I hated cursive when I was a kid. I had horrible handwriting. Not sure which “system” my school used, but it looked ungainly, and friends and I rebelled and used alternate forms of certain letters, fighting teachers along the way. Oh, the row we had when we insisted on using “our” versions of capital F and capital T. Literally ended up in the principal’s office over it. If only that was every rebel in school…
Once I got into university, though, I ended up using cursive of my own accord. I typically write in block letters, but when writing for speed (note-taking from certain fast-talking professors), I end up lapsing into a quasi-cursive that others find pretty. It literally was a way of writing without lifting my pencil/pen, one step removed from a scribbled shorthand, and had nothing to do with the system taught by my elementary school, but classmates loved it and thought it was some arcane writing method I’d brought from the depths. I think that was when I “got” cursive. I always heard that it was supposed to be faster than block print, but the methods I’d always been taught relied on excessive flourishes and time spent on serifs and such. I do think that my experience with “real” cursive helped me be able to create my own way of writing quickly, though it’d have earned me an “F” from all my teachers.
I still ended up using my elementary-school knowledge, though; in math classes, I used that system for writing variables and formulas, retaining block/quasi-cursive for other stuff. Math classmates thought it amazing that I had a way of writing an equation where I could visually identify some portions from others.
I don’t pause, I just substitute a more block-like version for capital D, F, G, Q, S, Z, 'cuz they always screwed me up. Forty years ago, when I had a job that required me to go into the DMV at least once a week with auto reg transfers, the requirement was to use the traditional cursive capitals when writing out VINs longhand, and it killed me to try to get a good Q.
Ditto ( I’m 45 ). My printing is a bit slower, but marginally more legible ( still not great ). In college, when I was vainly attempting to take notes as fast as possible, I did it all in cursive and even I had a hard time sometimes deciphering what I had written the day before.
I just glanced at some rough notes I wrote earlier on a pad of paper while doing some work stuff and it looks like I’ve unconsciously moved towards a weird 70/30 mix of printing and cursive. Still ugly-looking, but most folks would be able to puzzle it out a little easier I think - glancing at Ammonium Phosphate I printed the “A”, used cursive for “monnium” and printed “phosphate.” Like I said - weird :D.
If I am writing a note for the benefit of someone else, I always print.
I write a sort of hybrid cursive-block that seems faster than either alone. A few others I know who have to write legible records have adopted a similar technique. I can read and write cursive, it just takes longer to write it in order to get all the curly q’s right, or at least legible.
As for reading it, I can only handle cursive if it’s neatly formed and I read very slowly. I have a much, much easier time deciphering messy block print than cursive. I find it very frustrating and give up quickly.
As for writing, well, I’m slow, I have to think about how to make each letter, and then half the time I can’t read the result. And I can’t do a capital G to save my life, which is unfortunate because my middle name starts with one. I took the Praxis last year and we had to copy over the anti-cheating statement in cursive: this was a room full of 24-25-year-olds and it took most of us 5 minutes to write 2 lines.
I print exclusively unless I’m forced into a situation like the one above where cursive is mandatory, which almost never happens. I think it was a waste of time learning it in school: teach kids how to do their signature and that’s all you need.
I remember that I wasn’t able to read cursive until I was taught to write it in school, though I was already an avid reader.
A number of letters are very different in cursive than in printing (either handwritten printing or book printing): f, r, s, and z are totally different, and a number of other letters like b, m, n, and v are different enough to be confusing if you haven’t been educated in cursive. Not to mention the lack of clarity, at least to someone who hasn’t been educated in cursive, about where one letter ends and the next begins, that creates its own confusions and compounds the others.
And the capital letters are even worse: F, G, I, J, Q, S, T, V, and Z all look very different in cursive than what you see in front of you in this sentence, and cursive capital A and Y are only saved by looking like big versions of lowercase a and y.
I’m sure that if I’d never learned to write cursive, I’d have eventually learned to read it, but it isn’t something that is obvious.
This. Other than signing my name, I haven’t written in cursive since I was 14. That was 45 years ago.
Not to mention, in this age where we’re much more likely to type stuff on a computer keyboard than write by any means, teaching kids to write in two different ways seems like serious overkill. My handwriting of the printing sort has taken a nosedive in legibility over the past 15-20 years because I just don’t use it that much anymore, either. One method of handwriting is enough.
Hell, I can’t even see the point of teaching elementary school kids nowadays to sign their names in cursive. By the time they’re adults, we’ll surely have some standardized form of electronic signature.
Arguably there’s still some sort of call for it for note-taking, though as tablets become more ubiquitous…
All the mention of signatures reminds me of something about mine: On the (increasingly rare) occasions that I need to sign a receipt, my signature tends to be an indecipherable squiggly. When I sign a check (of the bank draft, not restaurant variety) or professional correspondence, I almost always take the time to make it a somewhat florid but legible version of my name. In fact, it’s not uncommon for me to practice a few times before signing any letter I send out in my professional capacity, even if it’s just “Enclosed herewith please find the following original documents associated with the above-referenced transaction: …”
I pretty much exclusively write in cursive; printing was always slow and illegible when I was younger, and I got decently good at cursive before my printing got legible enough to be presentable.
Then, when in college, all the note taking really kicked the cursive into gear; while I can type pretty fast, I can write in cursive pretty fast as well, and it’s actually legible and pretty good looking.
I do write a few of the capitals in block form- predominantly the ones that don’t flow well- F, Q , T and V are the ones I can think of that have particularly stylized constructions versus the printed forms in the method I was taught (Zaner-Bloser… strange that I recall that from my elementary school books from 1st-2nd grade in about 1980).
Since I was in first grade 70 years ago, of course I can read and write it. Block printing is much slower for me. Typing is probably about the same speed as cursive. Although I touch type, I am slow (20-30 WPM and none too accurate).
But I have a friend who is only a few years younger than me who never learned cursive. His block printing is very fast. But his bank insisted on a cursive signature so he invented something. It is funny about signatures. I knew a mathematician whose initials were SE and the last letter of his second name was a g and basically his signature was a scrawled SEg and his bank accepted that.
I am surprised by the people who say they rarely if ever write checks/cheques. I deal with a number of people who are not set up for credit cards (one merchant charged a 5% surcharge for credit cards) and who are happy to take checks. Or if I want to give a cash gift to a grandchild. Or in one case where a US merchant was set up so that they couldn’t take a credit card purchase from anyone outside the US. (They insisted on an address check that failed if you didn’t have a zip code. Come to think of it, you cannot put money on a NYC Metrocard without a US zip code.) I probably write a couple dozen checks a year.
I have always had very neat cursive writing. I still tend to write in cursive for all correspondence.
Reading cursive is also not an issue. I’ve been indexing records for familysearch.org and there have been only a few records I’ve had to return due to not being able to decipher the writing (for some reason anything after 1830 or so is a snap, but before then? Ugh).
As far as my signature goes - my mom and I tend to argue about it. If I need to sign my name on a legal contract, yes it will be legible. If it’s a check or something in that vein? My signature is a few loops and assorted squiggles. My bank once contacted me when a check I wrote was pulled for being “off” - it was a check written when I was with my mother and she was nagging me to make it legible. So I did. And it set off alarms with the bank.
Pretty much the only time I write anything by hand is to make short notes to myself, or when I write out a check (maybe once a quarter). I’ve read that they don’t really teach cursive that much in school anymore, good riddance.
I can start off with really beautiful cursive writing.
Then, after about six words, it starts to get sloppy.
Than, after about a paragraph, it starts to look like doodles by a drunk.
Just can’t keep up the quality - and speed makes it worse.
My printing has turned into a “personal” sort of cursive, where the letters that work together get connected and the letters that don’t - don’t. I much prefer writing this way and about half the people I’ve seen also write this way.
When I learned cursive, the teachers neglected to tell us that cursive was actually just block letters connected in fancy ways. I thought it was a whole separate alphabet. That actually caused problems with my form for years because I didn’t realize a cursive “b” was supposed to look at least vaguely like a print “b”, just with a loop or two. So my cursive was absolutely atrocious, no idea how they read it. In my 20’s I figured it out. I even figured out why cursive Qs and Zs look the way they do (and all the other letters like f, s, and so on. The only mystery left is the capital I and G) - all Palmer cursive is regular print letters with flourishes and connections. You can see the print letters if you cut off all the excess. Pissed me off in fact that nobody told me and that I couldn’t figure it out.
What also pissed me off was for years the teachers goaded us on with “In high school they’ll require you to write EVERYTHING in cursive so we’re starting early by making you do everything in cursive now. You BETTER learn!”. I hated cursive and writing it was difficult as I didn’t understand the letters and the loops didn’t fall naturally in my print pattern. Of course, when we got to high school not a single teacher wanted cursive assignments. Middle school lied to us.
I just had to add - I remember muddling through all my childhood thinking “why does the print m have two humps but the cursive m have three? It just gets confused with an n”
I didn’t understand that the first “hump” is actually supposed to be the connecting glide up from a previous letter and then down into the first downstroke you’d make with the normal print m. The other two humps are the normal humps. Even though there’s no reason to have that extra hump on the “m” at a start of a word because you’re not following from a previous letter (like “moody”) I’d always put that hump because I thought that’s how cursive m’s looked. After all, I was taught all the cursive letters with their connections even if the letters were isolated - how could I know half these flourishes weren’t really part of the letters?
Brit here and as I posted in the other thread, “cursive” isn’t a thing here. “Printing” is what little kids do before they learn to write joined-up. Adults write with normal letters (roughly the same shape as printed letters), but joined together so you can write them quicker as you’re not always taking your pen off the paper.
The thought of somebody actually devising a more complex alphabet for people to handwrite in is just… odd.
I taught myself to read at age 4, but I flatly refused to earn how to write (much later, testing proved I have serious eye/hand coordination problems). Right before my eighth birthday, I saw a book in a store window with a word I didn’t know on it. So I asked my brother “What’s a diary?”
A book where you write down everything you did that day? The idea knocked me out. FINALLY, a reason to learn how to write!!! I got my brother’s cursive writing book and taught myself how to do it in an afternoon.
I still can’t print very well, but I still keep a cursive writing diary.
My son just graduated high school. Cursive wasn’t considered important, he can barely read it and only knows enough writing to sign his name. He recently had to sign his full name and I had to coach him through signing his middle name.
He told me about a classmate of his who went to get his learner’s permit and didn’t know enough cursive to sign his name. The kid’s mother had to take him home to practice signing his name and then brought him back to get his permit.
Cursive is faster than printing for me, but sometimes I will print the capital letters. Especially Q and Z.
