I am so in tune with the OP. If they have to teach it, they should’ve done it initially as Einmon says they do in Germany. Complete and utter waste to teach two ways to write.
Anyway, as others have posted, neat handwriting became obsolete 15 or 20 years ago. The schools are a bit behind.
Working in a hospital, I think physicians need more training in how to write neatly; I can say with some confidence that the number of physicians I’ve seen who write neatly, I can count on one hand.* It’s a wonder more incorrect prescriptions and other errors don’t occur more often. As for the arguments about computerization, they are always taking handwritten notes first, at least at the institutions I’ve seen.
I went to Catholic grade school in the late 80s-early 90s. Starting in 3rd grade we had penmanship every single damn day for two or three years and were graded on it on our report cards.
Hell, I’m only 21 and I occasionally get people who say, “you went to Catholic school, didn’t you?” when they see my writing (even just my printing!) because it’s extraordinarily neat and orderly. Even though I’ve made my writing more to my personal style, I’ve impressed others by doing a picture perfect Palmer and Zaner Bloser alphabets. 
So, uh, I guess cursive is really good for impressing those around you (I print most of the time, myself).
Hey, zweisamkeit, maybe you can answer a question for me. I’ve always heard that the Palmer method is quite fancy, but when I tried to look it up, it looked pretty much exactly like the ordinary cursive I learned in grade school. What the heck is so fancy about Palmer handwriting? And where can I see it, in case I want to try it out?
(I enjoy handwriting and have got idiosyncratic, but pretty and quite readable, cursive. I also like calligraphy, and wish I could improve.)
Schools in America now teach cursive in third or fourth grade, but forget it in a few years. Most adult American handwriting, like mine, seems to have taken the utility of cursive and attatched it to print, ending up with semi-connected print that can be written quickly. Learning to write Japanese has made me pay a lot more attention to the logic of English handwriting - I tried out my cursive for the first time since fourth or fifth grade, and surprise surprise it looked like an elementary school child’s writing. Traumatic.
My mother can’t read the handwriting of any American under 30, for what it’s worth, but I can at least read cursive.
Cursive is beautiful and fluent and flowing, but the best thing about it is that the young slackers can’t even read it! Seriously. If I drop my grocery list in the supermarket, odds are whoever picks it up can’t read it. As if it were in a foreign language! Every time I write a check I wonder if the data-processor at the other end can read what I wrote, or if they’re going exclusively by the numerical entry.
I don’t know if my niece and nephew can read cursive or not, but I’m going to start sending them letters just to find out.
Cursive is great for coming up with a cool signature someday. Otherwise – absolutely useless. I mean, what’s so special about it? There are all SORTS of stylistic ways of presenting the written word, whether with pen and ink or pixels, and old-fashioned cursive writing is just a small subset of all the artistic wonders that can be done. And face it, artistic expression is about the only reason to go with cursive, because practical it ain’t. In this age of electronic devices, mastering typewriting and whatever it is you squiggle into a Palm Pilot is far more useful. Hmmm … now that I think of it, that kind of does in the “signature” argument, too.
I only discovered this about a year ago. I was amazed. The average American writes in tiny block capitals they call ‘print’ and they make such a deal about normal writing that they have a whole other name for it, like it was a different language!
I was taught ‘cursive’ along with ‘print’ as a matter of course right from the start. It was the way you wrote. Block capitals are laborous and nowhere near as elegant. ‘Cursive’ flows, ‘print’ makes everything look like stilted, toy-town letter blocks. Like your whole text was all headings and no content. If you find cursive untidy or ugly it’s either because you just have naturally untidy handwriting or because you haven’t practiced it enough.
Nor do I get the suggestion that it’s such a trial to learn two different ways to write. The first thing I did when I learnt to write was play around with how I wrote letters and have been doing so ever since. I change my style of writing to match my mood or writing instrument.
I’m not saying I’m brilliant, or Americans are thick. I thought this was usual, and was bemused when I found out differently.
I think it looks really nice, and it can be faster…if you’re not taught that godawful D’Nealian method, which, IMHO, looks like utter crap even when it’s done perfectly. Personally, I have my own handwriting style which is part print and part cursive. I can read any cursive just fine, though, including the really, really elaborate stuff that my mom uses.
For me, and other lefties I know, cursive is actually far more painful to write than printing. Ever notice that a lot of lefties write cursive with their hand upside down? Have any idea how uncomfortable that is? I’ve never been able to write cursive for more than about 10 minutes without a bad cramp. But I can print just fine without holding my hand upside down, so I can print for about an hour[1] before my hand starts to cramp. Then there’s the smudge factor (that happens when I print too but it’s messier in cursive) from dragging our hands across the paper. In my little world, cursive isn’t useful for anything.
[1] Or at least I could about three years ago when I had my last handwritten essay question final exam in college. I havn’t to hand write anything more than a few lines since then.
Hey, I did that, too. I had a whole rebellious teenage “left slant” period to my name.
Seriously, I think it all depends on what you learned. I have trouble reading printed text, because it seems to be ALL CAPS. But that might have to do with German having capital letters at the beginning of nouns. So a German reader (me) expects to use those caps as aid to move forward while reading. Printing eliminates this visual aid. So it seems to be just a jumble of letters.
I admit, though, that some people’s handwriting is atrocious.
And I have trouble reading cursive handwriting from foreign countries. French cursive is particularly hard to read…
I’ve detested cursive on principle since third grade when my teacher force-fed it to me. It was just so useless – why learn this new form of writing when you still had to print everything out for the rest of your schooling? I much prefer printing and hold great admiration for beautiful handwriting.
Block capitals? Nay. Most printing I’ve seen is uppercase and lowercase, like mine, which you can see by clicking here.
I can’t write in cursive. I had to use it for three years (it was required at school), and as soon as I got into 6th grade, I stopped using it and have never looked back.
However, I have a mild form of dysgraphia, which is like dyslexia, only it involves not being able to write instead of not being able to read. My brother, who is severly disgraphic, will probably never learn cursive.
I can’t make the letters b, c, r, s, or v in cursive. I just don’t seem to be able to make the shapes. I write in print, although some letters combinations do “flow” together. I can’t even write my own name in cursive. It takes me a ridiculous amount of time to do it.
And as a minor hijack, are you allowed to sign checks in print?
I use cursive mostly when taking class notes and writing letters.
At my school, you learned it in the third grade, and for the rest of elementary school, you had to use it for the exams, papers, etc.
The only reason I’ve written in cursive since I was in school (the '70s) was the massive (36-page) letters I wrote to my wife-to-be, for a period of two years. Since we got married, I can’t think of when I’ve needed to use it, and my handwriting style has gone to pot.
I was very good at writing in tiny all-caps, which I preferred over cursive. People used to marvel at my printing. Some even asked me what font it was. Since the advent of computing, I type nearly everything, and now my printing style has gone to pot, too.
My mother had beautiful cursive writing, despite having been a leftie. She told me of when they were taking penmanship class, that she was the only leftie in the room. It so unnerved the teacher to see everyone making lines and circles in unison with their right hands, and my mom with her left, that she would send my mom to the supply room for paper and pencils, just to get her out of the room.
I have a friend who cannot write in cursive, and his only style of printing is so pathetic, I don’t even know how he can read it! His signature looks like a small line of tightly-compacted W’s, and his name doesn’t even contain that letter! Don’t get me started on his spelling (or lack thereof), or his penchant for putting an apostrophe in every word that has an ‘s’ at the end.
**Futile Gesture **, I, too, was taught cursive along with print as a matter of course right from the start. And guess what – I’m an American. Oddly, I’ve only just learned that cursive writing was such an issue within the last few days from reading about it at SD! I honestly had no clue that there were people who didn’t even know how to read it.
And like you, I change how I write depending on my mood, my time and also on what I’m writing. Thank you notes are always in cursive! Sometimes I print in all caps and sometimes in upper/lower case. I mostly print with a slight slant to the right, though, so it doesn’t look so “toy block letterish”. I even alternate between styles of cursive – sometimes more upright and rounded and sometimes more right-slanted and narrower. And for the most part, it’s never a conscious decision. I don’t sit there thinking, “gee, how do I feel like writing this today?” I just start writing and what comes out, comes out. Am I really all that unusual in this? My father is a structural and civil engineer and had to learn a very specific style of printing, but also has very elegant cursive writing. I just though everyone wrote both ways!
There are some examples and samples on this page. Apparently the Palmer style has even changed over time. Interestingly, it seems the “new” '80s version is what I learned in the '60s! I have, however, been known to use some of the strokes shown in the '20s version – particularly the upper case “T” and “F”, which I also alternate so they “match”. And then I’ve “personalized” some of my letters, too, so they look nothing like those shown.
This is just so fascinating!
Like some others, I was taught to write in cursive, and didn’t realize until years later that the difference was really an issue.
I went to a montessori school in the 80’s, and in preschool we started to learn to write by tracing letters with our fingers on these neat blocks that had the letter in sandpaper on a smooth background. The flow of the letter was what was emphasized, not the particular appearance. I never got particularly neat, and to this day my handwriting is usually a mishmash of connected and unconnected letters. When I want my writing to look nice, though, I do it SLOWLY in cursive, or in small caps. Cusive does stay the neatest over long periods, though, as other posters have mentioned, so I think that it is worthwhile for anyone without the cash/inclination to eliminate paper altogether.
That said, I don’t agree at all with the whole “teach the kids to write by printing, then sock them with penmanship in third or fourth grade” thing many of you are describing. It seems like pointless busywork, because anyone who reads printed matter can learn to write in “printing,” so why not start out with the cursive? But maybe I just feel that way because that was my experience… Sorry to ramble. I guess I feel that cursive has value, but not as a seperate subject in grade school.
Shayna, I’m just like that, too. My handwriting changes with my mood, and I’ve changed various letters over the years to be Mine. I write capital M’s like the Russians do, J’s and A’s according to my own ideas, and some small letters as I had to learn living in Denmark. (You guys think Americans pointlessly emphasize cursive; I got graded on my handwriting in math in Denmark.)
Thanks for the Palmer link; I write my small r’s just like the 20’s version, because (yep) that’s what they do in Denmark.
Is that it? I was required to do all written work from elementary school through senior year of high school in cursive, and it was always a pain. Literally. It took forever, it hurt my hand and wrist, it smugged if I dared use pencil… I gave it up quickly in college and found that printing my notes was both faster and neater, so I still print but rarely do anything but sign checks in cursive. (I did “try” it recently, my fine motor skills must have increased over the years because even with the lack of practice, it’s far nicer looking than when I was young.) I never wondered why it was painful, though, beyond those damn spirals in the notebooks getting in the way. That makes sense!
