This was really interesting! Don't know if you listen to Craig's Wednesday Audio but he has a legit hard time reading my cursive, which I thought was crazy until I realized I read your cursive WAY slower than I read your printing. . . which me got me thinking, maybe reading cursive is as much a meditative exercise as a cognitive exercise.
So much so, I'll be responding in a post on my Substack and publishing by this coming weekend. I need a couple days to cull examples, images, and draft and rewrite.
Suffice to say, there are three states of being in cursive, hand-printed, and key-stroked words, as well as other forms of communication such a calligraphy and doodling. I hope to rope that all in the forthcoming post.
As you know, I find time spent on cursive writing somewhat superfluous. Probably influenced by the fact that I went to school at a very strange time: just as the whole computer thing was really taking off. So I was taught cursive for a world that didn’t exist by the time I was in high school. It’s also kind of useless for historical reasons: the type of script taught now/recently isn’t the script that’s always been used and if you’re going to be engaging with older handwritten documents, you’re going to have to learn multiple different ways to read different scripts anyway.
Also having spent time helping physicians interpret each other’s handwritten notes: we are much much better off typing things.
Great post, Mark - really interesting! I love that you've shown us the three variations.
Over here I don't remember being taught 'cursive', although we did have a weekly handwriting lesson to get us from printed letters to what we call 'joined-up handwriting' (or at least we did in the 70s and 80s). Our handwriting was just our handwriting, and everyone's was different.
When I was an au pair in Germany I was astonished that the small children I looked after were learning 'Schreibschrift' at school, which to me at the time seemed totally over-the-top because it was really, really complicated with loops and curls and all sorts. Every child's handwriting was supposed to be identical - and it was!
I would say there is an equal place for handwritten text and typewritten text in our lives and routines, in both leisure and business contexts, but if I am the one reading the text I definitely want it to be clear. If words are badly typed or carelessly handwritten by someone, and it's something I need to read, that's no good at all. Communicative competence is as crucial in the written word as it is in spoken language, and accuracy goes a long way to achieve that.
Most of the writing I do for myself is longhand, joined-up, sometimes messy handwriting, and this is simply a tool to get words out of my head and onto the page. As long as I can read it, that's fine. But in today's world we can't be without keyboarding, and that's a great thing too.
I was taught cursive, and my sister, five years my junior, was taught printing. The main influence on the quality of writing, though, is the implement: fountain pen good, fountain pen with italic or oblique nib better; roller ball next, or a decent pencil. As for keyboardist skills, it was only ever presented as an option to girls, if at all. By the time I decided I should learn, it was too late: I couldn't be bothered to unlearn my inefficient habits. I think it ought to be compulsory for at least the first year of secondary, though how IT could be accommodated in the timetable poses a problem
I remember having to practice cursive writing in grade school and am still not sure why they've gotten away from it these days. To me, it's a more elegant way of writing compared to plain script, but I guess the need for such things is waning.
I will NEVER forget being in typing class in high school and complaining that it was something I would never use as I had "no plans on being a secretary" LOL!
It's funny you bring this up. I felt the same way myself and I've gone back to writing in cursive for all my notes and journaling. I grew up in the awkward time in school where we had to learn to write in cursive and type without looking at the keyboard.
It's been a shock to me that now I can just write in cursive and unless someone is older than me they probably can't read it.
I learned cursive in school but I can't tell you when. It's funny how you can remember some old stuff like it was yesterday but not other stuff. I can't even remember if I used it in college or not. I do know I had one class where we had to write the directions of how we got from school to home. We were told to write down two different ways. I printed that. I was writing fast. I completed the assignment before the end of class. The next class, we got our papers back. The instructor (that's what we called our teachers) told me by writing on the paper, that I couldn't have completed it in the time limit we had in class. After class, I walked up to him and told him that yes I had completed it in the class. How would I have known the assignment before anyone else? I was just writing so fast that I guess he thought there was no way I could have done it.
I LOVED this post. And I love I could read your handwriting (very nice cursive). I still write, every day. By hand, on paper, with pen or pencil. It is my need but I also think it helps our brains to be active in some other way. There is nothing I love more than seeing handwritten notes. I do type, but I do not prefer it. And I like thinking that I could still write if I didn’t have a device that needed electricity to function.
I have an affinity to some things that have gone or are going away. 45s, for one thing, including the whole experience of going to the mall to buy one. But Spotify really is much more convenient, so although I can be wistful for those times, I can't immediately throw a song onto my iPhone the second I hear it playing in a restaurant, instantly know the title, and even get a complete Wikipedia history on the band. There is something in that, too.
I don't have an affinity to cursive, probably because I never really liked writing by hand -- or my own handwriting, for that matter. So I can say without emotion that the last version on the Rosetta Stone above is by far the easiest to read. That in itself would spell the end of cursive. But when you add in how much faster it is to type, how much easier it is to email and store in Word, how it can be instantly changed into any font you want (including a choice of 10,000 crisp cursives), the writing for handwriting is on the wall.
But I feel you. The price of technology and progress is lost experiences, like riding in the back of station wagons, curling and uncurling phone cords, and threading film into the camera until you feel that satisfying tug.
Doesn't mean I'll trade truly Instamatic photos for it, though.
Yelp, I learned cursive, and I agree with you in the value of deciphering symbols in multiple forms. But I must admit--my capacity to write in cursive is utterly gone. I could read it easily, but I never use it any more. Fun post!
This is so creative! I love the the versions of the same post. And I agree with you, it's a shame to do away with cursive. It's also crazy how reliant we are on typing and on autocorrect nowadays - that's really not good esp for younger children who at school they use exclusively iPads.
Your cursive is rather easy to read! I usually use cursive when taking notes (basically shorthand). In Lithuania , everyone learns cursive in school (and you get a lot of praise in primary if you have a nice writing).
Hi folks, I wanted to add a follow up comment and I'll edit the post itself later.
Clearly there's a Anglo/Germanic/Romantic languages (Americas/European) bias within this post. Other languages, especially those using different symbols (Mandarin, Kanji, Korean text, and parts of Middle East/Africa/Asia) may not have the same considerations of joined up vs. separately printed text so those situations are possibly a simple duality to explore between typed vs handwritten text.
I also want to acknowledge those people for whom typing may be preferable due to differences in motor skills or other capabilities. My post shows a bias to those for whom using a pen or pencil to write is a trivial act (as well as being biased towards the literate, to be fair) and I realize that's not necessarily a global given. Hopefully my framing of this situation is not overly insensitive - people are not all the same and my writing represents my personal opinions, subject to my own assumptions and biases, unless otherwise stated.
This was really interesting! Don't know if you listen to Craig's Wednesday Audio but he has a legit hard time reading my cursive, which I thought was crazy until I realized I read your cursive WAY slower than I read your printing. . . which me got me thinking, maybe reading cursive is as much a meditative exercise as a cognitive exercise.
Okay, Mark, this hit a nerve with me too.
So much so, I'll be responding in a post on my Substack and publishing by this coming weekend. I need a couple days to cull examples, images, and draft and rewrite.
Suffice to say, there are three states of being in cursive, hand-printed, and key-stroked words, as well as other forms of communication such a calligraphy and doodling. I hope to rope that all in the forthcoming post.
Cheers, Mike
As you know, I find time spent on cursive writing somewhat superfluous. Probably influenced by the fact that I went to school at a very strange time: just as the whole computer thing was really taking off. So I was taught cursive for a world that didn’t exist by the time I was in high school. It’s also kind of useless for historical reasons: the type of script taught now/recently isn’t the script that’s always been used and if you’re going to be engaging with older handwritten documents, you’re going to have to learn multiple different ways to read different scripts anyway.
Also having spent time helping physicians interpret each other’s handwritten notes: we are much much better off typing things.
Great post, Mark - really interesting! I love that you've shown us the three variations.
Over here I don't remember being taught 'cursive', although we did have a weekly handwriting lesson to get us from printed letters to what we call 'joined-up handwriting' (or at least we did in the 70s and 80s). Our handwriting was just our handwriting, and everyone's was different.
When I was an au pair in Germany I was astonished that the small children I looked after were learning 'Schreibschrift' at school, which to me at the time seemed totally over-the-top because it was really, really complicated with loops and curls and all sorts. Every child's handwriting was supposed to be identical - and it was!
I would say there is an equal place for handwritten text and typewritten text in our lives and routines, in both leisure and business contexts, but if I am the one reading the text I definitely want it to be clear. If words are badly typed or carelessly handwritten by someone, and it's something I need to read, that's no good at all. Communicative competence is as crucial in the written word as it is in spoken language, and accuracy goes a long way to achieve that.
Most of the writing I do for myself is longhand, joined-up, sometimes messy handwriting, and this is simply a tool to get words out of my head and onto the page. As long as I can read it, that's fine. But in today's world we can't be without keyboarding, and that's a great thing too.
I was taught cursive, and my sister, five years my junior, was taught printing. The main influence on the quality of writing, though, is the implement: fountain pen good, fountain pen with italic or oblique nib better; roller ball next, or a decent pencil. As for keyboardist skills, it was only ever presented as an option to girls, if at all. By the time I decided I should learn, it was too late: I couldn't be bothered to unlearn my inefficient habits. I think it ought to be compulsory for at least the first year of secondary, though how IT could be accommodated in the timetable poses a problem
I remember having to practice cursive writing in grade school and am still not sure why they've gotten away from it these days. To me, it's a more elegant way of writing compared to plain script, but I guess the need for such things is waning.
I will NEVER forget being in typing class in high school and complaining that it was something I would never use as I had "no plans on being a secretary" LOL!
It's funny you bring this up. I felt the same way myself and I've gone back to writing in cursive for all my notes and journaling. I grew up in the awkward time in school where we had to learn to write in cursive and type without looking at the keyboard.
It's been a shock to me that now I can just write in cursive and unless someone is older than me they probably can't read it.
I learned cursive in school but I can't tell you when. It's funny how you can remember some old stuff like it was yesterday but not other stuff. I can't even remember if I used it in college or not. I do know I had one class where we had to write the directions of how we got from school to home. We were told to write down two different ways. I printed that. I was writing fast. I completed the assignment before the end of class. The next class, we got our papers back. The instructor (that's what we called our teachers) told me by writing on the paper, that I couldn't have completed it in the time limit we had in class. After class, I walked up to him and told him that yes I had completed it in the class. How would I have known the assignment before anyone else? I was just writing so fast that I guess he thought there was no way I could have done it.
I LOVED this post. And I love I could read your handwriting (very nice cursive). I still write, every day. By hand, on paper, with pen or pencil. It is my need but I also think it helps our brains to be active in some other way. There is nothing I love more than seeing handwritten notes. I do type, but I do not prefer it. And I like thinking that I could still write if I didn’t have a device that needed electricity to function.
I have an affinity to some things that have gone or are going away. 45s, for one thing, including the whole experience of going to the mall to buy one. But Spotify really is much more convenient, so although I can be wistful for those times, I can't immediately throw a song onto my iPhone the second I hear it playing in a restaurant, instantly know the title, and even get a complete Wikipedia history on the band. There is something in that, too.
I don't have an affinity to cursive, probably because I never really liked writing by hand -- or my own handwriting, for that matter. So I can say without emotion that the last version on the Rosetta Stone above is by far the easiest to read. That in itself would spell the end of cursive. But when you add in how much faster it is to type, how much easier it is to email and store in Word, how it can be instantly changed into any font you want (including a choice of 10,000 crisp cursives), the writing for handwriting is on the wall.
But I feel you. The price of technology and progress is lost experiences, like riding in the back of station wagons, curling and uncurling phone cords, and threading film into the camera until you feel that satisfying tug.
Doesn't mean I'll trade truly Instamatic photos for it, though.
~Graham
We need more Rosetta stone examples like this.
Yelp, I learned cursive, and I agree with you in the value of deciphering symbols in multiple forms. But I must admit--my capacity to write in cursive is utterly gone. I could read it easily, but I never use it any more. Fun post!
Rosetta Stone! Brilliant. My question is: which of the 3 did you write first?
This is so creative! I love the the versions of the same post. And I agree with you, it's a shame to do away with cursive. It's also crazy how reliant we are on typing and on autocorrect nowadays - that's really not good esp for younger children who at school they use exclusively iPads.
Your cursive is rather easy to read! I usually use cursive when taking notes (basically shorthand). In Lithuania , everyone learns cursive in school (and you get a lot of praise in primary if you have a nice writing).
Hi folks, I wanted to add a follow up comment and I'll edit the post itself later.
Clearly there's a Anglo/Germanic/Romantic languages (Americas/European) bias within this post. Other languages, especially those using different symbols (Mandarin, Kanji, Korean text, and parts of Middle East/Africa/Asia) may not have the same considerations of joined up vs. separately printed text so those situations are possibly a simple duality to explore between typed vs handwritten text.
I also want to acknowledge those people for whom typing may be preferable due to differences in motor skills or other capabilities. My post shows a bias to those for whom using a pen or pencil to write is a trivial act (as well as being biased towards the literate, to be fair) and I realize that's not necessarily a global given. Hopefully my framing of this situation is not overly insensitive - people are not all the same and my writing represents my personal opinions, subject to my own assumptions and biases, unless otherwise stated.
Thanks.