When I was learning the Palmer method I saw the method I learned as a kid but I don’t remember what it’s called. I learned it in the late 70s though. I can’t believe anyone would suggest not teaching kids to write. When I think of the reams I’ve written out over the years, I can’t imagine being without that. I can’t print out more than half a page in block letters without my hand cramping, but I can write for hours.
When I was learning printing and writing I had a best friend named Janet whose mom taught her to print and write at home, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t be as fast and neat as she was. I could be as fast, or I could be as neat, but not both. I think it was very good for me trying to keep up with her. Over the years I’ve changed my handwriting many times. Probably over a dozen times. When I want to be fast, I regress to my that old first style but with modified capitol "F"s, "T"s and "H"s, and a modified small “t” that is crossed on the way along.
When my grandmother died, I inherited some of her notebooks, and that’s when I decided to learn Palmer Handwriting. I like the ornamental, old fashioned look. I use it for more formal notes and things. For work communications I use my regular cursive.
I agree that writing by hand is a process that is different from typing or printing block letters. Not only that, but it’s the only way you can do a lot of writing quickly if you don’t happen to have a computer in front of you. That’s pretty important.
Can’t remember what they call it, but I hold my pencil in a way where the eraser end points away from my body and I press down harder on the paper. Writing cursive as a child was litterally painful for me to write. No matter how many papers I wrote, it remained being painful and it would take me over an hour to copy a single printed page.
So, personally I’m against teaching it beyond being able to do it if you want to–rather than teaching to a level requiring proficiency.
I went to Catholic schools from K-12. We started cursive in 3rd grade (for me, that was 90-91) and were graded on it until… at least 6th grade. It might be regional, but around here, Catholic schools are known for being sticklers for handwriting. I print most of the time because I have absolutely tiny and near-perfect printing; I’m not joking when I say that numerous people have thought a sheet of my printed notes were typed. Even so, when I print or write in cursive, I’ve had people look and say, “You went to Catholic school, didn’t you? Your handwriting is amazing.”
Not to toot my own horn or anything. But I love handwriting and can’t imagine not bothering to learn it. Not everything is typed out. But then again, I’m a Computer Science major who prefers to write things out instead of typing them and prefer fountain pens to ballpoint or roller ball pens, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt.
Don’t most people sort of modify their cursive so that’s it’s not really according to any particular system? (Or maybe that’s largely a girl thing?) I’m not sure what system I learned, but after I was done with it, it was different.
I remember as a teenager changing my writing around and experimenting until I liked it. I copied J’s off a friend and adopted a lot of Danish conventions after living there, and then when I took Russian I borrowed the M’s, and all in all my writing is a hodgepodge. And I remember a lot of my friends doing something similar.
Can anyone direct me to some information on the different styles and how they developed? I’ve heard the term “Palmer method” before, but that’s about it.
Suddenly this thread is making me all curious and now I want to learn to write cursive (beyond what I did in grade school. I stopped in 8th grade, and my cursive thus looks like a child’s. But then, my printing is - idiosyncratic or no - more attractive than most people’s.) How should I go about learning decent, pretty cursive writing?
Not how they were developed, but what they look like (for the other folks who, like myself, have never heard of the writing as anything other than Cursive).
Anyway.
I never liked cursive. It slowed me down, actually. Why bother with all those extra hoops and loops and such? “M” doesn’t need three humps. With the “a” and “d,” etc, I hated the backtracking. So now I write with a mix. The way I write, “the” is all together, but that’s one of the few words. Oh, and I sign my name in cursive (Janelle is fun to write in cursive, heh) with printed capitols.
That’s really neat. It looks like the original handwriting that I learned is more like the Zaner-Bloser method.
But I did like **dangermom ** and modified my hand, so that these days when I write things down, it’s more of a scrawled cursive with wacky breaks where I don’t bother with the up-and-down strokes and use just a downstroke, or with the odd printed character thrown in to make things interesting.
Lowercase f’s in the middle of a word consist of just the upper loop and a straight downstroke before the crossbar is slashed in from right to left.
G’s at the end of a word are just figure-eight-ish squiggles.
When I sent postcards to friends from China on a trip years ago, everyone commented on how tiny and insanely neat (if idiosyncratic) my handwriting was. Measuring my postcard-size handwriting gets me half a centimeter on my L’s and capital letters. Regular handwriting is a tetch bigger, but not by much.
My good friend teaches 4th grade, and apparently the 3rd grade teachers were not exactly successful in teaching cursive. So now he is working hard to teach it before school ends and the kids move on to 5th grade. He hates teaching it, but IIRC it is part of the required curriculum.
When I teach nursing students (or do my own writing in patient charts), I always suggest printing over cursive. IMHO, printing makes you slow down a bit and think about what you are writing. It’s generally easier to read and more accurate, which is obviously important in nursing. My printing is small and neat, and a lot of people comment on how good it looks.
i learned cursive russian and english at the same time. one righthanded (russian) one lefthanded (english). my handwriting in russian tends to be better due to the hours i spent in class making letter strokes over and over in those wee little squares. i spent much less time learning to form english letters, and no squares.
some letters crossed over. capital “k”, “h”, “b” “d” are russian, “m” is a modified russian.
i still use a russian capital “m” to draw a stick figure woman head. kinda looks like “that girl” or bree on desp. housewives. you just close off the open end on the top and add eyes and a mouth!
I’m surprised that so many people seem to find printing to be faster than writing. For me, cursive is at least twice as fast and much more comfortable. It’s also neater and more readable. And since I write left-handed I have to push the damn pen across the paper. You’d think I’d prefer printing.
My algebra teacher in 7th grade made us write variables in lower-case cursive so they couldn’t be confused with numbers. I’ve since realized that, though he was quirky, he was also absolutely right about this.
But I love handwriting and can’t imagine not bothering to learn it. Not everything is typed out. But then again, I’m a Computer Science major who prefers to write things out instead of typing them and prefer fountain pens to ballpoint or roller ball pens, so you can take my opinion with a grain of salt. 