I’m in my mid-30s, which means I learned how to write cursive nearly 25 years ago. Almost immediately after, I started getting extra credit and kudos for typing my assignments (computer use was being encouraged, I guess). I’ve been typing for as long as I can remember, I’m pretty good at it, and it pays the bills. My handwriting is atrocious but I can still function. My signature looks awful and is nearly unrepeatable, but I was still able to buy a house.
A couple days ago my daughter asked me how to write her name the fancy way. I couldn’t. I literally cannot write a simple name in cursive anymore, no matter how long I take. Just couldn’t do it.
How bad is this?
Poll to follow, selecting one option for reading and one for writing.
The time is coming soon when we oldsters can send each other messages in cursive which only we will be able to read! Of course, all we’ll talk about is our bowel functions and B&W TV shows, but it will still be our secret.
For reasons of legibility, I strongly prefer block writing. Before I picked up the habit (in a high school drafting class), all I had available to me was an absolutely illegible cursive scrawl. I can write cursive now, and it’s mostly legible, but it’s ugly as sin and I’d much rather stick to block printing. Also, if I’ve been doing much Russian handwriting, everything gets all messed up in cursive, as a number of the same strokes are used to represent letters with very different sounds.
ETA: So far as reading it goes, I can usually puzzle out the ornate script used in old land record books, so most modern cursive is no problem.
Of course I can read cursive. I don’t know how you can’t if you can read English. It’s not that far removed (leaving out horrible handwriting). I prefer to not write in cursive just because I have sloppy handwriting.
I can still read and write cursive as well as ever, but my cursive handwriting has always been atrocious. My block printing is smaller, much more readable, and at least as fast, so I prefer it.
I didn’t vote on the ability, as I do a combination of print and cursive. Although, now looking at some samples of my writing, it appears to be much more cursive than print. It’s not “Palmer method” cursive, though. It’s some sort of quick, efficient style that leaves of the frou-frou loops and stuff, crosses t’s and dots i’s as I go along, with relatively frequent breaks in the stroke within words. It’s faster than printing, and faster than Palmer Method cursive.
I regularly got B’s and C’s in writing as a child because I tried to write too quickly. By the time I was about ten years old or so, I discovered The Lord of the Rings, and the magic that is Tengwar. I practiced writing the elvish runes so well that my facility spilled over into cursive and eventually into calligraphy. Even now, a few years later, I am still tasked by my close friends and family to inscribe manuscripts deemed notable by the usually female members of my cadre.
However, I rarely use cursive anymore when I take notes as my handwriting is clear and much quicker.
I failed to note that the poll was multiple choice, so you can add another vote (if you wish) to ‘I can read cursive just fine’ as well.
Related GQ question I just posted. I’m skeptical about the benefits of cursive, but that puts me in a minority among elementary teachers, and I’m curious what others know about its benefits.
Yeah, I’m curious, too. Other than maybe teaching fine motor skills (which, for all I know, may be quite important, although I’m sure there’s other ways than cursive to do so), I really don’t see the point.
I use it as an honorific, to denote respect for the recipient. Thank you notes, cards to my mother-in-law and grandparents, etc. If I ever wrote to Miss Manners, I would have a hard time deciding whether to email or send it on paper in cursive. My everyday handwriting, the little I don’t type, is in either block letters (drafting class has left its scars on me too!) or in a cursive/printing blend. The ends of "d"s join up with following "e"s, “y” and “g” mid-word join up their tail to the start of the next letter, and so on. Now that I think of it, lower-case “e” joins up with lots of letters, thanks to its low-left starting point.
Learned how as a kid, but lost it somewhere along the way. 43 years old now, and I can’t write cursive anymore, except for my signature - which makes my mom cringe every time she sees it because it looks so bad.
Back when I was a kid, the only reason cursive was still taught was because a couple of old fuddy-duddies in various legislative bodies figured the kids of today should have to suffer just as much as they did. Sure, if you can’t read cursive, you can’t read the originals of many important documents, but the same is true of not being able to read cuniform. Most people I’ve watched write tend to use both systems at once, switching between them to use whatever’s easier for a given letter.
I can still read it just fine, though it is now, always has been, and ever shall be much less legible and consistent (regardless of who’s writing it) than printing.
I can read cursive just fine. My writing is a mixture of cursive and printing. When pressed I can write all in cursive or all printing, but I’m slower at either than my hybrid writing.
and when I was in high school (grade 9), we had a section in our social studies class on check writing - and it insisted on printing the payee and the amount in all capital letters. Drilled into me to such an extent that on the rare occasion that I write a check, I still use that format.
Except that I think that the “and” in “and 99/100” is supposed to be vertical, and I don’t do that any more.
Cursive is the fastest way to write for me (faster than typing, cos I can’t touch type), but it’s very messy and usually only I can read it. If I’m writing for other people I use a mixture of print and cursive. I hate forms that say ‘use block letters only’ because I always slip a few cursive ones in there unless I’m really concentrating.
