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

[Manalto]

My sense so far is that people gave up cursive because it was introduced after printing and became more of a chore than anything else.

 

You're probably right, but the opposite is true in my case. Cursive, as opposed to printing was, for me, like riding a bicycle instead of walking. I took to it quickly and with great enthusiasm. Maybe it's because printing was taught at such a young age when hands were less nimble, it felt laborious. By the time cursive was taught (I don't remember at what age; I want to say 3rd grade/9 y.o.) coordination was better and speed was easily attained. I grew up with a mother who took great pride in the beauty of her penmanship and who regularly got complimented on it, which was certainly an influence. I was fascinated by letter variants and, to this day, remember those friends and neighbors whose Christmas cards were addressed with panache. In school, I usually followed the penmanship rules to the letter but once in a while slipped in an ornamental "D" or "R" that I had admired on a Christmas card.

Edited July 12, 2018 by Manalto

[jolsson]

Around 2012, when I was in the third grade, I learned cursive from my teacher. As it was not required to be used, I promptly stopped using cursive, and went back to print. Around five years later, in seventh grade, I bought my first good fountain pen, a charcoal Lamy Safari. With this pen, I rediscovered the joy of cursive. Since I am relatively young, I use cursive to confuse my classmates, as most cannot read it, as well as some of my teachers. I also found that it was a lot more comfortable to write quickly in cursive.

[pen_master]

Around 2012, when I was in the third grade, I learned cursive from my teacher. As it was not required to be used, I promptly stopped using cursive, and went back to print. Around five years later, in seventh grade, I bought my first good fountain pen, a charcoal Lamy Safari. With this pen, I rediscovered the joy of cursive. Since I am relatively young, I use cursive to confuse my classmates, as most cannot read it, as well as some of my teachers. I also found that it was a lot more comfortable to write quickly in cursive.

I like how it confused both peers AND teachers. I think we may get to the point in 10-15 years when a majority of teachers can't read or write cursive because they were never taught to do so in school. Also, the speed element was never emphasized when I was in school. Perhaps if it had, I would have used it more throughout my high school and university years.

 

Your generation benefits from what appears to me, a renaissance in the pen world which I guess owes a lot to the internet and people connecting with each other. I never saw a fountain pen as a kid and so that allure wasn't there until much later. I imagine in my head a scenario where teenagers pull out their flashiest pen, rather than phone, as a status symbol.

[Manalto]

I like how it confused both peers AND teachers

 

I had the opposite reaction; I found it deeply disconcerting.

 

I imagine in my head a scenario where teenagers pull out their flashiest pen, rather than phone, as a status symbol.

 

I'm sure that day is just around the corner. (In your head )

Edited July 13, 2018 by Manalto

[Karmachanic]

Renaissance?

 

Try this. Go to a coffee shop and ask a twentyish year old if you can borrow their pen. They don't read books and they don't write. They have difficulty expressing themselves cogently. They have no need of a pen when all they do is poke a screen.

 

The average teenager has a vocabulary of 800 words. What would they write about? Not their fault of course.

 

edit: This, of course, this is a sweeping generalization

Edited July 13, 2018 by Karmachanic

[Manalto]

The average teenager has a vocabulary of 800 words.

 

The article you linked to is from 2010, so they're probably down to 650 words by now. It states:

 

"“There is undoubtedly a culture among teenagers of deliberately stripping away excess verbiage in language," he said."

 

Stripping away excess verbiage? In the UK, perhaps. Here in the US, the word "like" is a chronic verbal tic, in phrases heavily laced with "actually," "kind of," and "sort of." There is fashion guiding the use of adjectives, so "amazing," "dope," and (ugh) "awesome" continue to reign for anything positive, be it mundane or spectacular. I was recently mocked by a young adult for using the word "scrupulous" as if it were pathetically antiquated and the height of pretension. I love that word as it pertains to a person who pays careful attention to details.

 

The only thing worse than listening to inarticulate speech is reading it. I'm not sure cursive will be of much use to someone who has nothing to say.

Edited July 13, 2018 by Manalto

[jmnav]

I'm 49 y.o. I was taught cursive, so that's what I use and that's all (sorry for not having a long winding interesting story about the fact).

[RoyalBlueNotebooks]

I would say I agree on what you say.

I learned cursive at school in Italy at the age of 6-7 in the mid 60s and it was the first and only writing that was taught to me.

Or at least, block capitals, cursive capitals and cursive were taught at the same time, I still remember the pictures that were hang on the wall, with block writing and cursive writing in the four corners.

 

Emphasis was on cursive, we had to know block capitals and script existed in order to read it but we had to use cursive and cursive capitals when writing.

 

I am not sure which cursive it was, it was never given a specific name except cursive,

The cursive was round and upright, not slanted.

 

I am fully convinced that if school taught cursive from start all children would pick it up fast

So many things here were the same for me.

Was taught cursive in northern east Italy in the 1990s in first grade of elementary school. Not with fountain pens but with robberballs.

Cursive right after print so we could the textbook.

Emphasis was on neat and precise letters not on speed, and on getting each letter straight. So even if you raised your pen several times during each word you weren't scolded as long as you wrote neatly.

This unfortunately meant that I learned to join all letters in a word very recently.

As for stopping to use cursive. I used it all the time until the end of high school, but by then my fast cursive was so bad that in University I often switched to print.

I've recently consulted business handwriting and practical handwriting books, so now I'm getting the hand of never lifting the pen from the page until the end of the word. So I'm back to using cursive all the time.

Fun fact: I also was taught the Italian alphabet without foreign letters, and then we would integrate them. So each morning we would repeat the alphabet twice, once the Italian alphabet, and again with the foreign letters.

I also had the cards with print and cursive on them in class. Loved those cards. They were really helpful for the cursive majuscules,which I used to dislike because I used to confuse them, but now they're my favourite!

I used to write my majuscules in print in high school, I thought it was faster. But now I'm back to using the cursive majuscules,and I'm never letting them go. They're part of my traditional handwriting.

[aih]

I'm an old guy. When I went through elementary school cursive was mandatory, starting in 3rd grade I believe. In middle school and highschool, I'm not sure as I was doing my assignments in cursive and it never came up.

 

From college days through today, I'm mixed. If I'm writing notes on a legal pad or similar, I'm doing it in cursive. If I'm doing calculations, then notes and explanations and remarks on the calculations are printed. If I'm recording notes in small pocket notebooks, printed. Calendar and address book, printed. If making written notes and comments on pages of a document, it could be either way, and sometime it's a cursive-print hybrid.

[sansenri]

learning cursive is a slow process but once achieved it becomes natural

at the beginning clearly the focus is on getting the letters right in size, shape, with firm hand

only afterwards the exercise moves to linking them

many cursive books show exercises on linking the letters, and I distinctly remember our teacher teaching this part

the most common consonants an vowels were put next to each other and we were taught the specific linking techniques, those small pieces of lines that are the hardest part of cursive (I also tend to skip them at times, which is not good...)

the problem is no time is dedicated to teaching cursive anymore, despite I believe this is a very formative exercise.

In any case writing cursive is theoretically faster than print because if you don't lift the pen from the page the word is formed faster.

(that is why if you write print very fast, as I have done for a period, it eventually develops into a sort of cursive with linked letters)

[mana]

I started primary school around the beginning of '80s when the "old school" cursive writing was still taught in Finnish schools. Unfortunately both dip and fountain pens had been phased out a decade or so before that so we had to make due with HB pencils and crappy paper. Oh, ballpoints later on... I hated it. It was a painful learning experience. I slogged through it but ended up writing in print most of the time.

 

Everything changed later on when I had been re-introduced to fountain pens (around the year 2000 or so) and started writing with them more. It was an almost magical transformation. I suddenly found both the joy of writing and my personal style and it has improved and become more personal and controlled ever since with every line written. I currently do almost all of my handwriting using fountain pens. It is much faster, and creates more legible and beautiful results than using print.

Soooo... less effort, more fun. What's there not to like?

Edited July 16, 2018 by mana

[Arctic]

I started school in 88. We learnt how to print first. Letter by letter, then longer sentences as we should be able to master accordingly. Then, in third grad (at nine years old) We were taught cursive just the same way. The teeachers urged us to use cursive. If someone printed after we'd been supposed not to - they were told to whrite cursive in the manner of a kick in the rear. I had actualy problems printing after a while, and I still do. If asked to print, It very quickly turns into a weird hybride whriting. Think my school was very stict on this matter. In high-school there wasn't much focus on handwriting as long it was legible. Since I'm visually impaired, I got to use a computer for larger projects like essays an such. But note-taking was something I kept doing, as I felt that made learn the stuff better. I'd rather copy it to the computer afterwords.

 

I think the focus on handwriting is dying, unfortunately.. A caligrapher I talked to, told me that when I started school in

88 there was 38 pages focusing on goals for what kids should achive regarding handwriting. Now that has shrinked to half a page. That's sad, and also alarming I think. Pupils are given iPads at the age of 7, which is second grade by today's standard (when I started school, we did at seven years. Now they do at six). My nephew really struggles when he has to practice any handwriting - I think thes problem is due to him (and lots of other children) does not get enough tranining to get as good motor skills as fast enough to get any motivation. But on the iPad... He types as a tornado...

 

Personally I have really big problems improoving my own. Think I just have to stick whith my handwriting, even if someone should call it "doctorish"

[djmaher]

I cannot remember when I stopped writing in cursive. Which kinda horrifies me, now that I think of it.

 

I remember taking computer coding at university in the early '80s, when there wasn't a laptop, or even many desktops, anywhere in sight. I was still writing by hand then, but, I cannot for the life of me remember what my handwriting looked like.

 

Now, my "handwriting" is a mishmash of cursive (more like printed letters sort of weirdly connected), straight printed letters with starts and stops, and what looks like scribbles. I've been writing this way for years, but I can't remember when I started. And, Im still new using fountain pens, perhaps over the past 5 to 10 years, on and off. It makes writing the way that I do a bit of a nightmare when it comes to FP use. Somehow I manage, though, with I think 50+ journals and counting. But, I'm almost embarrassed sometimes to open up some of those old ones. I can barely read some of it. I was obviously trying to say something, but, I have no idea what, sometimes.

 

I would LOVE to re-learn some form of cursive, just as a matter of principle. It just seems right to try again, in this day of screens and keyboards. Somehow more personal and intimate.

 

It's sad to say that I'm all but certain that I'd not have a clue if I sat down with a pen and paper and wanted to write cursive anything. How sad is that? Where did it go, that skill?

 

Maybe someone here can get me started again. I'd really like that.

[RoyalBlueNotebooks]

Maybe someone here can get me started again. I'd really like that.

Coding in the 1980s? That sounds interesting! I wonder how such a class was back then..

Back on topic, if you wish to refresh your handwriting or re-learn cursive, you could visit https://palmermethod.com/

The drills are very useful to develop good whole arm movement, tempo, and spacing.

[OregonJim]

I grew up in New England in the '60s. We learned to print in grade 1, followed by cursive in grade 3. It was all done with pencils, not fountain pens.

 

After 3rd grade, I don't recall ever being told to "print" by teachers. I've always used cursive, to this day. The only time I "print" is when writing in small spaces, like appointments in my day planner, or a note scribbled on a post-it. Otherwise, it's cursive. Over the years, I've developed TWO cursive hands - the one I learned in school, which looks very legible, and a much faster "speed" hand, which probably can only be deciphered by me.

[OregonJim]

Coding in the 1980s? That sounds interesting! I wonder how such a class was back then..

Back on topic, if you wish to refresh your handwriting or re-learn cursive, you could visit https://palmermethod.com/

The drills are very useful to develop good whole arm movement, tempo, and spacing.

 

Another good resource is https://www.amazon.com/Spencerian-Penmanship-Theory-Book-copybooks/dp/088062096X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533663517&sr=8-1&keywords=Spencerian+Penmanship+%28Theory+Book+plus+five+copybooks%29

 

Re: coding in the 1980s - we learned Macro Assembler and Fortran on a PDP-11 starting in 1976. I built my own computer from scratch in 1978 (I was a junior in high school at the time). It had a whopping 1K bytes of RAM, which was enough to simulate a moon landing. The Apple II was announced later that year, and the original IBM PC wouldn't be along for another 3 years...

[morethanjustacat]

It's so interesting hearing the stories of so many people! For me, I kinda decided to learn it on my own in third grade. I was born & raised in China, so much of our English education throughout primary school was devoted to learning how to write letters at all --- much less cursive. I came across a cursive alphabet by chance; it was printed on the inside of my one of my notebook's front cover. I must admit I was somewhat starstruck. Ever since, I've been experimenting and adapting my letter forms & such. Now, I've evolved a fairly quick hand; it doesn't really look like any established script though, because I've basically "stolen" various elements from various styles.

[BaronWulfraed]

I remember taking computer coding at university in the early '80s, when there wasn't a laptop, or even many desktops, anywhere in sight. I was still writing by hand then, but, I cannot for the life of me remember what my handwriting looked like.

 

Now, my "handwriting" is a mishmash of cursive (more like printed letters sort of weirdly connected), straight printed letters with starts and stops, and what looks like scribbles. I've been writing this way for years, but I can't remember when I started. And, Im still new using fountain pens, perhaps over the past 5 to 10 years, on and off. It makes writing the way that I do a bit of a nightmare when it comes to FP use. Somehow I manage, though, with I think 50+ journals and counting. But, I'm almost embarrassed sometimes to open up some of those old ones. I can barely read some of it. I was obviously trying to say something, but, I have no idea what, sometimes.

 

I would LOVE to re-learn some form of cursive, just as a matter of principle. It just seems right to try again, in this day of screens and keyboards. Somehow more personal and intimate.

 

Well, early 80s computer coding probably still used coding sheets -- which meant block print letters. I still have a few pads of FORTRAN and COBOL (and maybe an IBM ASSEMBLER) coding pads from the late 70s. A time when even a /terminal/ was privileged equipment, and the majority of work was done with an 029 keypunch.

 

These days, if it is something meant for others to read, I probably use a block print style. My cursive tends to flatten out too many of the characters for legibility by others unless I cut my writing speed to half my print rate. And even then, it is likely a hybrid, using block print capitals with cursive lower-case (until looking at some of these example scripts, I'd totally forgotten that cursive Q looks like a loop 2).

 

As for "Somehow more personal and intimate"... Might I suggest a cursive italic hand? cf: "Write Now" (Getty-Dubay Italic). Falls somewhere between fully connected cursive and completely separated print. (I should probably buy a copy of the book myself).

[Misfit]

I don’t recall the elementary school grade we started learning cursive. All I can say is once I started with cursive, I never stopped using it. I’d print abbreviations like GOV or ECON. I still use cursive much more than print.

[Parker51]

Another good resource is https://www.amazon.com/Spencerian-Penmanship-Theory-Book-copybooks/dp/088062096X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1533663517&sr=8-1&keywords=Spencerian+Penmanship+(Theory+Book+plus+five+copybooks)

 

Re: coding in the 1980s - we learned Macro Assembler and Fortran on a PDP-11 starting in 1976. I built my own computer from scratch in 1978 (I was a junior in high school at the time). It had a whopping 1K bytes of RAM, which was enough to simulate a moon landing. The Apple II was announced later that year, and the original IBM PC wouldn't be along for another 3 years...

When I was in high school in the 70s our high school got its first computer, a PDP-8. We used Decwriters and computer paper and " wrote" our programs on cards. I had a friend who got bored with this so he started programming the computer in machine language. By the time I got to University, my high school had CRT displays, as did the University. They were running in tandem two PDP-11s linked to as I recall, to three DEC 20s. Programming class was very strict in regard to spelling punctuation, etc. as any mistakes meant your program would not run. Back then the term coding wasn't used as it is now. We wrote programs with lines of code as part of writing programs and they weren't apps, or applications either.

 

In regard to cursive versus printing, it was printing first, then cursive, starting in first or second grade, maybe during the end of first grade for our group. I am so old that I experienced "tracking". I have heard that some schools no longer do this, but twenty years ago when my daughter entered school, they used groupings which looked a lot like tracking. In an ideal world, all children would have highly capable tutors providing individual instruction. In the worst sort of place all students of all skill levels and need would be in one class, forced to follow the same material at the same speed. I believe tracking is a reasonable compromise, but, I wish someone would have warned me how bad it gets in the real world if you don't get a job with other people of your capability. Training sessions can be horrible with coworkers who ever get it the first, second, or third time around and always ask for help, typically loudly and obnoxiously. And then, dealing with the low quality of work product they produce, it's an embarrassment, an annoyance and a reality. And these are all college and university educated professionals who are paid well, better than anyone else in their field.