For the handwriting-hotheads ...

During this week, at http://www.radionz.co.nz/nr/programmes/nights ,
you can hear a 16-minute interview (on the New Zealand National Radio program "NIGHTS") with an American handwriting-enthusiast, one Michael Sull
(owner of http://www.spencerian.com )
(After this week, it will leave the site - till then, one can listen to it on-line though apparently not download it.)
Even though Mr. Sull makes excellent points about handwriting and its continuing importance, and even though he noted that the big commercial handwriting-publishers purvey unskillful teaching and thereby often gain poor results in their chosen methods, he also described his own position on handwriting as "strongly against Italic" and strongly in favor of slanted writing methods that not only connect all letters but that require such connection from the beginning of handwriting instruction: nineteenth-century Spencerian and closely similar styles, as his chosen site-name would suggest.
While Sull acknowledged (and indeed quite plainly stated) that most people who seriously strive to improve handwriting today teach and use the Italic style, he nevertheless condemned Italic as an inferior method "because it is erect and does not flow."
Those wishing to comment to Mr. Sull can find an e-mail link and other contact-info at his spencerian.com web-site. For those wishing to contact New Zealand National Radio's NIGHTS program (which ran the interview with Mr. Sull), the radionz.co.nz site includes
contact-details.