Did Ballpoint Pens Kill Cursive?

[searcher18]

When I was looking for fountain pens in an antique store, the owner kept calling fountain pens `ink pens` and was surprised when I told her that ball points pens also used ink. I found an interesting article claiming that ballpoint pens killed cursive. If you think about it, it was the more viscous inks that ballpoint required that made connecting letters more difficult. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/

Edited August 29, 2015 by searcher18

[shawndp]

I don't believe that for a second... My grandfather had beautiful cursive and very likely started off with a dip pen but could produce magic with a Jotter too - all the way into his 80;s. My dad writes flawlessly with a BP too and the Cross Solo has been his pen of choice for the last three decades. Both have written better with a generic BP than I could ever hope to write with a $500 FP. There's an old adage about a bad carpenter blaming their tools that sort of applies here. What killed cursive is laziness and complacence. I had teachers who wouldn't take an excuse for bad writing and would not hesitate to lay down the law when I got lazy. Good penmanship comes from practice and the desire to do it. Nice FP's make me enjoy writing more than other instruments but are merely implements that I control, not some magic key to unlock cursive. If you want something - work hard for it, practice it, do not let adversity become an excuse - but it has become the cultural norm to find the path of least resistance and that (in my opinion anyway) has killed cursive.

[thatotherguy1]

Cursive is still alive, but dying. I don't believe for a moment that the ballpoint is killing cursive. I think electronics are killing cursive. Kids nowadays are growing up in a world where one can, with a little effort, go weeks without touching a pen or pencil, and thus handwriting in general is less of a paramount in education than it used to be. Print does fine for taking notes. Cursive is only required for signatures, and that's pseudo-cursive more often than not.

 

I do think that the cheap, poorly writing ballpoint has killed the joy of writing for many people though. I used to hate writing by hand. Now that I have decently performing pens, though, I'm handwriting a manuscript for a novel, even though I could have typed it with a typewriter or a laptop (and will eventually probably have to anyway).

[Kiaxa]

I'm going to have to side with the article

 

Because from what understand cursive existed because of the dip pen. The whole point of cursive was to minimize the amount of blotching created by putting the pen on the paper. The need for cursive was lessened with the invention of self regulating ink flow (I.e. fountain pens). With the invention of ballpoint pens, a 100% on-demand ink delivery system, the utilitarian reason for the existence of cursive was killed off and thus cursive lived on as a formality. From a clearly analytical point of view the answer is yes, cursive nowadays from a purely utilitarian standpoint is dead living on merely as a formality.

[Manalto]

I submit that the typewriter played a larger role in the demise of cursive. Until its invention, business letters were handwritten and the better the cursive the more professional the communication. This necessitated training, and launched an entire industry of business writing. Once letters were routinely typewritten, the only common evidence of handwriting in business communication was signatures and checks. Personal communication continued to be handwritten, in fact it was considered rude to type a personal letter. (Today, when I type letters to friends they get a kick out of it.) I don't find the effort to write in cursive significantly greater with a ballpoint than with a fountain pen, it's just less fun.

Edited August 29, 2015 by Manalto

[FlyFast]

Computers and the Internet are killing cursive writing. Plenty of people wrote in cursive for their entire lives using ballpoint pens.

[crookedbeam]

I think what has mainly killed cursive is the fact that printing produces letters that look much more similar to those that would be made on a computer screen than cursive does. While I don't think that understanding cursive is difficult, printing can make reading much easier for some. So no, I don't think that the decline of cursive is to the fault of ballpoint pens, even though I personally don't like using them.

[Parse Error]

I'd add that it's about momentum. A heavy fountain pen makes cursive natural, since the pen is already moving in the direction -- small changes will round out the letter to make it in shape, and you can bounce the pen off of your knuckles for an abrupt change in direction. Compare that with print letters, where you have to place the pen at the start of the letter, push/pull the pen, and then stop the pen and lift it up for each letter.

 

As the most common pen in the world (BIC cristal) has a very heavy resistance in order to apply ink and is relatively light, there's no need for cursive anymore. With a heavier pen, such as my favorite Visconti Homo Sapiens, cursive feels more natural because the pen has a momentum on it.

[searcher18]

I believe that writing cursive helps kids get their head around spoken and written language. Children who are aphasic or have serious communication problems can be helped with the Association Method. There are 10 steps and writing in cursive is step 5. Many young students who have only mild difficulty learning to read maybe helped with the Association Method. Association Method is “Teaching Language Deficient Children” by Maureen Martin and Etoile DuBard. We are losing young readers to computer games . This is another unintended consequence of ballpoint pens.

[Algester]

I grew up writing cursive with BPs what is the article talking about is simply I dunno... from the title itself I dunno who says viscous ink has to do with it has anyone ever written with a uni-ball jetstream knows that ink is (bleep) smooth but in the end some of the innovation now is centered in Japan... at least they recreated a cheaper fisher pen :3

uni-ball power tank and Tombow Air pump are probably cheaper than a fisher pen
immortal ink is innovated by Uni-ball as well as its a pigmented gel based ink found in their signo pen and without further testing I can not prove their claims either

Edited August 31, 2015 by Algester

[Dronak]

I was just going through my morning news e-mails and such and saw this article in The Atlantic that I thought people here would like. I only skimmed it right now, but it looks interesting, so I wanted to pass it along.

 

Edit: The URL was there when I typed this up this morning. I guess without the right code around it, it wasn't displayed properly. Sorry about that. Here's the link, which someone else put in a reply below: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/

Edited August 31, 2015 by Dronak

[tinto]

Nice find! To Instapaper

[sirgilbert357]

Am I missing something? I don't see a link to the article...

[melodiousb]

I'm not seeing the link either, but I've read the article. It's here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/ballpoint-pens-object-lesson-history-handwriting/402205/

 

The main idea is that a fountain pen encourages lifting the pen as little as possible, so it's well-suited for cursive, whereas a ballpoint requires you to press pretty hard, so shorter lines, i.e. print, are easier on the hand.

[e-beth]

I learned to press really hard when I write because I like a nice, dark line (pencil or pen). I didn't realize it until I tried to write with felt-tip or nylon-tipped pens which ended up writing really thick lines since I smashed the tips due to the pressure I was using. Fountain pens have been a joy because I don't have to press as hard to get a nice line, but I am still struggling with breaking the habit of pressing hard when I write.

 

What I found intriguing about the article was the implication that saving handwriting may involve developing a new form of pen hold and a new form of cursive that is particularly suited to writing with a ballpoint pen. It's an interesting idea and I wonder if it's something that anyone has given a lot of thought to pursuing?

[deepak23]

Article has attached a huge number of comments, many pointing out the advantages of FPs. Looks like we are not a dying breed...

[ISW_Kaputnik]

I learned to press really hard when I write because I like a nice, dark line (pencil or pen). I didn't realize it until I tried to write with felt-tip or nylon-tipped pens which ended up writing really thick lines since I smashed the tips due to the pressure I was using. Fountain pens have been a joy because I don't have to press as hard to get a nice line, but I am still struggling with breaking the habit of pressing hard when I write.

 

What I found intriguing about the article was the implication that saving handwriting may involve developing a new form of pen hold and a new form of cursive that is particularly suited to writing with a ballpoint pen. It's an interesting idea and I wonder if it's something that anyone has given a lot of thought to pursuing?

 

I found the article interesting too, partly for the reason you state, and partly because it's not just another "ballpoints are bad" rant. One thing, though, even a ballpoint does not necessarily require a lot of pressure, if it has a good quality refill, and I'm not even talking about rollerballs here. Some ballpoint refills will write with almost no pressure. Maybe people press because they see other people doing it, nobody has told them that it shouldn't be necessary, and it doesn't occur to them to try anything else. Ballpoints do tend to need a steeper angle to the paper, but I suspect that most of an effective ballpoint writing technique is getting a decent refill, writing with as light a touch as possible, and not holding the pen in a death grip.

[ANM]

Computer keyboards, smart phones and notebooks have changed communication via the internet to such an extent that the use of cursive and even writing paper itself have diminished quite a bit. Teachers are even requiring written assignments to be submitted over the internet. I remember when I wrote themes and research papers in high school and at university with a typewriter that I would write first and second drafts in cursive with a BP on legal pads. Now people can easily compose and edit their communications on a screen.

Edited August 31, 2015 by ANM

[Kiaxa]

If I may interject with some technical nonsense. The idea that ballpoints killed cursive does have some merit. Cursive was originally created to limit the amount of ink pooling one got when using dip pens. Because dip pens had no way regulate the ink themselves a way to externally regulate the flow of ink had to be created. In comes cursive a way to create entire words in one continuous movement.

 

When fountain pens were invented they lessened the need for cursive because they had the ability to regulate ink flow themselves, the biggest benefit of this self regulating prevented a pen from releasing all of it's stored ink if one was to carelessly leave the pen in one spot on the page for too long. Cursive was still useful because ink pools could still be created albeit smaller.

 

The ballpoint by design has no need for cursive as it's ink flow is 100% self regulated because it dispenses ink on-demand meaning ink will not flow unless you want it to, so no risk of ink pools. So cursive with a ballpoint is merely a formality because the problems that cursive solves do not exist on a ballpoint.

 

I really don't have an opinion on the cursive vs print debate, I use both but I prefer to use print because my handwriting has never been very good (Aspergers syndrome makes handwriting a bit difficult which is why I got into fountain pens, to improve my handwriting). I thought I'd give a little food for thought.

Edited August 31, 2015 by Kiaxa

[prf5]

Cursive was originally created to limit the amount of ink pooling one got when using dip pens.

 

 

You may be right about that. Wikipedia says that cursive, specifically connected cursive, was developed to promote speed as well as to cope with the limitations of quill pens. The former advantage still applies, whether I write with a fountain pen, ballpoint, or pencil.

 

I witnessed the death of cursive writing, and it predated the growth of cheap disposable ballpoints. Some pupils mastered the skill of writing cursive; others did it well enough, but many of my classmates never got the knack of writing quickly and legibly. Teachers were swimming upstream. Understandably, they didn't like to see good students falling behind because they couldn't write in the style of the day. If the 19 cent Bic was implicated in the death of cursive, it was probably a convenient excuse.

 

Regardless of the contributing factors, it is unfortunate that cursive writing has fallen out of favor.