The Great Cursive Writing Debate: Lost Art Or Vital Skill?

[markh]

This came my way today:

 

<https://thewritelife.com/cursive-writing-debate/>

 

Nothing is ever actually decided..... which maybe is just fine.....

 

 

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[ISW_Kaputnik]

Thanks for the link. Indeed, it breaks no new ground for these discussions, but they remain relevant for anyone interested in school curricula.

 

A random thought occurs to me, a minor and no doubt unimportant consequence of a future in which only historians and "history buffs" can understand cursive. Imagine a movie from the twentieth century being shown in the year 2101 or so. There is a closeup of a short note in cursive. Almost nobody would be able to read it by now, so subtitles have been added to translate it.

[pajaro]

Can you read hyerogliphs, cuniformn, shorthand, machine shorthand (stenograph)? Writing systems pass out of use when they are.not needed or useful.

[Rosendust2121]

I think it can be considered a lost art. For example, I learned it in Elementary school and have contuinued to use it despite me being a left handed person.

[Drawing61]

Maybe a lost art. I believe drawing, making marks that signify something, as well as making music and inventing stories are in the human DNA . So not too pessimistic until the machines take over.

[pajaro]

I think it can be considered a lost art. For example, I learned it in Elementary school and have contuinued to use it despite me being a left handed person.

 

I am also left handed, and I am not sure why that would be an issue. I write easily in cursive, just as younger people print or text. Often in my career in IT I had to print so some could read it. It seems slower to me than cursive, but if people are using mainly electronic devices to communicate, cursive dies with its last practitioner. Not a lost art yet.

[ParkerDuofold]

Hi all,

 

I do not think it will disappear completely... it will remain as one of those "lost arts," like the study of Latin or Greek languages... but I do not think it will ever be mainstream again. It's been my experience that a lot of people under 35 cannot even read it; let alone write it.

 

But 8-balls like us will keep it from dying out completely. Parents... teach it to your children.

 

Be well and enjoy life.

 

 

- Anthony

Edited August 15, 2017 by ParkerDuofold

[JakobS]

Not a vital skill, but a once popular type or types of handwriting that like many before it were taught to record important information of the day. Handwriting in general I believe is a nice skill to have, be it cursive, or uncial, italic, book hand, or gothic blackletter. But, I believe limiting the ability to use, understand, or enjoy handwriting to one or two types does not help to sustain it. An individual needs to be allowed to explore all the many types of handwriting, and choose the one that best fits them, if they enjoy it, they will use it, and handwriting will sustain.

Edited August 16, 2017 by JakobS

[Studio97]

If i am leaving a message i should print it. But for myself, if i am using a quality pen especially a fountain pen then printing just feels unnatural.

[Mech-for-i]

Neither

 

its not on school curriculum does not made it a lost art nor even an art form. in the end, cursive writing is tailored for well writing and jotting down text in a practical fashion and this is not going away as a fact and as how its main usage had been, is, and likely will remain so in the future. Is it a vital skill, now that depends. Each and every one live in a different environment which might made a certain skill, including good handwriting, a needed skill or just a nice to have.

 

Say ... nobody would be too bothered about the office colleagues handing them document, notes, or etc on a laser printed, nor if its just jotted down on a piece with a simple Gel pen. The handwriting is likely not the best of calligraphic performance but so long its legible and readable its OK .. do we all need to write in cursive, well .. certainly not in most cases. Nice to have and nice to have master such skill, certainly , but required I doubt it

[Ergative]

In my view, handwriting is similar to domestic skills like, say, sewing or embroidery (at least for women). It used to be that every woman knew how to sew, some were quite good at it, but all of them were brought up stitching samplers or doing the household mending (depending on income and class and so on). Now, we have no need for that skill: we have sewing machines and factories, and although we can still buy cross-stitch samplers from catalogues if we want that kind of decoration, very few of us know how to produce them ourselves.Still, Some hobbyists continue to practice the art, and are as skilled as anyone ever was back in the old days, and the profusion of hobby shops and specialist suppliers means that there's no danger the art will be lost forever. It simply occupies a different cultural niche.

 

Similarly, good handwriting used to be indispensable, simply because it was so commonly in need. Then we got typewriters, PCs, phones, email, printers, and so on, and handwriting is now occupying the same state as embroidery was once. Perhaps it hasn't gotten quite as far down that path (school children do still need to make marks on paper with a pen in hand in most places, so we aren't purely digital yet), but I think by looking at skills like sewing and embroidery we can see the future of handwriting. And it really doesn't concern me. Sure, the general population may not sew very well, but the people who like it are going strong, and certainly it seems to me that the fine writing community is plenty robust to continue. Think about the supplies alone: maybe we're no longer in the golden age of fountain pens, but we're definitely in the golden age of inks!

[chromantic]

If i am leaving a message i should print it. But for myself, if i am using a quality pen especially a fountain pen then printing just feels unnatural.

 

For communicating with others, I use block printing. For personal writing, it's the 'runic' block style that I've been using since '78 (my cursive was really bad).

[TSherbs]

The "science" link in this article ends up only about "handwriting," and makes no distinction between cursive and other forms of handwriting, connected or non-connected.

 

Cursive has no lasting particular efficacy above other forms of handwriting. This is a cultural value, and cultural values change. I am a teacher and we teach cursive in my town in the elementary school. It is done for cultural reasons, not as a specific or improved learning tool (it is not one.) I teach high school and have no preference of one form of handwriting over another from my students as long as it is legible.

[Sasha Royale]

I enjoy writing, though my cursive is just fair. Sometimes, reading the cursive of others is challenging. It is part of the enjoyment of all parties. I liken it to using a sharpened, high-quality chef's knife, or cooking at home, or grinding coffee beans for the french press. Most of these activities are unnecessary. Neither are they sterile. Life should not be sterile.

 

By the way, this past Monday was National Rum Day. Few of you would care, except for the few, to whom I gave a celebratory bottle of Rhum Barbancourt (aged 15 years). In those cases, it was National RHUM Day.

 

pro Deo et Patriae.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Sasha Royale

[inkstainedruth]

In my view, handwriting is similar to domestic skills like, say, sewing or embroidery (at least for women). It used to be that every woman knew how to sew, some were quite good at it, but all of them were brought up stitching samplers or doing the household mending (depending on income and class and so on). Now, we have no need for that skill: we have sewing machines and factories, and although we can still buy cross-stitch samplers from catalogues if we want that kind of decoration, very few of us know how to produce them ourselves.Still, Some hobbyists continue to practice the art, and are as skilled as anyone ever was back in the old days, and the profusion of hobby shops and specialist suppliers means that there's no danger the art will be lost forever. It simply occupies a different cultural niche.

 

Similarly, good handwriting used to be indispensable, simply because it was so commonly in need. Then we got typewriters, PCs, phones, email, printers, and so on, and handwriting is now occupying the same state as embroidery was once. Perhaps it hasn't gotten quite as far down that path (school children do still need to make marks on paper with a pen in hand in most places, so we aren't purely digital yet), but I think by looking at skills like sewing and embroidery we can see the future of handwriting. And it really doesn't concern me. Sure, the general population may not sew very well, but the people who like it are going strong, and certainly it seems to me that the fine writing community is plenty robust to continue. Think about the supplies alone: maybe we're no longer in the golden age of fountain pens, but we're definitely in the golden age of inks!

 

Interesting analogy.

A few years ago (back before I was using fountain pens) I took a womens' entrepreneurship class at a local college (I would consider it my only foray into a graduate level course). One woman in the class was trying to develop an app that would help people figure out to figure out fabric yardage and body measurements and such, as a sewing aid, but she didn't finish the course.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: A couple of years ago I read a novel set during the Gilded Age (late 1800s/early 1900s) and having to do with the interactions between the US and England at the time (i.e., broke nobles marrying American heiresses to prop up their estates). One of the characters is an American typewriter salesman on a biking holiday through the English countryside, who manages to convince one of the said heiresses to buy his company's products (she has inherited her father's -- and grandfather's -- business acumen, as well as being beautiful and rich...).

Edited August 16, 2017 by inkstainedruth

[markh]

Similarly, good handwriting used to be indispensable, simply because it was so commonly in need. Then we got typewriters, PCs, phones, email, printers, and so on, and handwriting is now occupying the same state as embroidery was once. Perhaps it hasn't gotten quite as far down that path (school children do still need to make marks on paper with a pen in hand in most places, so we aren't purely digital yet), but I think by looking at skills like sewing and embroidery we can see the future of handwriting.

 

I must disagree with this. If you write text (as a writer, or for a personal journal, etc...) the result is different depending on whether you use a keyboard or write by hand. Not necessarily better, but different. If you want a similar comparison, try dictating an essay or article into a voice recorder and see how it comes out.

 

I'm currently taking a short writing course at a local college, and part of the "homework" is to sit down each morning and write something. The instructors guidance is to write by hand, unless you have some limitation that prevents that. Her opinion is that there is a different connection to the brain used when pen contacts paper, than when fingers contact keys. I've read this opinion in many other places, and personally notice the same thing. Anything I write starts sketched out by hand, with the final task of stringing words together on a keyboard.

 

I think both by-hand and by-key should to be available to best allow you to think clearly and to express your thoughts clearly. Then you can choose what works best in the particular circumstance. Part of your job as a thinking person is to pick the tool that works best.

 

If you never had the opportunity to learn writing by hand, and it isn't an available choice, so much the poorer for you.

 

 

 

(everytime I (re)read one of Charles Dickens novels, I usually think about that the entire thing was written with a dip pen. That's hard work.....)

.

 

 

 

[Larina_1248]

I completely agree that the writing that results from writing by hand is very different from what is thrown out by a computer, if for no other reason than the speed associated with each. Writing by hand makes you consider every word more, think of whether it really matters to the text or not. That being said, I do think that cursive is fading into a lost art. It's not there yet, but with the increasing digitalization of writing, it's only a matter of time. Some kids in schools (the kind that don't work much, to be fair) are losing the skill of writing by hand at all, never mind in cursive. All the same, there is definitely still a strong interest in handwriting, cursive or otherwise, so I hope that it will be a long time before we all forget it.

[ac12]

Short of learning short-hand, which I with my mother made me learn, I don't know of another way to take notes quickly than some form of cursive.

My printing is not as fast as my cursive.

But as my cursive writing speeds up, the legibility goes DOWN.

In college, I had to rewrite my notes for the classes that day, just so that I could read them later. Yeah it was BAD.

 

Maybe one day, or maybe it is already here, there will be a tablet app that will let the student type notes, and insert drawings or sketches into the notes as the lecture is going on. Several/many of my college classes, the professor would draw charts or diagrams on the blackboard or overhead projector, and those charts and diagrams were every bit as critical as the words he said.

Doing that is easy with pen on paper, but NOT in MS WORD on my laptop.

[Studio97]

Quote markh "Her opinion is that there is a different connection to the brain used when pen contacts paper, than when fingers contact keys"

 

There is absolute proof of that when you see really silly and oxymoronic errrers floating across your tv screen in a news broadcast. Spelcheck doesn't solve everything. Mispellings are one thing but when the writer is in such a hurry to fill copy space or by cut and paste pushed to meet a deadline, accuracy is not always checked either. Newspaper: Photo of a WWII vet getting pinned with a bronze star. The story was that decades later he received France's Legion of Honor medal. Second photo shows him holding his Legion of Honor medal in his hand. The caption says "holding his Bronze Star".

Of course cursive can't be used in the newspaper business but at least we think more clearly when we write even if we write fast. I often cross out words in my journal and correct as I go in cursive but I feel I'm writing to meet my own expectations. Keyboards and lack of caring often damages that.

And last our cursive writing is like a fingerprint that identifies us as a unique individual. That just seems special to me.

Edited August 16, 2017 by Studio97

[pajaro]

Cursive will linger. People will have to do something with all these pens.