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Comments: 921 +- News: 26 Years Old and Can't Write In Cursive on Sunday July 26 2009, @02:33PM
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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!"
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Oh Noes! (Score:5, Funny)
If we let cursive die, calligraphy could be next to go!
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Funny)
Texting would be the far more appropriate skill to teach.
Storm
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.)
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Interesting)
Dave Barry wrote a funny (yet true) piece on the topic [google.com].
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
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.
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep my weekly logbook in cursive writing.
I'm an Engineer, and my logbook must be kept for 6 years after my death for legal reasons. If all goes well, that'll be in 70+ years. It is unlikely at best that anything written on a computer will be readable in that time frame.
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
I keep my weekly logbook in cursive writing.
I'm an Engineer, and my logbook must be kept for 6 years after my death for legal reasons. If all goes well, that'll be in 70+ years. It is unlikely at best that anything written on a computer will be readable in that time frame.
And according to this news, it will be unlikely what anyone will be able to decipher your handwriting by then : )
Parent
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
And according to this news, it will be unlikely what anyone will be able to decipher your handwriting by then : )
Actually, the makers of fancy pens have been reporting increasing sales over the past several decades. The number of people who are studying and practicing good writing may not be increasing as fast as the population, but the number is increasing. So there's a good chance that there will still be experts in all sorts of handwriting in another 70 or 80 or 100 years. It'll just be the great masses who were never educated in the topic who won't be able to read all those old letters and logbooks.
To use the ob automotive analogy, I have a number of friends who raise horses. There may have been a drop in the number of horses back in the early 20th century, but for some decades now, horse breeding has been on the increase. And it's not just race or show horses; various kinds of work horses are also being bred and trained. It turns out that there are a number of situations where horses are very practical tools for getting a job done. And people usually like them a lot better than machines.
I've read comments by a number of historians to the effect that new technology rarely totally obsoletes what came before. The new tools may take over a lot of the work, but there are usually situations where the old tools are still the best for some jobs. Thus, people who have several power drills usually have even more wrist-powered screwdrivers. And even though they know how to build with screws, they still use simple nails and hammers for some jobs.
So handwritten text probably also has a good future. The percentage of the population using it may decline, but we'll still have a reasonable population using it for the foreseeable future.
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Informative)
If you need your cursive-written pages to last long term, then you had better use acid-free paper. I've seen lots of cheap paper get yellow and brittle and then start to crumble after 10-15 years, which is hardly archival. After 70+ years, your logbook is probably going to crumble to dust if someone tries to read it if you are writing it in a blue-lined spiral notebook.
Parent
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.
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Is the legal requirement that you use a bound book, or ensure that pages cannot be added or removed without it being obvious?
If the latter, then one-way hashes are a MUCH more reliable indicator. On the bottom of each page, print the hash of the previous page, the hash of that page and the hash of the hashes. This will ensure that not only can no page be added or removed, but no page can be altered, either.
To make it even better, use a secure timestamping service and include the timestamp.
Also, I strongly dispute your original assertion that no computer format will be readable in 70+ years. Plain ASCII text will. HTML will (ASCII encoding). Also, basically any format with an open standard and open source implementations will.
Finally, your log book is far too easy to lose, damage or destroy. It's not feasible to copy it (not without losing the integrity features provided by the bound book), so it can't be backed up. It's also bulky.
Your logging problem is solved by the log book, barely. Technology provides much better solutions with higher survivability, better accessiblity, easier production and much, much higher integrity verification.
Parent
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cursive serves *one* important purpose. It's makes writing from a "real" pen (not a ball-point) readable, as you tend to get a splotch whereever you first touch pen to paper. Ballpoints, not computers, pretty much made cursive obsolete.
Parent
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Funny)
You just don't know how to do this on a computer.
I use a custom perl script so I can write all my essays in plain text with comment lines. The script strips out the comments, builds a latex source file, and compiles to pdf automatically. I've been considering adding in rtf support for the rare occassions I need to work with people who insist on using word processors (which I despise for being slow and inefficient for my purposes), but haven't gotten around to it yet.
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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.
Parent
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Informative)
not really, John Holt merely timed himself versus his class printing. Not a scientific study.
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Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Funny)
Well done. You've requested justification for an unsupported statement and made one in the same breath.
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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.
Parent
Re:Oh Noes! (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is not going to happen unless everything we base our civilisation on breaks down as well. And in that case, I'd rather worry about my hunting and gathering skills than my penmanship.
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26 years (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
Parent
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.
Parent
Re:26 years (Score:5, Insightful)
You are ignoring the atrophy issue. I'm 28 and distinctly remember writing cursive in 3rd grade, but 3rd grade was 20 years ago. Afterwards I could write proficiently in cursive, and for the next couple of years they forced us to write at least some cursive, but after that everything that wasn't on computers we were allowed to hand in with print. The fact of the matter is that it's just easier to both read and write and print.
That's my feeling about it as well.
The teachers who ordered us to use script justified it by saying that, once we got out into the real world, everything would have to be in script, lest we appear unprofessional.
Ha. Ha.
Everything I do in my work is typed, with the exception of notes I scribble to myself. On the rare occasion I give handwritten notes to colleagues, they're usually things like filenames or database table names...and they're on Post-it notes.
And they're always printed. If I gave anyone anything in script, they'd just look at me blankly.
About the only thing I can do in script is sign my name.
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Re:26 years (Score:5, Funny)
Well, he can't write and you can't read, so it all works out, right?
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Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Insightful)
I am curious how you can say you have no problem reading neat cursive when you type riding instead of writing. How do you know you are reading it correctly when you don't know which letters are supposed to be there?
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Re:Because its a useles skill (Score:5, Informative)
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Are you freaking kidding me? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm nearly 40 and haven't used cursive since high school. How is this a Gen Y thing again?
Think it is bad now? (Score:5, Funny)
Just wait 50 years: "That's right kids, grampa used to use his hands to program computers!"
29 and cannot write the full ABC's in cursive (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's exactly one profession that requires cursive handwriting skills.
Third grade teachers.
Signature and that's it (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Teachers don't care / It isn't taught (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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: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?
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Re:Ball Point Pens Destroyed Cursive (Score:5, Informative)
You say "Ball-point pens are to blame", but that implies that you don't like the writing done with ball-point pens.
In fact, the style of writing depends, and has always depended, on the writing technology used.
From chiselling letters into stone, we got serifs. They look beautiful and help reading, but unless you are chiselling inscriptions, you don't tend to use them for writing. Moveable type brought them back for printing, just because they look good.
With a quill pen, you have thick and thin strokes, and you don't want any up strokes, because the nib judders and splatters ink everywhere. The reaction to this was the lovely uncial and half-uncial scripts. Half-uncial is what we now call lower-case. Another solution was black-letter, which was also a solution to the high cost of materials. Black letter is very dense, and quite pretty (in some respects), at the cost of being almost, but not quite, illegible. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read!
The Chinese took a different tack and used a brush rather than a pen. This in turn impacted on the shape of their glyphs.
Then came the steel pen. At first, just a metal replacement for the quill, it evolved with the addition of a rounded blob on the tip. This allowed upstrokes without splatter! But, if you are doing longer continuous strokes and not dipping your pen quite so often, then the nib tends to dry out. Now, enter the fountain pen. A reservoir allows for continuous ink. Other requirements required the development of something other than the thick and corrosive, black "India Ink" (which is a Good Thing if you are writing on vellum, but less so with a steel pen on paper). Blue-black ink became popular. But now it became more important to have as continuous a line as possible. Hence, 'joined up writing'. And once more, people found ways to make it beautiful, even though it gave up the light and strong emphasis of the quill and flat steel nibs.
Then, the ball-point. Special ink that does not dry out in the pen, so joined-up is not necessary. A natural writing angle that is more upright than a nib, which leads to a preference for slightly different letter forms. In other words, with a ball-point pen there is no need for a continuous line, and it's actually slightly more difficult to write in that particular style anyway, which was designed and tuned for a particular technology.
People can write illegibly using almost any technology. I've seen 19th century handwriting that was perfectly legible to my eyes, but I've also seen stuff that is a painful exercise in decryption. Likewise I see people who write, or print, at high speed with a ball point pen and produce beautiful handwriting
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Cursive vs. handwriting (Score:5, Interesting)
And I'm still mourning ... (Score:5, Funny)
... the death of Blackletter [wikipedia.org].
Explain to me why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Age-related CAPTCHA (Score:5, Funny)
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
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.
no one forced them to learn. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Hinderance? (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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