# Stunning examples of willful ignorance **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 30, 2007, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644 "2007-10-30T23:50:50Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/281 "2007-11-12T17:52:09Z")
I had a guy ask me which came first on an oak tree, the acorns or the conkers (horse chestnuts.) He refused to believe they grew on different trees ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/282 "2007-11-12T19:36:42Z")
[Jane, you ignorant slut!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5UJOvVoPcw) ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/283 "2007-11-12T19:39:04Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > faux-copperplate writing Dude, that’s what cursive _means_. That is the meaning of the word cursive. When everyone else in the world talks about cursive in English, that’s what they’re talking about. Whatever cursive _you_ use is apparently not part of our discussion. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/284 "2007-11-12T20:00:47Z")
Cursive isn’t really meant for other people to read, unless you do have nice handwriting. I don’t think nice handwriting necessarily=cursive. Myself, I hate writing anything by hand. I’m 31, so I still grew up in an era where writing was mainly done by hand (then by typewriter in high school), so I know what it’s like, but never gained a fondness for it. I hate writing period, as I said, but if I have to write fast, printing doesn’t even match my cursive speed. Just because the cursive on the screen is the way you learned it, does that mean we are all supposed to keep to that way exactly? I have since modified boith my cursive and my printing so some have elements of the other - my 'f’s are almost always a long sloping f, and my 'a’s are almost always print-looking. I’ve adopted a style that combines both. Not wanting to use cursive just because kind of strikes me as willful ignorance…I mean, we’re not saying it has to be “perfect” cursive, whatever the heck that is! Just that it is faster when you don’t have to lift your pen from the paper. * * * My boss-for-two-years-but-no-longer refuses to become familiar on the computer. This drives me nutty. He refuses to type e-mails, instead, dictating long useless e-mails to me. He hand-writes letters then hands them to me to type up, when it would take him just as long to type it up. He doesn’t know how to attach a file. He refuses to learn. I don’t mind typing the letters and whatnot but I’m pretty damn busy too. I have two other supervisors. So I can’t always waste time on him, and sometimes he’s gotta learn to do this himself. He refuses. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/285 "2007-11-12T20:08:04Z")
[QUOTE=Anaamika] Cursive isn’t really meant for other people to read, unless you do have nice handwriting. I don’t think nice handwriting necessarily=cursive. Myself, I hate writing anything by hand. I’m 31, so I still grew up in an era where writing was mainly done by hand (then by typewriter in high school), so I know what it’s like, but never gained a fondness for it. I hate writing period, as I said, but if I have to write fast, printing doesn’t even match my cursive speed. Just because the cursive on the screen is the way you learned it, does that mean we are all supposed to keep to that way exactly? I have since modified boith my cursive and my printing so some have elements of the other - my 'f’s are almost always a long sloping f, and my 'a’s are almost always print-looking. I’ve adopted a style that combines both. Not wanting to use cursive just because kind of strikes me as willful ignorance…I mean, we’re not saying it has to be “perfect” cursive, whatever the heck that is! Just that it is faster when you don’t have to lift your pen from the paper. [/QUOTE] Well, generally speaking, cursive (even if it’s just slurred print) SHOULD be faster for me, but it’s not, because I just don’t habitually write like that. I’m used to lifting my pen off the paper between strokes, so when I DON’T do it, the legibility goes all to shit or the speed goes all to shit as I either try to concentrate on making it legible or just making it quick. That said, oftentimes my print gets slurred depending on how much of a hurry I get into, but it hardly ever becomes actual cursive. > [@](#): > > My boss-for-two-years-but-no-longer refuses to become familiar on the computer. This drives me nutty. He refuses to type e-mails, instead, dictating long useless e-mails to me. He hand-writes letters then hands them to me to type up, when it would take him just as long to type it up. He doesn’t know how to attach a file. He refuses to learn. > > I don’t mind typing the letters and whatnot but I’m pretty damn busy too. I have two other supervisors. So I can’t always waste time on him, and sometimes he’s gotta learn to do this himself. He refuses. OK, yeah, that definitely fits the OP, I think. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/286 "2007-11-12T20:11:15Z")
Back in 4th Grade (which would have been 1971), I had a teacher who thought that meteors were, literally, falling stars. She also told us that USSR stood for “United States of Soviet Russia”. ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/287 "2007-11-12T20:29:01Z")
A couple of days ago a young Dominican bloke asked me where I was from - I said “England” just to simplify matters because the real answer is too obscure for the average person at the best of times\* and I didn’t feel like going into the usual tedious explanation. I should have dumbed it down even further. His reply was: “Isn’t that part of Argentina?” At first, I thought he might be joking. Turned out he was serious. \*I’ve noticed my son, who is only 7, instinctively modifying his answer according to whether he thinks the person will be able to cope with “Gibraltar” as a reply to the simple question “where are you from?”. ---
**Author:** ![Raguleader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/258eb7/32.png) [@Raguleader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Raguleader)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/288 "2007-11-12T20:35:04Z")
[QUOTE=Martha] \*I’ve noticed my son, who is only 7, instinctively modifying his answer according to whether he thinks the person will be able to cope with “Gibraltar” as a reply to the simple question “where are you from?”. [/QUOTE] Isn’t that in Ireland? _ducks, rolls, and flees for cover_ 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/289 "2007-11-12T21:31:53Z")
[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck] For those of us who are hoary enough to take pleasure in a thoughtfully and properly handwritten letter, it happens to be quite the indispensable skill. But you know, different strokes and all that. [/QUOTE] Um, I love to write letters on unlined paper with a fountain pen. Does that make me a hoar? ---
**Author:** ![Martha\_Medea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/43a26b/32.png) [@Martha\_Medea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martha_Medea)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/290 "2007-11-12T22:08:56Z")
[QUOTE=Raguleader] Isn’t that in Ireland? _ducks, rolls, and flees for cover_ 😃 [/QUOTE] Close. It’s a peninsula. Oh. I thought you said ‘an island’ - which is one we get all the time. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/291 "2007-11-12T22:13:38Z")
[QUOTE=Swallowed My Cellphone] Probably something about absorbing the chemicals through your skin and becoming a glow-in-the-dark mutant. [/QUOTE] That’s not how I became a glow in the dark mutant. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/292 "2007-11-12T22:24:35Z")
My understanding is that the connected print that many of us write is actually called “connected print”, not “cursive”. I’ve always understood “cursive” to mean Palmer or Zaner-Bloser or Spenser or similar; you know, what my mom writes. ---
**Author:** ![DaphneBlack](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daphneblack/32/5389_2.png) [@DaphneBlack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaphneBlack)\ **Post date:** [November 12, 2007, 10:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/293 "2007-11-12T22:31:55Z")
[QUOTE=Martha] Close. It’s a peninsula. Oh. I thought you said ‘an island’ - which is one we get all the time. 😃 [/QUOTE] My example of wilful ignorance also involves Gibraltar. I mentioned to this posh git that I had recently driven around Southern Spain and that we ended the trip by driving into Gibraltar across the airport runway (as is the only way to get in by land, I believe). He says, ‘But you can’t drive to Gibraltar. It’s an island!’ I say, ‘No it’s not. It is attached to Spain, you can drive across the border.’ ‘But how can you do that if it’s an island?’ ‘It’s not an island!’ ‘I’ve always known it was an island.’ ‘I was just _there_, you posh git!’ \<– OK, this I didn’t actually say, but I wanted to. He eventually got it. I think. Though he did at one point unironically proclaim that since I was an American, I certainly didn’t know how to pronounce anything correctly. _sigh_ ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/294 "2007-11-13T11:43:08Z")
[QUOTE=Captain Carrot] Yeah, that’s what my teachers made me do. What is cursive supposed to look like, **Colophon**? [/QUOTE] Looks like there’s a big US/UK divide on what constitutes “cursive”. 🙂 Who better to give you an example of how to write the Queen’s English than… [the Queen](http://benzographology.co.uk/images/Queen.jpg)? That’s what cursive handwriting is, for anyone in the UK. Cursive doesn’t mean “writing like someone from Victorian times”, even if that’s what they call it in American schools. If it’s not block printed, and the letters flow into one another it’s cursive. [Here’s](http://benzographology.co.uk/images/Sports.jpg) another example, which is rather easier to read. Most UK schools teach something called “Nelson Handwriting”, which looks like [this](http://images.samedaybooks.co.uk/covers/Batch3/0174246846.JPG?type=medium&isbn=0174246838). So that’s the basic letter shapes most British kids start off with, which you then modify to fit your personal style. Copperplate-type handwriting hasn’t been taught in schools for a long time here. My dad still writes like that, though. ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/295 "2007-11-13T11:48:59Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] Dude, that’s what cursive _means_. That is the meaning of the word cursive. When everyone else in the world talks about cursive in English, that’s what they’re talking about. Whatever cursive _you_ use is apparently not part of our discussion. [/QUOTE] I agree - that looks exactly like the format posted up in the rooms in the grade school I attended. The students ended up modifying it (for instance, most of the straight upward/downward bars in letters like “d” and “p” turned into loops similar to the other letters, like “h” and “q”) to a greater or lesser extent. ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 11:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/296 "2007-11-13T11:59:36Z")
[QUOTE=fetus] Dude, that’s what cursive _means_. That is the meaning of the word cursive. \*\*When everyone else in the world talks about cursive in English, that’s what they’re talking about. \*\* Whatever cursive _you_ use is apparently not part of our discussion. [/QUOTE] Would this be “world” as in “Series”? That may well be what is known as “cursive” in America, but it is demonstrably not so in other parts of the English-speaking world. My fiancé teaches at primary school level, which includes cursive writing that looks like [this](http://images.samedaybooks.co.uk/covers/Batch3/0174246846.JPG?type=medium&isbn=0174246838). ---
**Author:** ![Li\_l\_Pluck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ee59a6/32.png) [@Li\_l\_Pluck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Li_l_Pluck)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 12:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/297 "2007-11-13T12:03:10Z")
[QUOTE=Sunrazor] Um, I love to write letters on unlined paper with a fountain pen. Does that make me a hoar? [/QUOTE] 😃 See? When I wrote that post, I knew that something like this would come up. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know who, but I knew it was coming! And that’s c-o-m-i-n-g, ya damn gutter-dweller! 😉 Oh, and fountain pen? ::swoons:: (I’m slightly envious–mine has been out of commission for awhile, and I’ve been too-too busy to order a replacement nib.) ---
**Author:** ![Sunrazor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sunrazor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunrazor)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/298 "2007-11-13T16:24:06Z")
[QUOTE=Li’l Pluck] 😃 See? When I wrote that post, I knew that something like this would come up. I didn’t know when, I didn’t know who, but I knew it was coming! And that’s c-o-m-i-n-g, ya damn gutter-dweller! 😉 Oh, and fountain pen? ::swoons:: (I’m slightly envious–mine has been out of commission for awhile, and I’ve been too-too busy to order a replacement nib.) [/QUOTE] Hee-hee, you said “nib.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/299 "2007-11-13T17:46:33Z")
> [@Colophon](#): > > Looks like there’s a big US/UK divide on what constitutes “cursive”. :smack: And I of all people jumped all over it without checking for that first. Shame on me. That’s some perverse, long-acting (ie, not from the same post) form of Gaudere’s Law, I guess. My foot’s all the way in my mouth, and I apologize. Also, why the hell couldn’t they have taught us _that_ in elementary school? Looks way better than what happens when I try to mash my letters together. ---
**Author:** ![sciurophobic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@sciurophobic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sciurophobic)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644/300 "2007-11-13T17:53:02Z")
[QUOTE=Colophon] Who better to give you an example of how to write the Queen’s English than… [the Queen](http://benzographology.co.uk/images/Queen.jpg)? [/QUOTE] I didn’t know the Queen actually wrote directly to anyone. I thought any correspondence is done by a secretary on her behalf. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stunning-examples-of-willful-ignorance/424644.md?page=16)