That’s not actually a millennial at all. We were born from the early 80s up to 2000. Obviously there’s no strict end date but “after the late 90s” is definitely catching either no millennials or a year or two of our youngest.
Or in other words, I’m a millennial. I’ve signed my names to all kinds of important stuff. Bought many houses, gotten married, adopted a child, settled my late father’s estate. We’re definitely not kids anymore.
Ok…so I’m the only one who thought this thread would be about ASL, huh?
She’s 5 and she wants to … but realistically she’s only just mastered printing her name. But it’s definitely something she’s interested in, whenever she sees me sign my name she has me write hers in cursive and tries to copy it. It’s interesting to me that it’s so hard for her (a kid who is otherwise decent at drawing and printing for her age), especially because the letters in her name map fairly closely from printing to cursive, so there must really be something about the “flow” of cursive that is challenging.
It’s still part of the curriculum at her school so I imagine she’ll pick it up eventually.
I still think it is worth teaching in school, if only to give people exposure needed for reading historical documents or the option to write a different way.
Keyboarding is obviously much more valuable, though, so if it must be one or the other, I would ditch cursive.
Hell, I’m gen x and I can barely sign my name. I use the accursed cursive so rarely that it never feels right when the time comes to scrawl my name across something.
Of all the things to rightly complain about regarding millennials, this isn’t one.
Is just “making your mark” with an X still valid? (Or was it really ever for that matter?)
Kids born in the 80’s - early 90’s are Gen Y, not millennials.
My almost 10-year-old can sign his name, but that is the only cursive he knows. However, I have told him that I am going to teach him to read cursive writing before he goes to college if he isn’t taught to at some point in his schooling. He said why, and I explained about research and “original sources,” then I impressed him with my ability to read 15th and 16th century script. I explained that I cannot write it, but I can read it. I showed him one of the notes his grandmother sends with gifts, because she writes in cursive, and said I’d also like him to be able to read them. He asked if I know how to write cursive, and I said yes, but like my brother and my husband, I have poor handwriting, so we all print.
Anyway, now he thinks of cursive as a secret code, and is sort of motivated to learn it. To read it, that is, not write it. I’m sort of amused, though, by the idea of a group of fifth grade boys learning long-hand so they can write notes the other kids can’t read.
Gen Y and Millennials are the same people.
Yeah, as mentioned a couple times in this thread, they are two names for the same generation. Generation Xers also, for a brief time, were also called Baby Busters (as well as a few other names) before the Gen X name caught on, thanks to Douglas Copeland’s novel. Gen Y and Millennials are similarly the same generation. Basically, they’re early 80s to late 90s/early 00s, depending on who’s doing the defining. The generation after the Millennials are known as Generation Z, the Homeland Generation, and the iGeneration. Not sure which one is going to stick yet, but it seems the default, at the moment, is Gen Z. In America Gen Z is regarded as starting somewhere from around 1998-2005, depending on who is doing the demography.
It irritates the hell out of me when some asshat demands that I spell out every letter of my first, middle, and last names because “this is a legal document.” It asks for my signature! I think I know better than you do what my signature looks like!
Born in '94. I’ve comfortably used the same cursive signature since I was 10-11ish. I did, however, go to a relatively prestigious private school catering to the children of English-speaking expatriates from grades 1-5, and learning to write cursive was an integral part of the 2nd grade curriculum.
My Danish peers generally have a stylized signature, but cannot write actual, standardized cursive, nor accurately read it without great issue - which is down to cursive simply not being an important part of the Danish primary school syllabus.
I know, I run into that all the time.:mad:
My 12-year-old can; my 8-year-old can’t (yet).
I’m an older millennial and I can write cursive and sign my name. Sometimes I wonder if my children will be the last generation that can actually use a pen and pencil.
That’s the only thing that really confused me about that whole “how to confuse a millenial”-thing - we were mostly 20-somethings when social media came along. Who are you talking to?
There’s not much call for it in Japanese, but yes.
10 years old, public school.
I would think if any kid or teen today does not know cursive writing it is the lovely education system we have today.
And in places with cut backs like California horrible education system I would not be surprised.
I’m a '68 vintage and I’ve never signed my name in cursive, but it’s a cultural thing. Writing your name down = cursive or block letters, depending on how bad your handwriting it. Signature = a scrawl which may or may not be related to your name at all.
It actually got me in trouble a couple of times with people who asked me to sign my name and got the scrawl.
Same here. The signature on my Social Security card I received and signed when I was in high school is of the same quality as for a written homework assignment. Now all you can really make out are my initials and the final letter of my last name.
At this point in life (I’m 41), my signature looks nothing like a cursive spelling of my name. It’s just a mark that I make on contracts and other legal documents.
When I was in Brazil last year, resolving my father’s legal affairs, I had to register my signature at the notary’s office (cartorio). The guy working there told me that they have one client whose signature is a drawing of a cat.