
Cursive Seemed to Go the Way of Quills and Parchment. Now It’s Coming Back - ingve
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/13/education/cursive-writing.html
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bfrydl
Typical cursive is a form of connected writing originally designed for pens
and quills with flexible nibs. Letters like ℓ have loops because when writing
with these tools the downstroke is thicker than the upstroke. The result is a
recognizable lowercase L with a thin stroke on the side. It's easy to read
even if you've never had to before.

This form of writing was dated as soon as the ballpoint pen was invented,
which was in the 19th century. Writing it with a pencil makes even less sense.
By tradition we have clung to this terrible writing style instead of
introducing something more sensible and modern like italic cursive, which is
connected but without loops.

~~~
reaperducer
Cursive exists not because of quills and ink but because it’s easier on hand
muscles when writing long form.

People used to write hundreds of pages a week. The letters I sent to friends
when I was in college were probably 20 or 30 pages each, and several went out
each week.

Writing that much in print hurts my hand, even today. Last year I switched
back to cursive in my daily work notebook and it’s reduced hand pain greatly.

~~~
bfrydl
Cursive in general, meaning letters connected together to minimize pen lifts,
still exists because it's easier and faster than block lettering. It's the
particular kind of looped cursive taught in America that was designed for dip
pens and other older instruments. Writing this script with a modern pen or
pencil trades legibility for writing speed and comfort.

My point is that if we want to keep teaching kids connected writing, there are
cursive scripts that are easier to teach, easier to write, and easier to read
than the one we've clung to for so long.

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dsfyu404ed
Considering the limited time available to schools for teaching and available
to kids for homework I find it very hard to justify teaching cursive in 2019.
It is no longer a required skill for being a functional member of society,
it's not even in the top half of the "nice to have" list.

~~~
ajmarsh
How is there time for this, and not a financial literacy class? Kids are
graduating HS with no real life skills to speak of yet we have time for this?

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dsfyu404ed
It is not in the government's interest to strongly support the teaching of
financial literacy because a population that is financially literate is going
to demand more financial responsibility from government. While there's no
conspiracy to prevent teaching financial literacy, there's just little
incentive to actually do it because the status quo thrives on its absence.

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ravenstine
The common discussion around this topic reminds me of how people got upset
about Pluto being demoted to a "dwarf planet", or how they value spending
hours of one's life reading fiction novels while scoffing at shows and video
games as lower forms of art. I know older folks who think it's a bad thing
that their nieces and nephews aren't being taught cursive handwriting. People
have a visceral reaction to change, especially when it comes to things that
were romanticized, or at least emphasized in childhood.

Knowing how to write in cursive is like knowing how to churn butter, how to
tie a horse to a hitching post, or (more aptly) using a typewriter. Said
skills might be selectively useful, but they are generally obsolete. It's
great that people want to know that I have to do those things, but don't
expect me to have to learn outdated things that have no use for me.

~~~
linuxftw
Learning how to write fluently on paper and the ability to read older source
documents is a skill.

Learning that Columbus showed up in 1492 is trivia. Public school spends >50%
of time on trivia, and skills are being removed.

I consider written language a part of a language culture. Getting rid of
cursive writing is like telling people they can't speak Spanish because it's
an outdated language and everyone should just use English because it's more
modern, and all the computer stuff is in English anyway.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Latin would be a better comparison than Spanish here. It has its uses, but
it's very situational these days and most modern people will never need it.

~~~
ravenstine
Even Latin still makes sense to learn in some capacity. It's obsolete(or dead,
really) as a form of communication, but it's still helpful to know in order to
better understand the words that we use today, many of which stem from Latin.
Understanding etymology and some Latin has helped me understand the meaning of
words without even having to look them up.

Cursive, on the other hand, still exists for its own sake. It's an obsolete
skill because few people write actual letters anymore or rely on handwriting
often. We still use English every day, which is why learning Latin is a better
use of one's time than to learn cursive.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
I imagine it has practical value for historians who have to read cursive
documents, and as an art form it's just as valid as any other sort of
calligraphy. But yeah, outside of a few narrow areas it doesn't have much
modern use.

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tdeck
I was born in 1991. I learned to write cursive in school, but I can't
comfortably read it. Whenever I get a card from an older relative I've got to
slowly puzzle over some of the words. Apart from the odd instructor who wrote
on the board in cursive, these occasional personal notes are my only practice.
These days most people default to what used to be called "printing" so it's
rarely a big deal.

If we want to bring back cursive, there needs to be more of an acknowledgement
that reading and writing are different things, and need to be practiced
differently. When I was learning Morse code, it was understood that sending
and receiving are different skills (e.g. I can send at 25 WPM but can only
copy at about 12 WPM). The same doesn't seem to be true about cursive
education.

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anon491throw
What's interesting is that difficult to read / "ugly" font text is more
memorable than easier-to-read text. Therefore, memory-item checklists,
insightful quotes and other bits of important text should use Comic Sans,
cursive, etc. to achieve memorability, whereas most ubiquitous affordance
labels and signage shouldn't.

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gruez
Source on this? You'd think that if it worked, all the ads you see would be in
ugly fonts, seeing how well adtech optimizes.

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jsty
[https://qz.com/1417818/hard-to-read-fonts-can-help-boost-
you...](https://qz.com/1417818/hard-to-read-fonts-can-help-boost-your-memory/)

Here's a font designed to leverage the effect for improving recall

~~~
tdeck
Very interesting! Though it seems like you'd grow accustomed to this font and
lessen it's effect if used regularly as part of a study process.

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Arbalest
It frustrates me that older generations lament the loss of cursive in the
curriculum, but refuse to acknowledge that it overall reduces the readability.
Not everyone is a born artist, and the evidence is quite clear that it isn't a
magic bullet (or else everyone would have readable cursive). I know I don't
write that well, but because the letters aren't linked up there's less ability
to scrawl, so they tend to be reasonably interpretable.

~~~
burfog
An artist would make less-readable cursive. To make readable cursive, you need
to practice following rules precisely. You need to develop hand coordination,
which is probably of general use for things like sewing and surgery and
removing slivers.

I think a big trouble is bad instruction. Somebody with a clue needs to
carefully study your writing, find the flaws, and insist that you get things
correct. Some things about letter forms don't matter much, while other things
matter a great deal. For example, the distinction between a rounded curve and
a point is usually important. Many teachers won't know this. Also,
individualized attention isn't easy to get in a large classroom.

~~~
cgriswald
I am left-handed and although my cursive was perfectly fine otherwise
(properly sized loops, etc.), I was removed from class and given special
instruction (by someone... I think she was not a teacher, but a volunteer aide
or something) in order to correct my left-leaning slant. It 'worked', but the
cost was my cursive was significantly worse. She frequently was out of the
room, so I just went very slowly to get enough 'good' cursive to satisfy them.
To this day, unless I am really thinking about it, my right-leaning cursive is
much uglier than my left-leaning cursive.

~~~
burfog
You are at a disadvantage, and so you'll need more practice. Perhaps it would
help to get a writing tool that doesn't need much force.

Funny story:

I'm right handed. In high school, I badly injured my right hand. When I first
tried to write with my left hand, I found that it seemed easy. My handwriting
was perfect except for one thing: it was a mirror image! Switching to the
proper direction didn't degrade the quality, but it really really slowed me
down.

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ummwhat
Call me uncultured but I say it should damn well stay dead. Cursive is a waste
of everyone's time. It adds nothing to the language. Remembering how to do it
is about as skillful as remembering all the Minecraft crafting recipes, and it
is merely a historical accident that one of these is seen as a mark of
education and the other a mark of immaturity.

~~~
DiffEq
So it certainly is not a waste of everyone's time, and it does add to the
language but only in the sense that it is, can be, and should be, considered a
form of art. And last time I checked beauty is not a waste of time (well not
always). I learned italics instead of cursive in the 1980s; I was in the first
year they dropped cursive. I lamented not learning cursive when I saw my mom's
handwriting...but I also lament not learning art when I was young when I see
people effortlessly sketch out a dog or some thing like that. Yet my lament is
not enough to invest the time to learn those skills; I would rather learn some
other thing; but I am not everybody and I know some people that certainly love
cursive and have learned different variations of cursive and some have gone
into calligraphy. So I think it should be some form of an elective, just like
art class. Perhaps that is the proper place.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Then take a college elective and stop wasting everyone else's time because of
your lament.

~~~
DiffEq
Um...if you read what I wrote, this is essentially what I said.

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ChrisRR
Is it an american thing not to learn cursive? I'm from the UK, 30 years old
and everyone was taught "joined-up writing" as it was called.

Nowadays I write about half and half. Joining up letters where it's natural
to, and leaving some unjoined.

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wmil
US and Canada use the "Palmer Method", which is much more stylized than
"joined up".

There are a lot of loops and odd shapes to keep then quill nib straight. Most
people realize that it's a complete waste of time when using a ball point pen.

~~~
NikkiA
Yep, UK 'joined up writing' is typically D'Nealian script - although 'z'
was/is often simplified.

~~~
ChrisRR
Thanks to both of you. I thought they were the same thing until now

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azhenley
> _Part of being an American is being able to read cursive writing._

What?? This is asinine.

~~~
jhbadger
The argument, such as it is, is that many of the founding documents of the US
were originally written in cursive. But they were eventually printed for
distribution so the argument doesn't really make sense. It would be like
saying Britons should not only learn medieval handwriting but medieval Latin
as well given that their Magna Carta was written that way.

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musicale
I recommend cursive italic, a form of writing that is beautiful and fast to
write, but much easier to learn than looped cursive, since it reuses the
printed letter forms and avoids complicated joins.

As a bonus, your handwriting resembles Shakespeare's.

~~~
burfog
That is a fine recommendation for people in the UK. It will be readable there.
Americans aren't usually used to it.

Americans normally use D'Nealian. It is similar to the older Palmer Method,
which in turn is similar to the older Spencerian script.

~~~
jvagner
Do you have recommendations for exposing/introducing/teaching some kind of
cursive to an American home-schooled 15 year old?

On the one hand, he's in college chemistry & physics on the side... on the
other hand, we have funny gaps like this that we know we should do _something_
about.

[Or maybe not...]

~~~
burfog
I did exactly that. I had kids studying for AP Chemistry ages 10 to 16, and I
think that is when I sat them all down to learn handwriting. I hadn't planned
to teach it, because I thought I never used it, but then one day I wrote a
non-technical essay (something I hadn't done in many years) and felt a
strangely strong urge to use cursive.

I sat everybody down at a table and had them copy my text from a whiteboard. I
wrote sentences about random crazy stuff. I would then go over their text,
making them fix each spot that could create ambiguity. Explain the ambiguity
so that they understand why it is a problem. (if your 'f' has a lower loop
that is wide or doesn't descend much, it could be confused with a 'b', etc.)
Most days we'd do a few dozen sentences. It wasn't long before they started to
be decent at it.

I sure know what you mean about the funny gaps. It is easy to forget something
while focusing on other stuff. At one point I had a 14-year-old who couldn't
really read. I threw him into AP Chemistry, making him read the book out loud
so I could correct him. That worked! It was miserable at first, because he
needed correction every few words, but now he reads well.

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JoeAltmaier
I remember in high school I tried to write a letter to my older brother in
California. I had forgotten how to write in cursive - too much hand-lettering
on my computer printouts etc. So I just hand-lettered the letter.

Today (decades later) I use cursive exclusively for signing things. And that's
a mess.

~~~
lainga
How often do you handwrite?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Almost never. Maybe a note in a notebook, and I hand-letter.

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braindouche
I've said for years, the American system gets itself all tangled up because we
(want) to teach two entirely different writing systems to children: we start
with manuscript (printing) and then once the kids are used to that, we
consider slapping them with cursive (and a hideous Palmer hand or a derivative
to boot).

You want to teach cursive effectively? Drop manuscript training entirely and
start kids on the joined-up writing in first grade.

~~~
brianpgordon
Why would you pick cursive _over_ print? Making kids practice cursive is
insane enough to me; making them _only_ learn cursive is a virtual non
sequitur.

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chungleong
Isn't cursive writing still required in certain social situations? I recall
having to write a statement in cursive when I took the LSAT. Presumably, so
they could verify I was the person who the test if necessary. I kept making
mistakes cause I was used to writing Cyrillic in cursive. Muscle memory turned
all my p's into n's :-)

~~~
RandomInteger4
Just vomit out some squiggles. There's no legal requirement in any situation
for your signature to correspond to anything.

~~~
chungleong
I imagine if I were to fail to reproduce my handwriting on demand, the test
result would be deemed fraudulent.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Then learn to make a reproducible squiggle vomit that's unique to you; it's
more secure than using the common alphabet of squiggle vomits and wastes less
of everyone's time.

Alternatively, you could use your knowledge that you were just tested on to
construct an argument for why deeming a test fraudulent based on some asinine
squiggle vomit system is kind of complete bullshit. I mean, for fork's sake,
you are training to be a lawyer after all, so do some got dang lawyering in
such an instance.

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booleandilemma
Do they not teach cursive anymore in schools?

That’s a new one for me.

