Can you write in cursive?
17I just finished listening to a radio program about the diminishing number of people who can write in cursive. Only 11 states require their public schools to teach cursive. Kansas is one of them, so I can write in cursive.
How about the rest of you? Write in cursive? If not, what do you do for a signature? Is cursive irrelevant? Should all of the schools just drop it?
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My cursive writing is really, really bad. It’s hardly legible. It makes for a great signature!
@Barney Maybe you should have been a doctor?
@heartny Trying to take notes in college ruined my handwriting. Of course this was in the Jurassic era, before all of this fancy computer stuff was invented.
@Barney
@heartny My optometrist uses that as an eye chart.
@Barney @heartny i did medical transcription for a while while i was in college. in the office, there were four of us doing work for the orthopedic department. each of us specialized in reading a specific doctor’s handwriting. it was actually pretty fun/ny how you got to know not just the handwriting but the writing style and common phrasing each used. still, a few of them needed all hands on deck because no one could become experts in their horrifying excuse for letting. /dumb anecdote
@meh I’ve often worried, after seeing my doc’s prescriptions, if I would get the right one/dosage at the pharmacy. But I guess now, they do it by computer or fax it to the pharmacy?
@Barney @Meh Most do it by computer/fax. Some still don’t. I had a mistake on my Rx recently thanks to poor handwriting. Pharmacist that helped me when I was picking up/paying for it went batshit, called the doctor and screamed at him. “YOU. COULD. HAVE. KILLED. SOMEONE! LEARN. TO. WRITE.”
When young I had nice handwriting. And could write pages and pages. I started living by keyboard as soon as I got my hands on my first pc (Trash-80)
My handwriting is now worthless.
And my hand is tired after 10 words or so. Then my handwriting gets even worse.
@f00l Star for the Trash-80. I grew up on those.
@f00l Same. I had beautiful handwriting until I got my first computer. So sad.
Even though I went to a private school, I’ll still address the question.
After several grades in elementary, the various teachers who were SUPPOSED to teach us script gave up.
So, we had to teach ourselves pretty much.
So, I don’t know most of it. I know enough to sign 2 versions of my name.
And by extension, the individual letters in my names.
Of course though, some letters I can fake the capitalization of, but otherwise I only really know the letters in my names the ways in which they appear.
@someRiverNoise So, you can’t read cursive?
@Barney
Once I start identifying the letters which I know, it’s a bit easier.
@someRiverNoise It’s like me trying to read old German script. I miss a lot of words, but most (some) of the time I can figure it out.
@Barney You had to bring up Fraktur, didn’t you? Or Deutsche Schrift? They give me nightmares.
The hardest part of the SAT for me was always copying that damn statement on the back in cursive. I was taught it because it was part of the curriculum but I think they’ve removed it. I write in print, though I do have a bit of a flourish on some of my letters that’s a holdover or a bit akin to cursive.
My signature starts with a pretty defined first letter and then devolves into some loopy stuff, for the most part. Not cursive but not that legible, like all good signatures.
As for if it should be dropped, I say yes. It’s too hard to read and the amount of time to save yourself writing it just gets dumped on the person trying to read it. Besides, with so much stuff being typed rather than handwritten these days, it just seems like it’s not a necessary skill to have.
I can actually write in cursive and do so on a fairly regular basis. Some of the meetings I attend are pretty writing intensive, and it would not be appropriate to bring a laptop or tablet with me to the meeting.
@ConAndLibrarian
You practice the Old Arts ,
@f00l I like writing in cursive.
@Barney
Mine is horrible and my hand starts to complain quickly.
This embarrasses me.
@f00l That’s because you are OLD.
@Barney
Old compared to dinos in Kansas?
My horrible disgusting handwriting embarrasses me because once upon a time this was a skill or art of which I had reasonable mastery.
@ConAndLibrarian So it’s inappropriate to bring a note-taking device like a tablet, but it’s appropriate to have a paper notepad that you are madly scribbling on and annoying flipping pages? What do you do with those hand-written notes? If you share them with anyone, you’ll have to photo-copy them or re-type them into a word processor or something. I prefer to take notes once and have them in an easily searchable and shareable format. I guess some people thing efficiency is in appropriate…
@medz perhaps I used the wrong words in my initial post. I should of said that in some meetings I have been in it would be inappropriate to bring in a device that connects to the internet. This is because of the confidentiality of the meeting. In those kind of meetings, our notes are collected. We see them again the next time we meet.
@ConAndLibrarian Ah… Airplane mode? or…
/giphy typewriter
Cursive? Yes.
Calligraphy? Yes.
Does it look good decades after I first learned typing on a typewriter – and when even my regular printing has gotten more and more illegible? Not even close!
@narfcake If I take my time, my handwriting is pretty good. The problem is that I’m often rushing when I’m writing and that makes it look pretty bad.
@narfcake I think we’re trying to write at the same speed we type, which causes scrambles.
@OldCatLady That’s a very good point. The last time I was tested, I did 66 wpm.
I know I’m nowhere near that speed writing/printing.
Can. Don’t.
@Pixy Glad. Sad.
I can only write in cursive. My printing is painfully slow, very poorly spaced, and nearly illegible.
It’s an effort to ensure that future generations can’t actually read documents like the Constitution and Bill of Rights and will thus be reliant on translators and interpreters.
@moondrake I often think of this Star Trek episode, too. But I think cursive is a lost cause.
@djslack Sorry.
@Barney We did have to learn it in school, but as soon as I was not required to write in cursive, I quit.
My most frequent use for cursive now is if I want to disguise my handwriting, like if I’m leaving a passive-aggressive note for a stranger. (That doesn’t happen often).
@djslack Just remember, I now have a copy of your handwriting if you decide to write me a passive-aggressive note.
I still write notes and thank you cards in cursive. I’m not letter perfect anymore, though.
Cursive fonts in work documents are annoying.
Buying a house killed my signature.
@Mavyn you bring up a good point, how do people sign their names if not in cursive? With a giant ‘X’? Emojis?
@elimanningface
If i ever buy another house, I’m using an emoji for my signature.
I will be teaching my son cursive. Our school system has stopped teaching it. I love my fountain pens and cursive is just so beautiful when you can make it prettier. I do want to learn spencerian script.
I’d like to listen to this podcast, what’s it called?
@Elphie http://www.jimbohannonshow.com/jim-bohannon-podcasts/
It’s the 3/30 show and starts about 40 minutes into the podcast.
My handwriting is poor in both cursive and regular print (got Cs in penmanship in school). Sometimes i cant even read my own notes.
But i still think they should teach it as a skill you can decide to use or not. Same as they made me learn history and chemistry, 2 subjects i also pretty much never use but they still made me try them. They come in handy from time to time, like i use history when playing Trivial Pursuit and Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader.
@mollama I agree with you.
Yes i can…but its difficult to read others writing
Schools here are teaching just the signature. Young kids and teens are funny when you ask them to sign their name.
I can write but it is sloppy. I never got good grades in penmanship. If I focus and carefully write my signature is legible but normally it is chicken scratch. I had a cast on my writing hand and when I was forced to use the other one it was pretty good.
I prefer to type. I am not a good typist although I know how. I use my own weird system.
I learned cursive in school but hated it. I also hated (still do) writing with a pencil. As soon as I was able to print and use a pen in Junior High I took my chance and never went back. I can still read cursive. Writing anything but my name takes a few minutes to remember, but it’s so ingrained that it comes back quickly.
I learned caligraphy but forgot it all soon after as I didn’t use it. My printing does reflect some knowledge of it though.
/image caligraphy
Yup…nope and nope…
The school that I work at teaches cursive in kindergarten…i’m glad my 9 year old son can read his grandparents letters without me having to decipher it for him. He does not like to print, he thinks it’s too hard and takes longer.
I learned it. I wrote in cursive as a kid. I can read it. I have not tried to write in pure cursive in a very very very long time. I bet there are some uppercase cursive letters I wouldn’t recognize any more.
My writing is more like printed letters that are sometimes strung together. I’m guessing that’s true for most people now.
Learned it. Never use it except for my signature which isn’t really accurate cursive…
Might be easier to write, but there are too many variations in style to make it easier to read. Print stuff when you have to, but type it any other time.
My printing is worse than my cursive. Which after only a few hours sleep and not enough coffee isn’t very good either at this hour. I write in a strange mixture of the two usually.
@KittySprinkles I would say I mix them a lot as well.
@Wolverine350r @KittySprinkles Yeah, I mix them, too.
Yep, I use it probably more then half the time. Looking at print from current middle and high school students it looks like my writing in second to third grade, but the spelling is worse. I am no good at typing.
More than 60 years later, I still remember how much I hated 1st Grade. I already knew how to read a bit, and write - with a normal pencil and paper. I was small for my age, with small hands. So I got to class, where we were issued those huge, fat pencils and pads of paper with lines for letters an inch high. There was no way to hold those pencils-on-steroids normally, so I had to try to write giant letters with a writing instrument held like a club, while thinking (not out loud!) that teachers were either sadists or stupidly unaware that kids had small hands.
Then when we had mastered (hah!) the art of gigantic block letters created with a club, we were introduced to cursive written in 1-inch letters with a club. What fun. Almost as much fun as those finger-painting sessions, where I very much wanted to use a brush, but was told we had to just dip fingers in the paint. (I was thinking: “What the hell! Are we 2-year-olds?”) Out of First Grade, my previously neat signature and writing had turned to crap, and never really recovered.
An 8th Grade class in mechanical drafting, and I learned how to do the lettering freehand, and have essentially used that ever since. I can freehand letter faster than I can write cursive. And it came in handy many times while writing (especially computer code) on a chalkboard for a room full of students.
@rockblossom I loved my Big Chief Tablet.
@Barney And the big Husky pencil. I was sad when I had to switch to the little pencil. All my life I’ve had a callous on the middle finger of my right hand, it’s honestly how I tell my right from left when I’m tired or have a headache. Yesterday when google maps told me to turn right I noticed it’s almost gone.
Of those of you who once had decent handwriting, either print or cursive: how many of you can now do, say, 2 pages of handwriting on standard printer paper without your hand going nuts and your handwriting going from decent to monstrous quickly?
When I was a kid, no PC’s, everyone had to write either one print or cursive, and everyone could and did, and we could write legible pages while still thinking about the writing, not that our hand was going nuts from fatigue.
Now even a single sentence is hard for me. There is a lot of fine muscle strength and control that I’ve completely lost.
Back then, I never thought of the physical act of writing as being physically taxing … it was just something you did …
@f00l Drawing keeps those muscles trained. But although I can write in cursive, when I was in school I got in trouble for kids copying off my tests so I deliberately started writing sloppy and that habit remains. My printing is very nice, and I’ve done a little calligraphy. I hand write lists all the time, so writing doesn’t wear me out but I rarely write in cursive. My signature is a version of my intials as back in my bureaucrat days I’d have to intial huge piles of documents on every frikken’ page and I developed a fast cursive scrawl of my initials. I use that with a flourish at the end for my signature. My first and last name are 16 letters which is too long.
I don’t get tired–I quilt and bake, so that keeps the hands strong–but I have had issues where I’m writing and suddenly forget how to make a letter. If I read through notes later, I can see where it happened.
I had to ‘relearn’ my initials for my work because I had to initial each step in a test script and it HAD to be legible. So, my initials are distinct, my signature is not.
@f00l my hand goes nuts and handwriting goes from decent to monstrous quickly because I am a lefty living in a righty world. Pens, pencils, markers - smudge, smudge, smudge.
Like others, I endured cursive whenever it was required, then went right back to block letters. All my cursive writing quickly devolves into a wiggly line.
My dad (architect) taught me how to write the way he did long before I was exposed to the school system. I also had a computer and printer from an early age so cursive seemed like a pointless exercise. If cursive was so great, why didn’t my printer write that way? CASE CLOSED.
I’m so damn old I can write cursive . . . in Latin.
I have a combination of cursive and printing. And sometimes for some reason separate words when using cursive.
I learned it, and had a fair hand for it in grade school. However I switched to printing in college Engineering classes and almost never use it any more beyond signatures.
That said I think its a good thing to learn because its great for hand-eye coordination. My Mom kept up her cursive to keep her coordination and to exercise her hands and wrists, and said it helped a lot though she could not maintain the ‘neatness’ as her issues increased.
This state passed a law to require schools to continue to teach cursive. I can write cursive faster than printing. Some things I do better handwriting, others typing.
There have been interesting studies where one of the findings is that students who take notes by hand do better in the class (generally around 1/2 a letter grade better when controlling for a number of factors). Several reasons - 1) more of the brain lights up when you do that rather than type and the same parts of the brain light up when you try to remember thus you have more of your brain working to retrieve the information. 2) because people generally write faster then typing they have to summarize in taking notes by hand thus they think about the information more. There may be more reasons but I can’t remember any more of them without looking up the original studies.
@Kidsandliz I fully believe this. In many of my undergrad classes, I was of a small majority that took notes by hand. In my masters’ program classes, I believe that I am the only one. Taking notes by hand is significantly more effective for me.
I always write in cursive, and find it much faster than printing. In high school, we were required to use fountain pen in all subjects except math and science labs.
Since I’ve acquire the other 8 thumbs, my hand writing has become usless. But I have great scribble for a signature.
All day long…
Yes. I can write in cursive.
My state is one of the states that “requires” cursive. I am a rebel and do not teach it.
/giphy rebel
From Our Nation’s Capitol: Nope, still can’t. Thanks for reminding me.
I can drive a stick-shift car though. Beat that.
@therealjrn I can drive a stick, read and write cursive, tell time from an analogue clock, make fire using two sticks, and juggle.
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn holy shit you are like a pioneer lol
@tinamarie1974 When the shit hits the fan, I’m heading over to @ruouttaurmind’s house.
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn me too! Does he have batteries, knives and speaker docks too? We will need them!
@ruouttaurmind @tinamarie1974 I don’t know, but I think he has a lot of little robot parts.
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn so we can build an army!
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn @tinamarie1974
I can do all of the above as long as one of the sticks is a match and juggling “the books” counts.
@Barney @ruouttaurmind @tinamarie1974 Well Barn, the world’s second oldest profession is accounting, so I’ll swing by and pick you up on the way.
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn @tinamarie1974
@ruouttaurmind Hey I can do all of those things too. In college I had a job addressing envelopes (calligraphy) for the alumni office for VIP alum that they hoped would give a fortune (the rest got mailing labels). And I can also start a fire in the rain just using sticks and a match. I also can drive dog teams, sail a “tall ship”, rock climb, kayak, canoe, cave, x-c ski, downhill ski, and knock over the pyramids that form in outhouses at 60 below, and corner and catch mice using just a flashlight, cup and a piece of cardboard. I do not, however, choose to do that with roaches. That is the job of the cats.
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind i can drive an automatic, change a lightbulb and use power tools. I can also walk and chew bubble gum at the same time lol
@ruouttaurmind @tinamarie1974 Ahhh but can you do all those things while goating?
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind like I said before, since I am a Capricorn, I goat EVERY day of my life. So, yes I can
@tinamarie1974 I’m a Capricorn, too.
@Barney I knew I liked you! #CapsRule
@tinamarie1974
/giphy high five
@therealjrn I must be glutton for punishment, since I’m in SoCal and both my daily driver and weekend wagon are manuals.
@narfcake Can you really do that in flip-flops?
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind @barney. This reminded me of something from a LONG time ago
I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan…
Not sure why it popped in my head!
@therealjrn Yes. I won’t do barefoot, though.
How did this get here?
@Barney no idea.
@Barney Did somebody click the big black button again?
@therealjrn
My fault. I’ve been feeling particularly open to subliminal suggestion the last couple days. And that button… just sitting there… taunting like… daring me to click so.
@ruouttaurmind @therealjrn There’s a CAGH reference in there, but I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
@ruouttaurmind You lie
. There was no big black button in back in 2017 back when this wasn’t a necropost thread.
@Kidsandliz But it all started (again) with the other topic. Then @therealjrn pulled a necro.
@Kidsandliz @ruouttaurmind @therealjrn @Barney You all know who’s really to blame for all this …
I write in cursive. I use it every day. I wish it was still taught. Letter writing is becoming a lost art.
I has the sads.