When Did You Stop (And/or Start) Cursively Writing?

[Manalto]

How burdensome for you. Could there be a chance that they have other capabilities and aren't, in fact, your inferiors?

[49erfantom]

Learned cursive very earl on in elementary, probably first or second grade. Today my youngest son, who's in fifth grade hasn't learned. Schools in our area at least are moving away from cursive, they no longer teach. Sad, it's a skill that will become less and less relevant.

[Joe in Seattle]

Started in 3rd grade in 1953. Still going, though my hand is a bit shaky.

[countrydirt]

I recall cursive being what we learned around 3rd grade. I've pretty much used it since then, which would have been around 1971 or 1972. I took a little detour with technical/drafting lettering but use cursive pretty exclusively still. I have added italic cursive to my arsenal of writing when I'm not torturing calligraphy.

[Orthostylos]

So, I am an older guy who learned cursive probably in the 3rd or 4th grade. We started by using pencil, and when the teacher decided you were accomplished or neat enough, you were allowed to use a ball pen.

 

I can not claim to have been a neat writer, but I recall at some point classes in High School which required copious notes, I could not read my own handwriting when reviewing.

 

At that point, I would print my notes, and eventually had a bizarre hybrid printing/cursive way of taking notes. I was pretty good and could keep up with the lecturer, and read what I wrote.

 

I then experimented with calligraphy (never really mastered it), but found that careful lettering could not be rushed, so my day to day cursive handwriting has improved, provided I can slow down enough to care what the letter are.

 

I am still a work in progress.

[Freddy]

Start) Cursively Writing?

 

Long Ago.....Still At It.............

And the dude standing next to me under the Bay Parkway train station in Bensonhurst....says usin' the Brooklyn Alphabet.......{in a unmistakable Brooklynese accent}

Fxxxkinx A.............................

Fred

[Bookman]

I'm trying not to think about having an OCD or my anxiety will hear about it and turn itself up a notch or two! Just for fun of course.

Welcome aboard the anxiety disorder train. We have breathing exercises, relaxant medication, ASMR, obsessive-compulsive tendecies, and much much more. It'll be a "fun" ride!

 

Breathing exercises are good. I'm going to try yoga and meditation and maybe aromatherapy if I can find an essential oil that smells the way a new pair of Levis smelled on the shelf back in the old days. Or essence of mimeograph paper. Powerhouse candy bar.

[TSherbs]

Stopped it in 7th grade, as soon as my teachers let me. I have used a hybrid form ever since. Connected writing has always been a challenge for me, but some letter patterns are easier than others.

[TSherbs]

 

Breathing exercises are good. I'm going to try yoga and meditation and maybe aromatherapy if I can find an essential oil that smells the way a new pair of Levis smelled on the shelf back in the old days. Or essence of mimeograph paper. Powerhouse candy bar.

 

Eau de SuperElasticBubblePlastic

[Bookman]

 

Eau de SuperElasticBubblePlastic

 

I'll look for that. Sounds promising.

[Kalessin]

I attended elementary school near Boston, Massachusetts in the 1970s. Both of my parents have used fountain pens all their lives; my mother has perfect and precise Palmer Method writing (as did her late mother), and my father has terrible half-cursive half-print from being forced from writing with the left hand to the right hand in Germany as a child during WW2 (once the Berlin bombings began, the war also interrupted schooling, as he kept getting sent out of Berlin to relatives' houses in the safer countryside).

 

For handwriting, I started with upper and lower case printing in first grade, using a special large-diameter pencil, Dixon Beginner's No. 308. By the end of second grade, my fine motor skills had caught up, so I was using regular pencils, and beginning in third grade, we had penmanship class two or three times a week with what must be an extreme rarity now, a specialist penmanship teacher. She was old-fashioned about handwriting, but very friendly and engaging, and we learned from battered and taped-together books printed in the 1950s. For left-handers like me, she had us write from above the line rather than below, which isn't ideal, but is better than forcing young students to switch to the right hand. We practiced in class, and had homework to bring home for every upcoming class.

 

We learned what I now know to be Zanerian cursive, which is close to, but not quite Palmer. We started with capitals and unjoined lowercase letters, and then started linking the lowercase together. At the end of the year, we had a test where we wrote out our own "Certificate of Achievement"; I passed on the second try. The reward was to be able to write in ballpoint pen, though sadly the school supplied horrible pens that smeared everywhere, even for the right-handers. Everyone started bringing in ballpoints from home, though when I brought in a fountain pen, I was told to leave it at home because it might leak.

 

I wrote with fountain pens at home, my mother's Parker 75 cisele, and Esterbrooks and Sheaffer school pens that were around at my grandparent's house no longer being used. But by 7th grade, when cursive was no longer required, I switched to large and small capitals printing, because I thought it looked cool. That became my default hand, and I only started using cursive again in my thirties, and mostly for my own notes.

[Manalto]

The thing that's surprising to me is that there are people who know cursive and still prefer to print. For me, printing takes much longer to get on the page; sometimes I'll start printing something and it will morph into cursive, simply because it's faster. Maybe I should slow down.

[djmaher]

At least in part, I just want to improve the legibility of my writing. I journal like crazy. And, at times, it seems like I can't put the words to paper fast enough. Sometimes it seems like gibberish, with the translation only known to me. I guess the point is to write, and maybe sort it out later. Not always sure if that's the best way.

 

I've recently been going through my old journals, and am surprisingly horrified by some of it. My thought process and my words are one thing, but, the legibility on some of it is questionable, at best. It makes me think, "I wish I could write better." Whatever that means.

 

So my problem seems to be twofold. Coherence, and legibility. I have to admit, I don't know which comes first, but, I suspect, it's a combination of the two, in varying degrees. I'm often in too much of a hurry, trying to get thought to paper quickly. Not sure how I manage, but, when I revisit my journals, I often think, and sometimes say, "What the hell..."

 

When I print-write, I often, mid-sentence, finish my letters, add punctuation, cross my t's, etc. I don't know if other people do it this way. It's like I'm going backwards, alot. And, I suspect it breaks my train of thought, as well as my words and sentences.

 

I suspect that trying to relearn cursive, in some form, will help carry my words and thoughts forward, more smoothly. It will help me pay attention, concentrate, and slow down a bit. I think. I know I don't want to have to "think" about my writing, as I do. But, maybe in my case, revisiting that will help, overall. And, eventually become a habit, if I work at it, a bit.

[EdwardSouthgate]

I was 5 . The young girl next door was learning cursive in 4th grade and taught me as she was learning . I could write before I could print so never learned to print nicely. I used the fat pencil in 1st and second grade and we changed to the #2 in the 3rd and 4th . 5th grade we were allowed our choice of ink pens and I chose a Parker 51 of my grandmothers , which I still have . Neither of my sons will sign his signature but will automatically print it because schools for the most part do not stress Cursive writing . Everybody has a tablet , cell phone , laptop so they figure why teach them to do something they will seldom use . When asked to print I find it hard to make myself do it and usually end up doing both , sometime in the same word . I'm 60 now and I don't expect to stop using Cursive as long as I am able to write .

 

Eddie

Edited October 7, 2018 by EdwardSouthgate

[RoyalBlueNotebooks]

Neither of my sons will sign his signature but will automatically print it because schools for the most part do not stress Cursive writing .

There is something very wrong with youngsters not knowing how to write or even read cursive writing. My 14 y/o niece has serious troubles reading cursive writing, even the most traditional style, which is very clear and easily understandable, the one I was taught in primary school.

Edited October 7, 2018 by RoyalBlueNotebooks

[djmaher]

There is something very wrong with youngsters not knowing how to write or even read cursive writing. My 14 y/o niece has serious troubles reading cursive writing, even the most traditional style, which is very clear and easily understandable, the one I was taught in primary school.

Geez,

 

It never occurred to me that alot of young people nowadays who aren't taught cursive may not be able to understand it or read it as they go forward in life. For some reason, I can't believe that that could happen.

 

I haven't written in cursive in years, yet I still manage to read it just fine. Sometimes I cannot read old english in old manuscripts, but, I can make it out if I take some time with it.

 

But to think that some people may not be able to read cursive in the not so near future? Considering the nature of this website and forum. where we wrestle over pens and ink and paper, that concept just strikes me as a bit horrifying.

 

And, I didn't even think much of it until RoyalBlue's comment. Which is sad in and of itself. Sure, I'm one of those people who think it's still important to figure out a way to teach cursive writing in schools now. I have to admit that it makes me think we take alot of things for granted. It's not like my words are particularly special once they get committed to paper, and it's not necessarily true that I write because or for someone's benefit in the future, but to think that my scribble won't be easily decipherable to many in a generation or two?

 

Doesn't that sound a bit horrifying? Imagine penning a letter to a loved one for reading in the future (like a note to and infant son or daughter) thinking you want to communicate something across the years, and them not being able to read it, as if it's some ancient artifact in a foreign language.

 

Geez. Again....

[TSherbs]

Any literate adult, with some effort, can read clean cursive. Most letters look similar enough to their print versions. Fears of losing this reading skill broadly are overblown.

[azbobcat]

Learned cursive in the mid 1960s in third grade here in the US. Pretty much stopped using it by high school (somewhat in middle school, with the fad for putting big circles instead of dots over the letter "I"). Pretty much printed except for signatures, or the odd calligraphy class (which didn't ever include stuff like Copperplate or Spencerian), or used a typewriter for papers, until just a few years ago when I found my way to FPN and started reading regularly.

I'm sure that a "handwriting expert" would look at some of my journal entries and diagnose me as having Dissociative Identity Disorder . When the truth of the matter is that sometimes I'm more awake than others... Even in the same entry. Because the angle of the letters can be that varied, even from one paragraph to the next.... My signature is much more upright than what I was taught, and I stopped doing the descender loops altogether for the most part.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: Even now, I still don't use cursive except for signatures on checks or for addressing envelopes, on the grounds that most people these days below a certain age can't read cursive.

 

I am 66 and I still use cursive as opposed to printing, that said my cursive "style" is vastly different from what I learned back in grade school. My Capital A's, G's, I's, K's, Q's, S's, Z's tend to be more print-like, and my lowercase f's tend to have a back loop rather than the nice forward loop I learned in grade school. Nonetheless it is clearly cursive -- or as we use to call it, "script" -- and not print. A friend, who is a teacher, recently told me that the emphasis now is not to teach "penmanship" -- another old term -- anymore, but rather to teach keyboard skills. Indeed "penmanship" has become another dinosaur that has joined the ash piles of history with the relentless march of technology. A small note: How can someone say that they are "educated" if they can read script? I don't particularly care if we live in an increasingly technological society, but the ability to read and write is basic.... that said even the ability to read for the pleasure of reading, or the ability to write is slowly being eroded away with the rise of "tweets", emojis and other such nonsense. No wonder there is an increasing rise in illiteracy in this country. Call me "Old School", call me an "Elitist", call me anything you want, but I refuse to lower my standards because some moron hasn't learned to read and write. BTW I am very proficient with computers and technology, as I run a small home network of light duty but research grade workstations, running CentOS Linux, not brain dead Windows. I think "tweeting" and emojis shows slothfulness (now there is a $25 word! HA!) of the mind.

[azbobcat]

Started 61 years ago and haven't ceased. Fountain pen was compulsory in those days, in that colonial place. I still write as badly as I did then. We lost points for spelling errors and incorrect grammar, in all subjects, in both primary and secondary education. Fortunately most of the Masters could not decipher my scrawl.

 

At this late age I fruitlessly attempt to improve my hand.

 

If you're over age 60 most people still use cursive "script" on a regular basis; if you're 30 or less most people tend to print. The style of a person's daily writing corresponds with how much it was emphasized during grammar school.

[ardene]

I learnt cursive in the context of my French classes (extracurricular). Cursive's wasn't a requirement at school and this is as it should be. I do not intend to offend anyone's sensibilities but cursive writing's beside the point. Good handwriting is just legible handwriting with correct spelling. Nothing more, nothing less. It was fun to practice it and it did change how I shape some letters, but I never adopted it. It's highly impractical. "Printing" is much faster to put on a page. So much so that my Parker IM's feeder has sometimes trouble to keep up with my writing speed, especially on sleek paper. Sometimes a person's hand has to keep up with their thinking, you see. When cursive is written fast you need a small army of PhD holders in graphology to decipher what the text might purport to convey. My views on cursive were later corroborated by how most people actually do those exquisite cursive, but highly legible, calligraphic texts: one letter at a time.

Edited October 24, 2018 by ardene