inspired by the debate on penmanship in schools, I have been thinking a bit about the two main scripts: cursive and italic. What to teach and why?

As far as I know, cursive type styles were developed to be used with a flex- steel- nib- dip-pen and using the arm forming the letters - most of the loops were used in order to avoid penlifts, that would make the pen skip, or slow down the writing.
It seems readable, because of the linevariation - shading the letterforms - the bad readability arises from using the same forms, with a "monoline tool" (a tool with no flex or linevariation ) - As most people have abandoned the flex tools long ago - there should be no need for the loops and joins anymore?

Italic (still as far as I know) was developed for the edged quill (we don't use that in schools anymore ) It is easier to learn, and the transition from manuscript letters to handwriting is rather "user friendly". It is readable, also when badly executed. (Again I think the monoline tool robs it of some it's the beauty).

These styles of writing seemes to be developed to accomodate the possibilities of the tool at a given time. So I ask now:

Which one to teach, now that we have the ballpen as the most common tool? They seem to be made for cursive - as they often skips or skids - they have a bit of line variation- and they often lay down a fine line?

Being a teacher, I have to take them in consideration -we cannot go on using pencils for ever.
Since penmanship has a very low priority - the ballpen is inevitable and I'm not allowed to ban them. So what to do?

As for now I have decided to give the Italic type a try for my next class. - But should "someone" develop a script for the ballpen?
best regards
Henrik

Dear Henrik,
I'm also a techer in an English primary school. We have a handwriting policy which is taught throughout the school. We follow the Berol handwriting scheme which is cursive, and uses loops. Recent research suggests that the use of a cursive style aids the kinetic and visual memory, therefore helping those children with dyslexia. It has also been suggested that the more visually appealing a piece of written work, particularly involving colours it also aids the memory. Great excuse to buy more ink and pens. In school we all follow the same rules to ensure continuity.
Love Badge

Dear Badger,
thank you - that was a fast reply.
I wish we had a handwriting policy - but I can teach anything I like as long as it doesn't cost.
I do no disagree with you concerning joining of letters. I didn't think of printing, but some of the loops and joins could be discarted so the legibility would be greater?
kind regards
Henrik

I do think that in some cases it would be good to discard loops, particularly those children with poor control, however in our scheme the lowercase 'b' is looped but the 'd' is not, helping with 'b, d' confusion. I think in most cases the loops are attractive. At my children's school they do not teach loops, but they do not have a clear policy either which causes confusion as different teachers teach different methods or do not teach it at all.

I don't think that a really good handwriting teaching system oriented for kids has been developed yet.

In working with my own children, I've found that showing them the development pattern which lead to contemporary letterforms helps them to understand letter formation much better and to relate a capital to its matching lowercase letter.

There's a decent overview of handwriting styles here:

http://www.zanerbloser.com/

and I think of them all, Getty-Dubay is the most reasonable, since there's a natural transition from the manuscript to the handwriting form. McDougal, Littell and D'Nealian have similar strengths, but I really think stopping w/ just italic or only teaching a connected script and not italic is short-changing the kids --- if nothing else, they need to learn how to _read_ connected scripts which others will write.

A brief comment on that page and things not mentioned:

- no mention of the desireability of width changes for scripts
- no mention of how tool influences lettershape cues
- no critique of some of the _really_ ugly letterforms (the Zaner-Bloser manuscript ``R'' is an outrage)
- no critique of confusability of mirrored forms (esp. ``p'' and ``q'' in too many of the styles)


William
(who would teach kids to read all caps first, then to write an all-caps uncial, then introduce lowercase, showing them the transition from caps to lc, then teaching a simplified italic and then introducing a traditional connected script as a natural successor to the italic)

Re:

>inspired by the debate on penmanship in schools, I have been thinking a bit about >the two main scripts: cursive and italic. What to teach and why?

First off — to paleographers and handwriting-specialists, "cursive" stands for *any* writing which joins at least some letters: the cursive styles therefore include Italic (among others). For this reason, when talking about handwriting I prefer to specify which cursive I mean: what most people call just "cursive" I've tended to call "conventional post-Italic 100%-joined looped-letter cursive" ... or "conventional cursive" for short. (Sometimes, I say "cursive-as-we-know-it" or "looped cursive" or "100% joined/looped cursive.")

Re:

>As far as I know, cursive type styles were developed to be used with a flex- steel- >nib- dip-pen ...

Uh, of course you mean "handwriting styles," not type styles. Type styles (including the cursive ones imitating a handwriting) developed for use with printing-presses, not for use with pens.
;-)
Also, your analysis somewhat over-simplifies things. Cursive-as-we-know-it didn't actually develop "for" flex-nibs (which would have meant that the flex nibs came first and then someone eventually developed a handwriting-style to fit those nibs) — rather, it developed *alongside* flex-nibs, and initially in the quill-pen (NOT steel-pen) days:
As it became gradually popular to cut one's Italic quills thinner and thinner, over 100 years or so as fashions changed from the Renaissance into the Baroque, the handwriting gradually changed along with — and as part of — the gradual changes in quill-cutting. People didn't suddenly wake up one morning thinking: "Today I think I'll make/buy a flex-quill instead of an Italic ... now, what kind of handwriting ought I to use with this?" ... it happened more gradually, and took almost a century to happen, starting with a late-Renaissance handwriting-teacher/artist (Giovanni Francesco Cresci) whose Italic-handwriting book in 1570 recommended a slightly narrower and more flexible Italic quill to produce certain stylistic effects that he liked ... then the folks after Cresci recommended an even narrower and even more flexible quill, to produce even *more* of those effects ... and so it went.
To see the gradual changes during (and after) the Renaissance and Baroque, pick up Lewis F. Day's inexpensive Dover book PENMANSHIP OF THE XVI, XVII, AND XVIIIth CENTURIES — which consists 99% of full-page reproductions of copybooks from Europe over those centuries.

Re:

> ... the linevariation - shading the letterforms - the bad readability arises from using > the same forms, with a "monoline tool" (a tool with no flex or linevariation ) -

Yes — forms that work with one tool don't necessarily work with another. However, note that some of the earliest and best examples of Italic use monoline or very-near-monoline quills. (To see an excellent sample — by an anonymous court bureaucrat in the year 1470 — look at Plate 4 in A HANDWRITING MANUAL, Alfred Fairbank's history-and-how-to book of Italic handwriting: available on Amazon in several editions ... or, more often, from the calligraphy/handwriting books-and-supplies firm John Neal, Bookseller [johnnealbooks.com] which also carries several Italic fountain-pens: tell John that I referred you!)

{{ NOTE: The 1470 date above — for an early — and monoline — example of Italic handwriting — may surprise people who know that the first-ever Italic book (the first-ever handwriting-book, in fact) appeared in 1522 (LA OPERINA by Ludovico Vincentino degli Arrighi). However, as LA OPERINA itself states in its introduction-by-the-author, Arrighi did not *invent* the style he used: rather, the Italic style already existed, and this man (a Vatican scribe) wrote it well enough that his friends had asked him to write a book on it. }}

Re:

>As most people have abandoned the flex tools long ago - there should be no need >for the loops and joins anymore?

I agree that no need exists for the loops. About the joins: certain joins (the more difficult ones) best suit the flex-tools ... certain others (the easiest joins) suit any took (flex pen or edged pen or monoline) and already predominated in Italic handwriting/textbooks before the introduction of "flex."
The more difficult, the "flex" joins, require the pen to trace a distinctly curved (usually several-times-curved) course between the bottom/ending-point of one letter and the top/starting-point of the next letter's shape — for example, within the letter-combinations "sc" or "pa" or "gh." The easiest & quickest joins of handwriting, which appear (or can appear) in any style) require only a straight or nearly-straight line (the shortest distance) between those two points: e.g., the straight horizontal which (in Italic and some of the very simplest looped cursives) makes the join in "on" and "to" ... or the straight diagonal to make the join in "an."

Generally, the more curves/the more curvature a join has, the more it slows down speed (as compared with just lifting the pen and moving straight from one letter to the next: when joins curve, any time that you spare by not lifting the pen you will lose again — in double and triple measure — by making on paper the curves which the join requires but which an "air-join" of lifting the pen would not have required. Lifting the pen permits quick, straight-line motions to replace meandering curves.)
The fewer curves/the less curvature a join has, the less advantage one gains from replacing that on-paper join with an "air-join" — when the join doesn't curve at all (as in "an/on/to" in Italic), then lifting/replacing the pen really does take more time than just keeping the pen on the paper while making the move between letters. (Straight line in air — straight-line-plus-"take-off and landing" — takes a little more time than straight-line-alone.)

Of course, writers differ — and so they differ in what comes easiest/hardest to them. Some writers find some joins much easier than other writers find them ... so Italic styles/options (today as in the past) cover a very wide ground between:

/a/ the Italic styles favored/presented by people like James Pickering (today) or Grailey Hewitt (in the 1920s) who "take to" no joining at all, or at least very little, in their Italic —

and:

/b/ the Italic styles presented by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay, who join almost all the letters in *their* Italic (they have less difficulty than most people with doing some of the curved joins well at speed) ... NOTE that, though they use and teach a very joined-up Italic, their textbooks give options to write it with less joining if one prefers: their books teach a sort of "maximally joined" Italic, but then (after the initial joining instructions) the books also present a page or so of options which consist mainly of indicating which joins you can leave out.
{{ NOTE: when I come to write my own book — several years away, unless the "Italic angel" drops $$$ from Heaven — I'll probably teach just a few joins as standard & then let the options consist of ADDING joins if desired.)

Italic's notion of optional & customized joining goes back at least as far as 1522 and the first Italic textbook, in which the author teaches that joins involve either straight horizontals (for joins out of some letters) or straight diagonals (for joins out of other letters), but then says that he leaves it up to the individual student to join (or not to join) where a join can happen in Italic.

I agree that Italic (like most styles) looks nicer with line-variation (the edged pen) than without it ... however, one can (and many people do) write beautiful Italic with a monoline tool (For examples, see the later work of Italic user/teacher Irene Wellington — e.g., THE IRENE WELLINGTON COPYBOOK available at Amazon.co.uk and also through johnnealbooks.com )

In my experience and opinion (as a teacher & user of Italic, who has "converted" a couple of schools and several thousand physicians to the style), Italic's adaptability to differing tools, and also Italic's flexibility of method — permitting a spectrum of join/not-join choices, to suit the writer — make it a very practical style for today.

Re the ball-point pen's suitability for conventional cursive — writing 100% joined/looped cursive with a ball-point tends to produce *sloppy* cursive (because of the skidding and loss of control: chemically, ball-point ink comes very close to automobile-transition fluid ... or so I hear from engineers who have worked on both).
The smoothness, the liberty-verging-on-license, of the ball-point means (in my opinion and experience) that those who want/need to write well with a ball-point will do best to use a style which does not "go wild" as easily as conventional cursive "goes wild" with a poor tool. The more controllable a style, the less it tends to "go wild" under bad writing-circumstances: so I definitely recommend using Italic when you use a ball-point, even if you write Italic at no other time.

Good Italic scripts developed for ball-points include those of:

/a/ Irene Wellington (mentioned above)

/b/ Nicolete Gray (available mostly in the UK, and pretty hard to find these days)

/c/ Rosemary Sassoon (also hard to find outside the UK — though she does not call her script an Italic style, I would)

/d/ Christopher Jarman - http://www.quilljar.btinternet.co.uk

/e/ Gunnlaugur Briem - http://briem.ismennt.is

/f/ Nan Jay Barchowsky - http://BFHhandwriting.com

/g/ Barbara Getty & Inga Dubay - http://www.cep.pdx.edu/titles/italic_series/excerpts.htm or http://www.handwritingsuccess.com (this second web-site gives you their program of classes for physicians)

Most of the people I teach (and most of the people taught by those in /a/ through /g/) use ball-point pens rather than fountain-pens, some or most or (usually) all of the time. We have indeed found Italic working well with ball-point pens!

Re:

> Recent research suggests that the use of a cursive style aids the kinetic and visual > memory, therefore helping those children with dyslexia.

For the record:
I have dyslexia.
My childhood handwriting instruction focused very heavily on 100%-joined cursive.
I completely failed with cursive.
I did not write even tolerably well (and could not even read most cursive) until I began teaching myself Italic.
About 25% - 30% of those who come to me have dyslexia, often severe dyslexia.
Almost all of them, also, had very rigorous training in 100%-joined cursive, and failed as I did with that style (with wriitng it and, often, with reading it — despite all those lessons.)
When I teach them Italic, it works for them. Also, and unexpectedly perhaps, when they learn Italic they become able to read conventional cursive too — and, in many cases, become able to write it too if they want ... although I haven't taught them that. (I do teach them a bit about how to read conventional cursive: mainly by showing them how it [d]evolved from Italic.)
Because of the above, I have frequently received hate-mails (e-mail and postal mail) from dyslexia-therapy teachers/organizations saying things like "You have no right to gain success with your approach, because everyone knows that cursive is the only style a person with dyslexia can ever learn" or "You have no right to do this, because everyone knows that print-writing is the only style a dyslexic can ever learn." (A few letters have said: "Someone with dyslexia cannot possibly help a dyslexic person anyway, because someone with dyslexia cannot possibly understand anything about handwriting." One letter said: "If you didn't have dyslexia, you might possibly understand one day that there is ONLY cursive and manuscript [print] handwriting. Any other so-called style such as Italic does not actually exist, and never existed." ?!?!?!?!)

Back to the research:
As far as I know, the research done by various people & cited by Berol (claiming cursive as helpful for us dyslexic folks) looked ONLY at two extremes: at 100%-joined cursive versus "ball-and-stick" or other completely joinless styles — the researchers making these claims didn't look at Italic.
(In fact, some research-staffers from "big name" 100%-joined-cursive publishers in the USA have privately told me that their companies intentionally do not investigate, and intentionally prevent their research-staffers from investigating, Itlaic or any other writing-styles except the 100%-joined and the 100%-unjoined styles: "because," as one researcher explained, "there is a fear that investigating Italic, a partially joined style, might produce results that would not be in the best interests of our company which produces and supports only completely joined and completely unjoined writing styles.")

To my mind, this makes it difficult to trust proclamations that "[100%-joined] cursive is best" — one has to ask: "Best as compared to what else? What styles did they research, and — more importantly perhaps — what did they NOT research?"
Looking at just two styles, and declaring from the results that "cursive is the best of all," sounds — to me — as if a biologist studied just two animals (mice and paramecia) and declared from the results that "mice are the largest animals of all."

Re:

> I wish we had a handwriting policy - but I can teach anything I like as long as it
> doesn't cost.

You can get the Gunnlaugur Briem Italic handwriting program for absolutely no cost at his web-site: http://briem.ismennt.is — click on the link "How to teach Italic" and then follow the little arrows (bottom of the page) to get to other pages from that first page (the introduction).

Re:

> I do no disagree with you concerning joining of letters. I didn't think of printing, but > some of the loops and joins could be discarted so the legibility would be greater?

Indeed — and three very brave handwriting-researchers of our times has actually established this fact: see citation and summary below.

CITATION:
Graham, S., Berninger, V., & Weintraub, N. (1998). The relationship
between handwriting style and speed and quality. Journal of
Educational Research, volume 91, issue number 5, (May/June 1998),
pages 290-297.

SUMMARY OF PAPER: This paper looked at the speed and legibility
of 600 USA students in grades 4 through 9 (ages 9 through 14), who had all learned manuscript and then cursive at school. /1/ The students who wrote in cursive and the students who wrote in manuscript [printing] scored about the same for speed and
quality/legibility: cursive showed no advantage over manuscript in speed or in quality/legibility of writing. /2/ Both these groups of students (the cursive writers as well as the manuscript writers) produced significantly less legible and significantly less rapid handwriting than the students whose writing combined some elements of cursive and some elements of manuscript (printed) writing styles.

Re:

>in our scheme the lowercase 'b' is looped but the 'd' is not, helping with 'b, d'
> confusion.

Most USA cursive school-styles loop the lower-case "b" but not the lower-case "d." This did not help me as a dyslexic, and I have seen other dyslexics definitely not helped by that loop ... including dyslexics who grew up in the (now rare) private schools that began instruction with a cursive hand (which looped the "b" and not the "d.")

Re:

> http://www.zanerbloser.com/

Point of information: this site doesn't come from the Zaner-Bloser company (which has its site at http://www.zaner-bloser.com ). I don't like Zaner-Bloser (partly because their program failed me in childhood, partly because I've received vicious hate-mails and even threatening phone-calls from company executives including the CEO), but I do want to make sure that people know where information does (or does not) come from. Unlike zanerbloser.com which (as you say) shows samples of differing styles, zaner-bloser.com maintains a company position which (over the years) at least five company executives have expressed to me in exactly these words: "There is no other alphabet than Zaner-Bloser."

I entirely agree that:

>if nothing else, they need to learn how to _read_ connected scripts which others will >write.

The USA's two largest Italic programs (Getty-Dubay and Barchowsky) address that need: their teaching-materials include sections on how to read looped cursive. You can see and download some of the Getty-Dubay how-to-read-looped-cursive materials at
http://www.cep.pdx.edu/samples/rloop_compare.pdf
and
http://www.cep.pdx.edu/samples/compare.pdf

Back to the not-from-Zaner-Bloser zaner-bloser.com page —

> - no mention of the desireability of width changes for scripts

Please tell us more about this.

> - no mention of how tool influences lettershape cues
> - no critique of some of the _really_ ugly letterforms (the Zaner-Bloser manuscript > ``R'' is an outrage)
> - no critique of confusability of mirrored forms (esp. ``p'' and ``q'' in too many of the styles)

Well, the *real* Zaner-Bloser people don't discuss such things either!
For your info, the page you refer to (zanerbloser.com - not the actual company page) comes from a grad-student who put this up some years ago as his personal on-line "collection" of different school-handwriting styles (for a project he then had in mind) and just never took it down.

Re William, who ...

> ... would teach kids to read all caps first, then to write an all-caps uncial, then
> introduce lowercase, showing them the transition from caps to lc, then teaching a > simplified italic and then introducing a traditional connected script as a natural
> successor to the italic)

I do something very similar for those kids (or adults!) who come to me writing only/mainly in capital letters: I show them how to "evolve" their capital letters into lower-case (following the way that capital letters historically did become lower-case), then polish this lower-case into a good Italic, show them Italic joining, then (if they don't know how to read conventional cursive) show them how (by showing how it developed from Italic.)
For the people who come to me already writing with (some form of) lower-case (this means most people), I do the capitals (and how they became lower-case) *after* working on their lower-case, joining, etc. I do this (for those who already write some form of lower-case) because lower-case constitutes 98% of what we write: so if a person already uses lower-case letters, in that circumstance (the more usual circumstance) I'd rather perfect the 98% first (so that s/he can immediately use the new skill) and work on the other 2% later.

Thank you everyone for the contributions and comments - I has given me a lot to think about, when planning.

and to Kate Gladstone,
thank you so much for an exhaustive reply - what a dedication to handwriting! Thank you for the links and all the other information! I have no more questions, but a lot of studying to do now
Just a couple of small comments:
- I was simplifying things a lot in order to get to the (ball)point - and not make my post too long
- type styles: sorry, a blunder, I was not aware of the difference.
- the refference to dyslexia wasn't mine: I have heard the opposite wiew.( I suppose you are answering all the posts in one go?)
I am really sorry to hear, that you are recieving hate mail and phonecalls because of your dedication to italic, that is unfair and shouldn't take place If we want to know about dyslexia, we should indeed ask people, who suffers from it - you have my support on this one.

But ballpens still annoy me - they make loops, when they shouldn't - but I suppose it's a matter of practice
kind regards
Henrik

Yes, Henrik — because I saw so many posts on these important matters, I did my best to answer them all in one "omnibus" posting.

Re the:

>hate mail and phonecalls because of your dedication to italic,

... about this, I could tell some stories that would melt your pen-nib! For now, I'll say only that at least one company (Zaner-Bloser) has me on an official "enemies' list" — I learned this from various people at the company, including a salesman who received a severe official reprimand merely for talking with me when I called the company to order one of their current books for my library of handwriting textbooks. (The company receptionist transferred my phone-call to the salesman for my region of the USA — the salesman recognized my name from a newspaper-story and from my web-site which he had visited — he asked me some questions about what I do in handwriting, and why — and the company punished him, so he called back to let me know this so that I would never call again & get him in trouble again.)

> that is unfair and shouldn't take place.

Yes — remember, though, that the USA's "big name" publishing-companies (and even 99+% of the smaller ones) have A LOT of $$$$$ and other resources invested in the notion that everybody needs to learn two handwriting styles (printing and then cursive). A company that sells every school two sets of books (teaching two opposed & difficult styles, and causing difficulties thereby) probably makes more money than a company that simply sells and teaches one style ... especially because the difficulties (caused by this practice) then allow the same company to sell *more* books (of the same two styles in sequence) in the name of remediation for problem students. A company that teaches (and sells books) again and again and again ... well, as long as the teachers believe this company (and regard its practices as the only way), this company will make much more money than a company that has only one style and therefore has to teach only once (with no wasted effort).

For a small example of how belief in style-change financially benefits a publisher: consider the Zaner-Bloser program. Zaner-Bloser requires printing-then-cursive, and gives the teachers a choice about when to require the change: in second grade (seven-year-olds) or third grade (eight-years-old) or to require cursive for only the best print-writers in second grade and then later for all the other students in third grade ... because of this, Zaner-Bloser publishes two editions of its second-grade book, so that the teachers/schools/districts can order either or both (as they please) ... when the teacher/school/district orders two books instead of one book for second grade, Zaner-Bloser gets extra profits (that they would not get if their program needed only ordering one book for second grade).
Also ... because most USA schools give teachers absolute freedom about when to change a child's handwriting from print to cursive, it VERY often happens that about half of the teachers in a school/district will change to cursive in second grade, while the other teachers in the same school/district will change to cursive in third grade ... so when a student moves from second grade to third grade (even in the same school), he or she has a 50% chance of going (with no knowledge of cursive) into a classroom where the teacher expects that the students "should have learned cursive last year — yes, I know that 50% of the new third-graders don't know cursive, but they SHOULD know it: in my opinion, second grade was the proper time to teach it, so I certainly can't be bothered teaching it to half of the third-graders in my room simply because their previous teacher did not agree with me ... however, because this is third grade now, I require these students to read all my writing on the board, which is in cursive of course. And of course I require these student to do all their own work in cursive whether anyone has taught them how, or not! This is third grade — they are not babies, they should not need special favors. Since they were not taught when they should have been taught, it is not my job to teach them this. They should 'pick it up' on their own, or if they cannot just 'pick it up' as they should, they should have the good sense to ask their parents to take a few minutes one day and show them how. If this is not enough, well, I cannot be held responsible — it's just too bad." (near-_verbatim_ quote from a third-grade teacher who spoke with me at one school)
So, of course, the children do not "just pick it up" (or only very poorly at best) when not instructed but still subjected to a requirement to read/write what nobody teaches them to read/write. (Certainly, from this kind of "teaching" they do not learn to love cursive or to love any handwriting whatsoever!) And, usually, a child of this age (with or without "good sense") will not go home and complain to the parents, will not ask the parents to give him/her extra teaching, etc. ... children do not want extra work any more than the rest of us do, and in any case children of this age very often assume that "the teacher knows best": the child assumes that, if other children can do something which s/he cannot, s/he alone must bear the blame: "I can't do it because I am stupid — if I wasn't stupid, I could do what the teacher wants." (_verbatim_ quote from third-grader ... tested with a genius IQ, but failing all subjects in third grade because the teacher wrote all work on the board in cursive, and required all children to do all their own work in cursive, which nobody had taught this child and which the teacher refused to teach: on the grounds that "in a few months, they should just pick it up on their own." After six months, the child finally did somewhat 'just pick it up': but by this time she had already become a failure and had learned to hate school.)
This teacher-enforced scribal disaster happens so frequently in the USA that it has even become part of a television show: it forms much of the plot of one of the most popular episodes of THE SIMPSONS ("You Only Move Twice").

And, of course, when a trusted school-materials publisher (or a trusted teacher) sets things up so that a very large percentage of children will fail, will learn to hate handwriting, etc. ... the publisher can then get *more* money and attention (from the trusting teachers/parents/etc.) by howling about the handwriting-crisis (which the publisher has helped to cause).
Many times, when newspapers have interviewed me about the handwriting crisis, they have asked me to explain my own ideas on the subject: what I do about handwriting, and why. When I explain my ideas, the newspaper-reporters sound delighted, ask many intelligent questions, say that the story will definitely include this, ask for more material on Italic, etc., etc. ... but, when the story appears, 9 times out of 10 it deletes all reference to Italic. When I ask why this happened, over and over again the reporter or the editor tells me: "The editorial staff decided that this could not be mentioned because it is not part of the way that the public understands handwriting" or "The editorial staff decided this could not be mentioned because it might anger and upset teachers/school administrators if someone hinted that there could be a problem with conventional instruction: therefore, we made this story into one that supports the conventional instruction and simply asks for much, much more of it, instead of suggesting anything different." Often, the editors explain to me that "One of the things teachers do in class, especially at the third-grade level and above, is to encourage children to become well-informed by habitually reading newspapers ... if a newspaper is critical of the well-established classroom practices of teachers in a basic subject like handwriting, the teachers will not encourage students to make a habit of reading the paper, or they will encourage students to read only the other newspapers: the ones that did not print anything which shows a problem in how the teachers teach. No teacher, after all, wants the third-graders coming into class waving newspaper-articles and shouting: 'Mrs. Smith, you said we should read the newspapers to become well-informed ... well, the newspaper says you are teaching us handwriting all wrong ... ' "
When major news-magazines (TIME and NEWSWEEK) each interviewed half-a-dozen Italic-folks including me for planned articles on handwriting (in 1996 and 1997), in both of those cases the reporters loved what the Italic-people said ... the reporters' immediate supervisors (editors) loved what the Italic-people said ... the editorial-department heads loved what the Italic-people said ... BUT (in each case) the editor-in-chief (the "top man on the totem pole") canceled the story at the last minute: AFTER telling everyone (including the interviewees) that the story owuld appear on a particular date. (In the case of NEWSWEEK, the "sorry-it's-cancelled" call came to me and a half-dozen other folks literally at the "eleventh hour": 11:30 PM, a half-hour before that issue went to the printing-presses.) Why? As the NEWSWEEK editor-in-chief's personal assistant explained to me (the TIME editor-in-chief's personal assistant gave a very similar explanation), "When the editor-in-chief suggested a story on handwriting, he anticipated that this could obviously be only a story on the death of handwriting, the death of cursive. However, when the story was actually submitted it became clear that handwriting is very much alive — it just isn't necessarily cursive, and unfortunately the Chief [editor-in-chief] believes that handwriting IS cursive, cursive IS handwriting. This made it absolutely impossible to fit the story into the formula or framework that it had been expected that this story would have to take: about handwriting being a lost art and all that — no possible degree of editing could make the events fit the framework that it was believed necessary for the story to follow, so the story simply had to be cut."

I said above that 9 out of 10 news-stories interviewing me about Italic don't get published ... at the time the above happened (TIME/NEWSWEEK stupidity), the ratio hovered closer to 98 out of 100. I keep on talking to reporters, and I believe that this *slowly* melts the ice ... once enough reporters hear an "impossible" story often enough, sooner or later it does become "possible" to cover the story (and perhaps impossible NOT to cover it ... )

Dear Kate,
what a story! I wonder how many people know this? That kind of putting profit before people and supressing new information is an outrage

I can't do much else from overhere, but keep my eyes open, wish you the best of luck and keep you in my prayers.
kind regards & good luck
Henrik

Re:

> what a story! I wonder how many people know this?

I tell the story to people when I trust them & when a reason arises to let them know the story — I wish I could tell everybody, but /a/ it would certainly bore most people, and /b/ it might dissuade newspapers/magazines from interviewing me AT ALL (therefore I do not put the story onto my web-site — 90+% of my newspaper/magazine interviews come from a reporter who has found my web-site when looking for handwriting information).

I wish I could begin some kind of worldwide better-handwriting organization, whose concerns would need to include honesty/integrity in handwriting instruction & in reportage on handwriting. But I have no idea about how this can possibly begin to happen ...

What an amazing read! I always knew there was a thorough science to handwriting and people who dedicate so much to it. Handwriting is fascinating to me, and I'll continue to read more often here

It really is disheartening to hear about those hate mails/phonecalls and whole companies making you into the 'enemy'. The way I see it, they feel threatened by you. They know you're right - and they're scared Behind every innovative idea and pioneer are stubborn conventionalist who fear change. Galileo had the church threatening him to deny his discovery that the universe does not revolve around earth, people refused to believe that the world was round for quite a long while, and Einstein had a fair share of doubters and haters When I read about your work, I'm sure you've got something fundamental there, just waiting to be accepted and made standard by the stubborn, hard hearts of society.

Re:

> Behind every innovative idea and pioneer are stubborn conventionalist who fear change.
>Galileo had the church threatening him to deny his discovery that the universe does not revolve > around earth,

Yes, but I have one advantage over Galileo.
When the church put Galileo under house-arrest, he didn't have the Internet — he had to spread his ideas by snail-mail.

But ... we DO have the Internet. How can we use it to get the info "accepted and made standard by ... society"? (I left out the phrase "stubborn, hard hearts" because most people don't *oppose* the correct information — they simply have never heard of it, and therefore at first they find it a little hard to believe. If we can inform the uninformed — get enough such people on our side — we will have the majority.)

Can any of the Italic forms be used with a fountain pen rather than a ball point?

--Rob

If I'm not mistaken, Italic writing is done much better with a fountain pen than a ballpoint pen in the first place

Yes, Italic (like any writing!) looks better with a fountain-pen than with a ball-point. (Ball-point Italic tends to look about as good as fountain-pen cursive; fountain-pen Italic tends to look better than that.)

Also, some (not all) fountain-pens allow Italic to maintain the attractive, legibility-enhancing "thick/thin" feature (automatic variation in stroke-widths: which of course you cannot get with a ball-point).

Now and then, school administrators/teachers have claimed to me: "Oh, we cannot possibly teach Italic because we would have to buy fountain-pens for all the children, and this would cost so much!" I point out that you can get those Italic thicks/thins without a fountain-pen by using a calligraphy-marker ... which costs about the same as the ordinary felt-tip markers that schools increasingly buy instead of (or along with) pencils. Even if you want to stick with pencils, you can get thicks/thins with a pencil by using the Striker pencil — http://www.striker1.com — an inexpensive mechanical pencil specially designed to produce crisp thick/thin strokes by using its own special leads. (They write GREAT! ... and cost surprisingly little, when you buy the pencils and the leads in bulk)
I enjoy the Striker pencil because I like to have a way to write thick/thin Italic and erase it too.

Oh, neat, I'll look for the Striker pencil.

This would all be funny if it wasn't so awful. Your stories from classrooms are the kind of thing--the general hammering of interestingly-shaped pegs into rigid square holes--that makes me want to home school.

I shall just comment that the second graders that I tutor in reading have horrible handwriting when filling out worksheets on their books, and they don't use a standard starting point for the manuscript letters. They form their letters so that they approximate the look and pay no attention to stroke order... the result varies so much.. Some have nice "printing", others are left in the dust, and I feel really bad... But it's not my job to teach them to write.. only to read better, so I leave well enough alone, since I don't want to get in trouble by pointing out their writing.

And I suppose the Zaner-Bloser method was the one I was taught, and it is indeed the one that is on the walls of the fourth grade classroom I tutor math in. I despise the forms of it. The "B" looks top heavy, and I simply despise most of the tiny little curlicues that the letters start with. The way I was taught cursive, starting in third grade and ending at the beginning of fourth, they had us laboriously copying worksheets of the same letter, and there was no flow or arm movement taught. You did well if you could copy it so that it looked nice. Most of us pressed too hard on our pencils because we were too busy focusing on getting it to look like the model, and not working on making the letter freely. That is part of the reason, I suppose, it is so difficult for me to write without a death-grip on my pen or pencil. I have to work hard at it. Most of my peers have even forgotten the cursive script and could not read my notes if I lent them out, which is another sad thing.

In my opininion the handwriting taught in today's schools, at least in my state of Minnesota, needs radical reform. Whether it be italic-derived or otherwise, as long as they teach it correctly I would not mind. But the deathgrip that children maintain with their writing utensils needs to end. And the majority of the U.S. doesn't realize that fountain pens help. I mean, -something- other than ball points and pencils, by God! At least rollerballs, -something- with freeflowing ink.

Anyway, end of tirade. Kate Gladstone, I'm horrified by your tale of the Zaner-Bloser executives...

Hi,

I have two Staedtler Technico 780C lead holders. I point the lead on one and cut the lead in the other pencil into a chisel for the thick and thin.

Dillon

I have heard that italic is gaining popularity with home schoolers, is that still true? And are there any school districts that are moving toward italic?

Hi,

Yes, the first is true. I'm not sure about the second.

Dillon

Worse than the stories from classrooms, I consider the stories from newspapers.
Beyond the papers that "black out" Italic because it doesn't fit the edu-corporation pravda. I've had calls from newspapers/magazines/TV-news channels that went like this:

CALLER: I'm trying to reach Kate Gladstone.

KATE: Speaking.

CALLER: Kate, I'm Igor Beaver, a reporter for the CITYVILLE NEWS. We're doing a story on the decline of handwriting and how to improve the situation. As a handwriting expert, are you willing to endorse the handwriting program that is used by [variation: 'has just been adopted in'] the Cityville School District?

KATE: What program does the Cityville School District use to teach handwriting?

CALLER: Never mind what program they're using. We just need someone who is able and willing to state that this program in our schools is able to / will be able to the decline of handwriting skills in our children today.

KATE: Mr. Beaver, I cannot recommend a program when I do not even know its name.

CALLER: Well, thanks for your time. We have other experts to call, and I'm sure we can find someone who will be able to feature in our article.


Sometimes, when I ask the name of the program, they do provide a specific name ... and then the conversation goes like this:

CALLER: Our schools are using the Schockin-Badd System for Hilarious Handwriting. They've been using it for _____ years / They just adopted it this year, and hopes are high. What can you say in favor of Schockin-Badd Handwriting?

KATE: I fear I cannot speak in favor of the Schockin-Badd approach.

CALLER: Well, what *can* you say about Schockin-Badd handwriting? We are doing this story because the Schockin-Badd corporate headquarters sent us a press-release to let us know that they will be doing a handwirting workshop for teachers / students / parents / tutors / the public / occupational therapists in our town next weekend, and we think this needs to be a key part of any story we do on handwriting.

KATE: Well, let me tell you some of the things that I know about Schockin-Badd Hilarious Handwriting. First off, quite a few of the people who come to me in serious need of handwriting help turn out to have studied Schockin-Badd Handwriting throughout their school years. Most of them turn out to have gotten "A"s in it. Secondly, the program ignores current research on what makes for fast legible handwriting. Third, the company uses deceptive marketing and fund-raising techniques, such as [... and here the CALLER interrupts .... ]

CALLER: Thanks very much for your input on this story. I'm afraid I've really got to go.

[ ... and then the story goes to press, in praise of their local shocking-bad handwriting program ]

Did I ever tell any of you how three handwriting-hotheads (Barbara Getty, Inga Dubay, and I) once had to fight Martha Stewart to keep her magazine from telling lies about Italic handwriting? We won that fight (and her article DID cover Italic: accurately) — let us know if you want to hear about it.

Wow Kate!

Dillon

With my Namiki (Pilot) Vanishing Point, I got four nibs: the standard round medium and fine (which have the little round balls on the end), and the Richard Binder cursive italic 0.9mm and crisp italic 0.7mm. (Richard is my hero!) I'm currently using the standard fine nib for my handwriting.

Would you suggest that I go with one of the italic nibs when first learning Getty-Dubay, or should I stick with the round nib, or does it matter? My goal is to dispense with the round nib and go exclusively with italic nibs, for the reason you mention above: I just think thick/thin variations are attractive.

Although scribing my signature with an italic nib may prove problematic. It goes in all directions!

--Rob

There's a neat quote attributed to author Ed Howdershelt: "There are four boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order."

I don't think soap or ballot work in the case of school district reform. Sue the bastards!

With tongue firmly in cheek,

--Rob

That's an excellent quote.. Excellent wit, Rob!

Re:

> the second graders that I tutor in reading have horrible handwriting when filling out >worksheets on their books, and they don't use a standard starting point for the >manuscript letters. They form their letters so that they approximate the look and >pay no attention to stroke order...

This happens BECAUSE of filling out those worksheets: more precisely, because the teachers expect the worksheets to do the teaching.
1 teacher
+ 0 knowledge of handwriting
+ 30 worksheets
+ 30 screaming kids
+ 10 minutes daily (or WEEKLY) for handwriting (IF that much!
____________________________________________________
20 second (1/3 of 1 minute) per kid to teach handwriting,
so the teacher uses those 20 seconds to give out the worksheets,
then uses her scant grading-time (at home or at work) to add a check-mark or smile-face to each worksheet on which something LOOKS more-or-less like an "o" (or whatever else she wanted them to write).

Add to this the fact that the kids write at horizontal desks (not chalkboards — reserved for the teacher — or proper sloping desks), so even if the teacher *does* say "Start the letter 'o' at the top" or whatever, to a 5- or 6-year-old "the top" means "the top of the table" ... nobody explains to him/her that "top" in this circumstance means "the place furthest away from the writer," still less do they give him/her a sloping desk at which "the top" would visibly MEAN the top edge of the writing-surface ...
if they had to write at sloping desks/blackboards, gravity if nothing else would cue an over-all top-to-bottom direction.

> And I suppose the Zaner-Bloser method was the one I was taught,

As the best-selling method in this country, the last 50 years or so, you can bet you probably had Zaner-Bloser at one point. If you had white-on-green alphabet-cards mounted 'way above the chalkboard: Zaner-Bloser made these. (It has now switched to black-on-white instead of white-and-green, and changed a few details of manuscript and cursive: it still looks every bit as plug-ugly.)

> Anyway, end of tirade. Kate Gladstone, I'm horrified by your tale of the Zaner-
> Bloser executives...

I didn't even tell you the worst parts:
one Z-B executive (who retired only a month or so ago after years of "glorious" work high up in the handwriting department) enjoyed telling people that "non-Zaner-Bloser writing-styles are one of the major causes of dyslexia" (her "evidence": one of her daughters has dyslexia, and that daughter attended a school that didn't use Zaner-Bloser) ...
... another executive (in the last conversation I had with a Z-B exec, before they put me on the "enemies' list") seriously informed me that "those who use and support Italic handwriting are going against the Creator, against God. Human beings are *created* to work best with the Zaner-Bloser handwriting program ... "

Re:

>I have heard that italic is gaining popularity with home schoolers, is that still true? >And are there any school districts that are moving toward italic?

In the USA, about 1/3 of our two million homeschoolers learn and use Italic. At least one school or school-district in each of the USA's 50 states uses Italic: ever since 1976, several school-districts in the state of Oregon (and also several school-districts in the state of Washington) use Italic. In California, enough teachers/schools use Italic that the state education standards specify that students should produce their handwritten work "in cursive or [in] joined italic" —
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/tg/sr/documents/bpcstela2to10.pdf
and
http://www.cde.ca.gov/re/pn/fd/documents/e...nguage-arts.pdf

Further:
According to a 2003 Associated Press/CNN report on handwriting, about 7% of USA third-graders that year learned Italic rather than conventional cursive —
http://www.cnn.com/2003/EDUCATION/06/08/cu...d.ap/index.html

Re Dillon's ...

> Wow[,] Kate!

Does that mean you want to hear about three "Italic musketeers' " fracas with Martha Stewart?

By the way ... I see that Autophile lives in Maryland. In that state also dwells one of the USA's *best* Italic-teachers/Italic-program authors (an increasing number of homeschoolers and others use her program) — Nan Jay Barchowsky: Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting at http://www.BFHhandwriting.com — she lives in Aberdeen, Maryland (near Washington, DC), and her web-site has her contact-info. "Autophile," please tell Nan I asked you to get in touch with her ... and say "Hello" to her from me!

Re:

>I don't think soap or ballot work in the case of school district reform. Sue the >bastards!

Sadly, my husband (an attorney) refuses to let me go that far: particularly because the state where I live (New York) doesn't have "educational malpractice" laws, as some other states do.
Would anyone else here (especially attorneys) like to check and see if the places where you live *do* have laws forbidding "educational malpractice"? If memory serves, some USA states do indeed have such laws.

I, for one, really want to hear about the Italic musketeers fight with Martha!

Go with the Italic nib as soon as you feel comfortable with it and can use it well — make sure you keep the proper pen-angle (angle of pen-nib edge to the writing-line — in Italic, this should equal 45 degrees but [as Fred Eager notes in his ITALIC WAY TO BEAUTIFUL HANDWRITING) the pen-angle can and probably should measure a little less in unusually slanted/shortened-x-height Italic: with really short-x-height, really strongly slanted Italic (say, 3 pen-widths high and slanted 15 degrees right), the pen-angle can in practice measure as little as 30 degrees.

Actually, Aberdeen is a lot closer to me than it is to Washington. Aberdeen is actually about midway between Baltimore (to the south) and Philadelphia (to the north), while Washington is even further south than Baltimore

I'm probably about 15 miles away from Aberdeen.

--Rob