The Lost Art Of Writing

[Columba Livia]

For example, the joins "pa" and "sc" and "qu" and "gh" each contain multiple curves, which inevitably take more time than straight or near-straight lines

 

Out of interest, I gave those pairs a try, seeing how many legible combinations I could produce in one minute with a gel ink pen (Blue uniball Jetstream (http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Uni-Ball_Jetstream_SXN-210.html)), and the results were as follows:

 

Printing "pa": 40 pairs

American cursive (i.e palmer style) "pa": 39 pairs

 

Printing "sc": 50 pairs

American cursive "sc": 44 pairs

 

Printing "qu": 38 pairs

American cursive "qu": 37 pairs

 

Printing "gh": 45 pairs

American cursive "gh": 46 pairs

 

I then tried some words with those combinations in. Legible words in one minute

 

Printing "pair": 24 words

American cursive "pair": 26 words

 

Printing "scum": 25 words

American cursive "scum": 26 words

 

Printing "quit": 22 words

American cursive "quit": 27 words

 

Printing "ghat": 25 words

American cursive "ghat": 29 words

 

So I would have to say that I personally find (American) cursive faster to write than printing. I also found the rolling rhythm of American cursive much easier on my hand than the stop-start of printing. It "clicked" when I wrote in cursive, in a way which I didn't experience when I printed. It feels more intuitive and natural.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Columba Livia

[KateGladstone]

Okay, so we have a cursive-versus-printing comparison from someone who does both. How about a cursive-versus-Italic comparison from someone who does both?

[nicholasyeo]

Wow, such beautiful artefacts!!!

[Mickey]

Part of the problem with this discussion is the lack of clearly defined terms. For example, does legible mean universally legible or is consistently legible by the writer the proper standard. I would think, as regards absolute maximum speed, the latter is the correct standard. Legibility is always going to degrade with speed and with writing intended for the eyes of others, speed must be sacrificed for legibility. So without qualifying what sort of legibility is required, we are comparing apples to screwdrivers.

 

I wouldn't say I've mastered any hand, but I've studied or been taught several. I was taught to print by my grandmother, whose cursive writing was clearly Spencerian. (She used the Spencer copy books in her classroom both as a student and later as a teacher.) I was taught Noble in school. Later I learned Italic (Chancery), dabbled in copperplate, and am now learning Spencerian.

 

For absolute speed, I revert to Noble. It isn't pretty and at full speed is reliably decipherable only by myself and (usually) "she who must be obeyed." Italic cursive for me is noticeably faster than printing and more legible, but it's what I've mostly used for the last 25 years or so. Notice the trend. The more consistently joined the hand, the greater the speed. Legibility is the trade off.

 

I've only been working on Spencerian for a few weeks, but it's pretty clear that it will eventually rank up with Chancery for speed and legibility.

 

Once the standard joins are learned, I don't think any joins, other than some of the elaborate ones used in ornamental penmanship, incur as much of a time penalty as lifting the pen. Arguing against cursive writing because of little used, arcane, elaborate, or novel joins is akin to requiring that all printed hands must include serifs.

[KateGladstone]

Columba Livia — Did your comparisons change only the single variable of joining/not joining, or did you also adopt the other (and far less efficient) aspects of printing along with the only change that I was actually asking about?

[KateGladstone]

Mickey — you ask important questions. Here's how I answer:/1/ I take legibility to mean forming a letter so that it cannot possibly be read as anything other than itself: e.g., "u" should preclude any possibility of regarding it as "n" or "a" or "U"/2/ Comparison of apples with screwdrivers is entirely possible, along numerous dimensions (e.g., weight, aerodynamics, chemical content, provenance, rapidity of oxidation at standard temperature and pressure, etc., etc., etc.) It is a poor intellect that cannot compare one object or concept with another.;-)/3/ If Mickey is right that his Spencerian "will eventually rank up WITH [my emphasis]" his Chancery/Italic "for speed and legibility," then he expects the two to end up about equal — which will much discomfit those who aver that anything ceaselessly joined must be faster than anything with fewer joins. I look forward to the results of Mickey's Spencerian/Chancery comparison, when he is equally adept with both & deems himself eady to attempt comparison  — I'd also like to see similar comparisons of (e.g.) Palmer and Italic, from those who are dually adept.

[KateGladstone]

When, as Mickey notes, "legibility is the trade-off," this makes evident the value of seeking an"optimax" for both legibility and speed. That's why I ask for a comparison of LEGIBLE letters per minute, instead of merely letters per minute.

[Mickey]

It is a poor intellect that cannot compare one object or concept with another.

 

But it is frequently challenging to develop methodologies which yield comparisons that are other than purely subjective, and some comparisons yield results so unilluminating as to be meaningless, e.g., the relative effectiveness of a piece of a non-citrus fruit to effect household repairs.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Mickey

[Columba Livia]

Re legibility, that is a tricky thing, especially when ones takes into account familiarity with someone's writing or a particular model. Anyhow, FWIW this is how it was with my writing:

 

http://i56.tinypic.com/16035m9.jpg

 

I used the special t for the endings of words there, and since I use the "reverse r" someone familiar with my writing would surely guess from context that the thing on the end of a word is a t, but some people not familiar with my writing, without an r to give context might mistake the t for an r in some cases, I suspect. Legibility is a tricky thing.

 

When I printed, I made each letter in one movement (i.e not like the ball and stick method, except for the crossbar on the t and dotting the i). I held the pen in the same tripod grip for both printing and cursive, and I did move the paper and my arm around on the table as I wrote with both cursive and printing.

 

My feeling is that joined up handwriting is faster than printing; but that there is no one true model for joined up handwriting out there, instead it varies from person to person depending on their individual traits. Some people may do better with loops, others without, some with joining every letter (perhaps even words sometimes), some joining only a few.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Columba Livia

[KateGladstone]

Columba Livia ... Thanks for the samples. Your "printing" is, in form, actually a hybrid of printing and Italic (and not as nice -- yet? -- as your Spencerian) so the samples compare a proficient version of one style with a not-so-proficient version of the other. may that affect results?It's likely enough that, as you say, some do better with and others without) loops and/or joining -- if this proves true, how should a handwriting program be constructed so that every child learns and performs to his/her best potential in this subject?

[KateGladstone]

Beak -- I mean that certain joins are more efficient than the corresponding pen-lifts, but that certain other join are less efficient than the corresponding pen-lifts.

Edited June 5, 2011 by KateGladstone

[KateGladstone]

Further: Beak, you're doubtless right about your own practices which you described in your points 1 and 3 -- and I think your practices are good ones -- my concern is that such practices (despite their known usefulness) are generally considered impermissible by those schoolteachers who still teach cursive. There are, in North America at least, teachers who would rather see an inept handwriting fully joined than see a rapid and legible cursive that even occasionally omitted or simplified a join. Such teachers and textbooks force cursive-learners to choose to sacrifice reasonableness (legibility and speed) to prescription on joining. (If they did not require such sacrifice, I'd have far fewer objections to cursive as it is taught ... When it is still taught in any fashion.)

[KateGladstone]

Beak -- my speed argument involves the greater speed and accident-resistance of a more efficient motion.

[publishing guy]

My grandparents could write and read cursive. They couldn't type. My kids don't do as well with cursive. But they can type very well.

 

My grandmother knew how to build a fire and cook on a wood stove, but she never really got the hang of using the telephone. My kids wouldn't have a clue about cooking on a wood stove, but they can use the phone like nobody's business, and are comfortable with talking, texting, you name it.

 

My father was amazing with a slide rule, but never got the hang of the computer - it came in just as he was retiring. My kids (middle school & high school) don't have a clue about how to use a slide rule, but they can and do use Matlab on the computer to crunch gobs of data, to generate graphs, to manipulate matrices as easily as we manipulated scalars, to do all sorts of things in ways that my father would have been overjoyed to embrace if they had been available when he was young.

 

My grandparents went as far as third grade in school, and probably spent a good part of those three years developing a pretty handwriting, and their handwriting was beautiful to look at. My kids didn't get so much emphasis on handwriting in school, and their handwriting is horrible. But they're doing math in middle school that most of us didn't see until high school, and by the time they're out of high school, they'll have had more math than most of us had in college.

 

The world moves on. We live in a world that moves a lot more quickly than the world my grandparents lived in, and different skills have risen to the top of the priority list, while other skills, formerly very important, have sunk. This has always been the case.

 

I love to learn and use traditional skills and technologies - that's why I love to make, fix and write with pens that use real ink, to wet-shave with a straight razor, to make furniture out of wood using human-powered hand tools, to listen to and play music that was written hundreds of years ago on instruments that kill no electrons. But I know it's just for fun - I have no illusions that these are intrinsically "better" ways of doing these things. And I'd much prefer that my children spend their time learning how to survive in THIS world. They can take up cursive as a hobby, if they like, after they've gotten the hang of all the things they need to survive in the 21st Century. Nostalgia is great, but when it gets militant, I start getting turned off.

Yes ... the world does move on ... for better and for worse. But it is nonsense to suggest that all forms are intrinsically equal. The computer is unquestionably BETTER for crunching "gobs" of data than the calculator or the abacus. When the topic is expression, I think an argument can be made that ease may be the enemy of quality.

I have seen -- in a lifetime of reading communication professionally -- a degradation in the precision of the language (not to mention the poetry) that I believe can be posited at the feet of the computer and our passion for speed. Our ideas are better expressed when our words are chosen carefully, and we choose our words more carefully when our pace is slowed and our communication is more difficult to modify.

Almost everyone has witnessed the sinking precision (and poetry) as we went from handwriting or typewriting to email to text messaging -- often communicated with symbols as opposed to words. I do it, too. To "correct" yourself on hand-written letter or a type written manuscript often required starting anew. Hence, we thought before we wrote. Now, we can spit forth our communication instantly and effortlessly under the assumption that spell check and grammar check or whatever check will make it OK without our thinking about it.

Look even to publishing, we generate millions of volumes of garbage. When the type was set (beautifully) by hand, we published only the best. Only a little less ture when skilled (and expensive) craftsmen set the type mechanically. Now we have more, cheaper and decidedly not better. As a culture, we chose inexpensive store-bought bread when we all prefer homemade.

Your children ... and the world ... will be ever so fine when they can read cursive no better than I can read Latin.

But we need not assume nothing will be lost.

One way or another, we will need keepers of the ancient flame, I suppose.

 

We have more communication, not better. Look even at publishing. We create all

[andru]

There is a study with some hard data:

 

The results of the study may be briefly quoted/stated as follows:

 

1. In legibility, manuscript [i.e. neatly printed] writing had a significant margin of superiority as compared with cursive writing. This margin is due to the independence of the letters, good spacing between words, and economy in line space.

 

2. In rate of production, manuscript writing is more rapid than cursive writing in Grades II-V. The difference in rate between the cursive writing and the manuscript writing in [the] Grade VI [group] is not large enough to be significant.

 

The number of specimens of each form of writing which were read is as follows: Grade II, seventeen; Grade III, twenty; Grade IV, twenty-four; Grade V, eighteen; and Grade VI, thirty-six.

 

There must be more recent data (this was from the 1930's)...

[DAYoung]

There is a study with some hard data:

 

The results of the study may be briefly quoted/stated as follows:

 

1. In legibility, manuscript [i.e. neatly printed] writing had a significant margin of superiority as compared with cursive writing. This margin is due to the independence of the letters, good spacing between words, and economy in line space.

 

2. In rate of production, manuscript writing is more rapid than cursive writing in Grades II-V. The difference in rate between the cursive writing and the manuscript writing in [the] Grade VI [group] is not large enough to be significant.

 

The number of specimens of each form of writing which were read is as follows: Grade II, seventeen; Grade III, twenty; Grade IV, twenty-four; Grade V, eighteen; and Grade VI, thirty-six.

 

There must be more recent data (this was from the 1930's)...

 

Interesting, Andru. Who were the readers?

[andru]

Interesting, Andru. Who were the readers?

I haven't read the whole paper, but from what I can tell, all we know is the readers were "adult" -- so, the schoolchildren wrote all samples, but legibility was determined by adults. The author(s) tried to avoid bias in a number of ways. I'm sure there are more pertinent results since? This is not my area! Just thought I'd try to ground the topic somewhat by pointing to a disciplined study.

[DAYoung]

The study's interesting, but I'd just like to know a little more. By the 30s, cursive was already waning. Orwell reports this in the late 'forties, but writes as if full cursive were finished long before. It's possible that some of the adults were already more accustomed to printing.

 

Also, we don't know anything about the social situation of the adults, e.g. education, class, status. If some were unaccustomed to cursive, this does not necessarily invalidate cursive.

[DAYoung]

Beak, this study also uses 'manuscript' for script (i.e. unjoined). It also reports that a mixed hand (mostly cursive) was most legible (judged using Larsen and Hammill's Test of Legible Handwriting).

[DAYoung]

The study's interesting, but I'd just like to know a little more. By the 30s, cursive was already waning. Orwell reports this in the late 'forties, but writes as if full cursive were finished long before. It's possible that some of the adults were already more accustomed to printing.

 

Also, we don't know anything about the social situation of the adults, e.g. education, class, status. If some were unaccustomed to cursive, this does not necessarily invalidate cursive.

You're referring to the Tribune piece of Feb 1947? I see no mention of any form of printing (unjoined writing) in this article, only comparisons between various forms of joined writing. I note that Orwell uses the term cursive to indicate a sub-type of joined writing, not as an umbrella term for all joined styles, and to be frank, I don't know to what actual style of hand his use of cursive refers. I don't see any indication in the article of the rise of unjoined writing, and my guess is that there was little of it to be found then, but I could be wrong in that.

 

Yes, you're right. Hasty judgement on my part. It doesn't back up my earlier points at all.