or a note penned on the inside cover of a card? Writing has an aesthetic that is missing in hand printing, or electro-mechanical rendering. It wasn't for lack of imagination that emoticons didn't arrive until computers; it was a lack of necessity.
I appreciate a written note, or card; it shows that they have taken the time to at least write my name, and perhaps had a thought about me while they did it. That is what writing is for.
Re:26 years (Score:2, Interesting)
And you know what? It was a little slower than my print, but looked a hell of a lot better than my typical chicken scratch. It slowed me down just enough that I could think things through while I wrote, rather than write faster than I could think (legibly).
Cursive really is a skill that is wonderful for formalities. While my grandkids won't need it to hit my soft spot, it sure does a number to impress MY grandparents.
Re:not important (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh Geeze (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Also makes it unreadable. I used to go out with a teacher and I never figured out how she could read the scrawl that was handed to her.
No, cursive doesn't make it unreadable. Poor penmanship makes it unreadable. I assure you, if you look at cursive written by somebody that is currently 60+, their cursive is most likely very readable. If they happen to be 80+ it is probably beautiful.
Re:Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:4, Interesting)
BitterOak wrote:
I agree that fountain pens are terrific to write with. I used to use them in high school because they gave better writing quality that ball point pens. With recent pens, the ones that come closest to the writing quality of fountain pens are the rollerball pens (the kind of pen I use now) and the gel writer pens.
Returning to the topic of the thread, I think the major factor that has led to cursive writing falling into disuse is that people are no longer required to use it. For myself, outside of grade school I've never been required to write in cursive. Now, I no longer have the ability to write in cursive.
I think another factor in the decline in cursive handwriting is that so much of our writing no longer remains in a fixed place. What I mean by this is, before the advent of electronic communication our writing basically stayed on a piece of paper. The only way the writing could travel is if it was sent or handcarried to someone.
Now, much of what we write travels in a non-physical form. Rather that writing letters on paper, we write e-mails and text messsages where the text only exists in an electronic form. Also, much of what is handwritten ends up being retyped into an electronic format at a later time.
Doctor's sloppy handwriting kills 7000 annually (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
I find cursive horrible. They tried to teach it to me and eventually gave up.. it's just completely unnatural. Being left handed didn't help - they tried to force us to write it with 'real' pens (those ones with ink cartridges) and if you're left handed you end up with a blue hand and nothing on the paper but a smudge. Got multiple detentions for that.. which didn't endear me to cursive at all.
Re:Screw cursive: let's have some legibility. (Score:1, Interesting)
I appreciate your disdain for cursive writing, but let me give you a different anecdote.
After I got out of highschool, my handwriting had also gone from the cursive taught at elementary school to printed. It sucked. Yes, it was legible, but it had no grace and was hard to put on paper. So some ten years ago, I taught myself cursive writing again, which at that point I hadn't done for ten years. It was hard in the beginning, but as I practiced more and more, my penmanship improved. I am not at a level where people, and I mean everyone, tell me what beautiful handwriting I have. I am not trying to show off or anything, just to give anecdotal evidence that people like it (although there are some people who have called me autistic for having such neat handwriting).
Personally, I feel that a good handwritten note shows something about the person who wrote it. If it's an illegible scribble then people will subconsciously form an opinion of the writer. Same thing goes for bad grammar or spelling, or a low-level vocabulary.
My point then is that while block printing may work out well for a lot of people, you shouldn't diss neat cursive handwriting as quaint and obsolete just because someone wants to put in the effort of making a nice impression.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:2, Interesting)
I actually just paused to think of the last time I wrote anything on paper using my hand and a pen. Other than filling out a lease, signing my name, or making a one or two word note on something, I don't think I've actually "written" anything by hand in years. Which is probably all for the better, because prolonged writing (when I was a kid, I wrote reams and reams and reams and reams) tends to cramp my hand anyway.
Same here (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Hooray. Die cursive die. (Score:3, Interesting)
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'.
Cur-what? (Score:2, Interesting)
Penmanship (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
GRE (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Your father was probably in the military right? They call it recruit handwriting and every letter is a capital and written distinctly. Once learned it is perfectly legible and unambiguous when written with even the worst penmanship. It is used for official logs and forms which must be legible.
As far as I am concerned it is the only form of writing by hand that should ever be taught. In the modern world focusing on typing makes far more sense, its faster than speaking vocally let alone writing by hand.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
The first thing I did after graduating from high school was immediately and gladly stop writing in cursive forever. It's been nearly 30 years, and I've never had a use for it, besides my signature. Even though I wrote a lot of cursive, even when I didn't have to, the moment I didn't have to any more, I stopped using it completely. I was also influenced by taking a lot of drafting in high school.
Of course, nowadays, I write so little more than about 3 lines of text makes my hand hurt. On the other hand, I can type really well, even though I never learned the "right" way to type. If I'd had even the remotest idea how much I would be typing on computers, within a year or two after graduating from high school in 1982, I would have seriously considered typing class when I had the chance. After a year or two in college I was typing papers for folks at a buck a page. I got pretty good fast, but only in the past few years would my typing speed be anywhere near someone who was properly trained. Of course, much of my typing is coding, and I'm seldom typing very fast when doing that.
Cursive? It's just something I have no use for. That seems a shame, but times have changed, and my written communicate is done with a computer 99% of the time.
Cannot cursive with a pencil (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm a lefty and was taught cursive as early as 2nd grade. Handwriting became my lowest grade semester after semester throughout grade school. With pencils and later ink, my writing would be smudged all to hell and my hand still cramps after only a paragraph's worth. I think the cramping has to do with having to inch my hand across the paper like a worm rather than sliding like a right-handed writer. By the end of high school, my teachers requested I start writing in print just so my in-class essays could be legible.
A couple months ago, I had to write a paragraph in cursive for an honor code and found that I couldn't remember how to print a few of the capital letters anymore.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
It is also helpful to delay the read aloud session for a few hours or if possible, till the next day. It seems like our brains build up the pattern the document follows automatically inserting what isn't actually there. It is easier to hear what is wrong once that pattern has faded.
Who needs it? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not only have I forgotten how to write in cursive, I've forgotten how to write in lower case.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope, I can't use a printer. Good thinking, but it just won't suit legal criteria.
I am required to use a bound book. That means that pages cannot be added or removed without making it obvious.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that, Slashdot has certainly been around since before 2000 yet posts before that are not availible. IIRC, it was something to do with a server crash or drive failure and the costs of backing up the posts at the time meant it didn't happen. So even if it is around in 70 years, there is no guarantee that a post would be.
Cursive is for girls. (Score:3, Interesting)
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!
Scholars, Make up your mind already (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:no one forced them to learn. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got 5 juicy mod points that I'd love to use but I'll just throw this in the mix. I'm 28 and never in 13 years of state schooling was I taught what nouns, verbs or *any* traditional grammar are for.
English for my entire schooling life was filled with touchy feely social and emotional BS, no Shakespeare, no hard literature, no deconstruction, everything was 100% social.
I curse the teachers and bureaucrats with their disgusting little social experiments who failed me and all of the other kids in the school system in the ACT, Australia. Learning all of that as an adult is a bloody pain in the arse not to mention the reduced ability articulate ones thoughts and ideas.
The gutting thing is it's even *worse* now, it's like we were the pilot project and tehy somehow deemed it a success. I have an 8 year old in the school system and he is only literate because we teach him as his school studies are 80% "social" - mostly being told how special indigenous Australians are and saying a little prayer to them at the start of assembly twice a week (seriously this is a major state school). I swear he's being doing that for three terms now and the "learning" is all political - there's no hard history in any of it.
There's a storm coming for the west that's for sure.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
And I'd say that that's only because most people in the U.S. are not taught a proper and formalized "cursive" script, they are just given guidelines and left to their own devices. Have you ever read handwritten letters from other countries? I have, and I can cite as examples people from Argentina, Mexico, France (and even some small towns in the United States) where it doesn't matter who wrote the letter, everybody from the same region seems to share the same overall scripting style. The individual characteristics are few and minimal.
This is from my childhood experiences, writing to "pen-pals" from around the world. It always surprised me because I couldn't fathom how three different, random people from Argentina wrote in pretty much the same way; while at my school, I would be hard pressed to find any two of my friends that scripted with even a similar slant. I was told that they are given a very specific format to learn and follow, and that cursive teaching continued throughout most of their elementary school.
-dZ.
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:3, Interesting)
no offense, but someone like a surveyor needs to keep those sorts of notes as well. kind of hard to bring a printer and laptop into a swamp. Then theres rain, snow.. paper is still very useful!
Sometimes the ignorance of others professions on slashdot is mind blowing.
It's called a PDA. Many are very durable and some models can even resist being dropped in swamp water or the belly of an alligator. Larger versions are called ToughBooks, made by Panasonic, and can survive water, dropping, being run over, etc.
There is a computer size for every need. This is not say that I believe hand-writing is unimportant, as I doodle my ideas in a notebook by hand on a daily basis, but DEATH TO CURSIVE. Talk about a lazy form of handwriting! Carelessly swooping from letter to the next without regard to legibility. I write in print. I can write print as fast as many people can slop their cursive. And with more legible results.
The ignorance of some as to what technology can solve is mind-blowing.