# What's faster, your printing or your cursive **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [September 10, 2011, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787 "2011-09-10T03:33:06Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2011, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/21 "2011-09-10T19:04:42Z")
For anyone my age: cursive hands down. When I was invited to Japan where I lectured (in English) my host gave a talk and invited me. I didn’t understand a word, but afterwards I asked him whether he could write faster in English or in Kanji, since the latter seemed painfully slow to me. He agreed that he could write English much faster. He wrote in cursive. ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2011, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/22 "2011-09-10T19:18:16Z")
For me , after over 35 years in Engineering, it is printing. My cursive was in such disuse, that I can’t read my own. ---
**Author:** ![AClockworkMelon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aclockworkmelon/32/10803_2.png) [@AClockworkMelon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AClockworkMelon)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2011, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/23 "2011-09-10T19:36:13Z")
I haven’t written in cursive since I was in elementary school. I doubt I’d be able to at all. So it’s printing for me. ---
**Author:** ![Rhiannon8404](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rhiannon8404/32/17929_2.png) [@Rhiannon8404](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhiannon8404)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2011, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/24 "2011-09-10T19:41:12Z")
I can’t answer this poll. All of my writing with the exception of my signature is a mixture of cursive and printing. Letters easily strung together are in cursive, others are printed. It sounds messy, but I have very neat easy to read writing. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/25 "2011-09-11T03:53:48Z")
My cursive is a LOT faster than my printing. Part of that is because my printing is rather engineer/draftsman-like, and part is because I’ve written in cursive my entire life, especially note-taking in undergrad and grad school, so I’m more or less practiced at writing it fast. ---
**Author:** ![Taomist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/53a042/32.png) [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 5:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/26 "2011-09-11T05:57:44Z")
Somehow my cursive blended with my printing, and now I do something that is an amalgam of both. It’s still illegible, however. Thank gods I live during the era of the keyboard. ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/27 "2011-09-11T06:24:55Z")
Printing. Considering how often people remark upon it, I’m apparently a rare lefty that has very easy to read printing. I have nicely legible cursive too ('cept I turn the terminal e in my last name into a dash), _but_ it takes close to twice as long to make it readable than printing does. I do a lot of tracing over parts of the letter with cursive, since no one trying to teach me in elementary school actually knew how to teach kids who weren’t right-handed so I had to learn aproximations of what the workbooks showed. ---
**Author:** ![Ann\_Onimous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ea5d25/32.png) [@Ann\_Onimous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ann_Onimous)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/28 "2011-09-11T07:32:28Z")
Cursive is much faster, but I’m the only one who can read it. I take notes in cursive, but if I need someone else to read it, I type it out. Printing is reserved for my whiteboard at work. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/29 "2011-09-11T07:55:53Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > Assuming you had to hand write out a page of text right now, what could you do most quickly in a legible fashion - cursive (specifically, the handwriting you learned in school as “cursive”) or print it? I don’t think i could write a page of cursive legibly _at all_, much less faster than I print. _\_ OK; make that unable to write a cursive _sentence_. It’s apparently been way, way too long since I used it for anything but my signature. ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Orzabal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@Roland\_Orzabal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Orzabal)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/30 "2011-09-11T08:00:47Z")
Taking the OP’s “legible fashion” requirement into account, cursive. Flowing Policy debates\* and waiting tables granted me the ability to write as fast as most people can talk, but only I can read it, and even then only for about an hour after writing it — nonetheless, to the extent that it involves recognizable characters, those characters are printed. When I had to speed-write essays in college, though, those were in cursive. I wouldn’t have made bets on their legibility, but apparently my professors could read it well enough that they didn’t complain. \*No worries if you don’t know what this means; it just indicates that you were less of a dork in school than I was, which is probably a compliment. ---
**Author:** ![maggenpye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@maggenpye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maggenpye)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/31 "2011-09-11T09:09:20Z")
I make lots of story notes and my cursive is both faster and more legible than my printing. My printing tends to change quite dramatically according to my mood, I once did a long hand written exam and the tutor asked about the writing changes (after marking). I went through the test and basically, the less confident I was with the answer, the worse the writing was. The ‘easiest’ answers were in my best, clearest cursive, the worst in a crabbed and almost unreadable print. I should thank my form two (12 years old, so 7th grade?) teacher who drilled us in handwriting, we filled sheets of newsprint with cursive. I wish I could get my daughter to do the same. ---
**Author:** ![cmyk](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmyk/32/3353_2.png) [@cmyk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmyk)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 9:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/32 "2011-09-11T09:28:07Z")
3 years of Drafting ruined my cursive as well. I think. I abandoned cursive around 14, and when I try to write in cursive now, it looks like a 12 year old’s handwriting. It’s like I picked up where I left off (+/- a few years due to disuse). My printing is neat and fast, though. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Mondegreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/91b2a8/32.png) [@Lord\_Mondegreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Mondegreen)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 9:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/33 "2011-09-11T09:44:01Z")
Cursive by a mile. But it’s about a 10th of the speed (and a hundredth of the readability) of my typing. ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 10:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/34 "2011-09-11T10:39:52Z")
Cursive.When you think about it printing requires that you lift the pen from the paper and place it down again with each letter written, with cursive each word is one continual motion. ---
**Author:** ![flodnak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/838e76/32.png) [@flodnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flodnak)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/35 "2011-09-11T10:41:43Z")
My cursive is much faster. So why do I print so much? Because I’ve figured out it’s easier to train myself to print than it is to train all the Norwegians in my life to read my North American Catholic School Cursive 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Icerigger](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/icerigger/32/432_2.png) [@Icerigger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Icerigger)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/36 "2011-09-11T11:32:42Z")
I went to a Catholic grade school and oh man those nuns were obsessed with The Palmer Method. We would fill endless workbooks with writing exercises to learn the proper method of holding the pen all the different loops and flourishes of each letter. ---
**Author:** ![MovieMogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f08c70/32.png) [@MovieMogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MovieMogul)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 12:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/37 "2011-09-11T12:05:38Z")
> [@AClockworkMelon](#): > > I haven’t written in cursive since I was in elementary school. I doubt I’d be able to at all. So it’s printing for me. Exactly. My “cursive”? WTF is that?!? ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/38 "2011-09-11T12:11:44Z")
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that cursive seems to be falling by the wayside with the younger generations. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/39 "2011-09-11T12:55:27Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that cursive seems to be falling by the wayside with the younger generations. Cursive simply involves a lot of effort for little return. After all, what is there to use cursive _for_? People all type now; if you are going to concentrate on a skill, you’ll get much more out of typing than cursive. And both printing and typing are much more legible than cursive, as well. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2011, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787/40 "2011-09-11T13:34:36Z")
> [@Icerigger](#): > > Cursive.When you think about it printing requires that you lift the pen from the paper and place it down again with each letter written, with cursive each word is one continual motion. On the other hand, though, with cursive you’re making a lot of extra strokes. Consider cursive “f” - baseline to top, loop around, go way back down below the line, come back up to the centre again. The amount of distance required for a print “f” is much less, even lifting your pen off the paper (which you only need to do by a mm or so anyway). I cast my initial vote for “print” btw. And I think the main reason why that is is because the cursive letters are more complex so require a lot more concentration to get right - speaking as someone with fairly mediocre fine motor skills, the extra effort slows me way down. Which is, of course, why I abandoned the whole caboodle in the first place. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-faster-your-printing-or-your-cursive/595787.md?page=3)