The Sad Decline of Cursive—Especially My Own

[markh]

 

From today's (10/14/23) Wall Street Journal:

The Sad Decline of Cursive—Especially My Own

Once I penned elegant notes. Now my ingrate friends critique my ‘chicken scrawl.’

By  Joe Queenan

 

1: The "unlocked" article

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/the-sad-decline-of-cursiveespecially-my-own-2c13930?st=h487nq5ml24r57e&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

 

2. Original url:

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/the-sad-decline-of-cursiveespecially-my-own-2c13930?st=3myvap7o3k78tsd&reflink=article_gmail_share

 

And if nothing else works, the pdf of the article, attached:

 

 

 

 

 

The Sad Decline of Cursive—Especially My Own.pdf

[Doc Dan]

I laughed at the note at the end. My own handwriting suffers from age and old sports injuries. I recently found an antique book on penmanship and am trying to undo the ravages of time and graduate and post graduate work. 

 

As for young folks, it is not just cursive they can't accomplish. They can't make proper sentences or paragraphs. My students are shocked when I show them examples from classic literature of sentences seventy, ninety, and even three hundred words long. 

[jchch1950]

Old age forgives nothing.

[alkman]

My niece had to have my sister read her a short note written in cursive. TImes change...I feel fortunate to have a few penpals both local and distant 😁

[PolarMoonman]

I try to write cursive everyday, I find it relaxing to do the loops and I like how it all flows and connects. But a lot of the kids I work with (social work) cannot write or read cursive. However, after seeing me write or my writing, some kids do ask to learn so we print them out worksheets so there are still some young people learning and using it

[inkstainedruth]

14 hours ago, Doc Dan said:

I laughed at the note at the end.

I laughed at the illustration for the article.

As for cursive, mine was never the best, but I think it's reasonably legible (at least to me, anyway -- but for my morning journal entries it kinda depends on how awake I was on any given day).  

My husband's, though, is atrocious -- even his printing I can't read (ironically, a friend of ours, who had to keep track of medical charts when her mother was in the hospital, can read it, even when I can't...).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Penguincollector]

I also went to Catholic school, and find it hard to write in block letters, but I never put the two together. I do find it more taxing to keep picking up and putting down a pen.  My writing on any given day or even moment can go from professional calligraphic caliber work to penguin scratch and blotted copybooks. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

With a ball point my printing got so bad I couldn't read it.

 

Then I started back with fountain pens...my chicken scratch is much improved...to Rooster Scratch.

[TSherbs]

20 hours ago, Doc Dan said:

 

As for young folks, it is not just cursive they can't accomplish. They can't make proper sentences or paragraphs. 

 

In 40 years as a high school English teacher, this was not my experience. 

[TSherbs]

My handwriting has begun a decline in the last 6 months (and it was never good). I have some tremors in my hand (only when I write). Maybe the cumulative fatigue of 40 years of correcting over 25,000 papers/tests/essays. Hopefully not something worse.

[Doc Dan]

1 hour ago, TSherbs said:

 

In 40 years as a high school English teacher, this was not my experience. 

You were fortunate. I am a retired university teacher. I had to teach special classes so that PhD students could learn to write sentences more complex than five words in length, use proper prepositions and pronouns, and then build simple paragraphs of longer than five to seven sentences. When the SAT required a written component this was brought out glaringly. I tutored many students who could not accomplish this basic task. 

 

If one looks at books that are being written today, one can see that word choices and sentence structures have become markedly simple when compared to previous generations. When I showed my students sentences from classic literature of seventy to three hundred words in length they were unable to find the main subject, verb, and object. And as for reading and writing cursive, most were unable to do these things. 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Doc Dan

[TSherbs]

15 hours ago, Doc Dan said:

... I had to teach special classes so that PhD students could learn to write sentences more complex than five words in length...

 

hard to imagine

[txomsy]

That is also my experience. And worse, since most people cannot digest long sentences or paragraphs, there is high pressure to write now papers that are short, with simple discussions, addressing a single point and in short sentences that anyone can understand. Plus many other "pressures" (not yet restrictions but almost) imposed by badly literate reviewers who otherwise will not understand what you write. 

 

And that using computer fonts. 

[Bo Bo Olson]

The Bell curve started it.

Then.

Pass or fail = everyone failed. 

and one has to add thumb typing.

[txomsy]

Exactly.

 

Next will be working by voice, like in "Star Trek", or like in "Minority Report", by gestures, and then we will have gone all the way round to prehistoric (as in pre-written word) times when word-of-mouth oral transmission was the rave or, even earlier, to the pre-hominim stage when gutural sounds and gestures where the choice.

 

Machines will know everything for us while we return to the glorious times of the oblivious past.

[InesF]

1 hour ago, txomsy said:

Machines will know everything for us while we return to the glorious times of the oblivious past.

I think this thoughts made already good inspiration for movies such as Planet of the Apes or Cloud Atlas. I like how the authors imagine social development during loss of peoples motivation to take any effort beyond the basic necessities. However, such human habits are not completely new in history.  

 

 

On 10/15/2023 at 1:33 AM, markh said:

And if nothing else works, the pdf of the article, attached:

Thank you @markh for sharing the article with us. Its a funny read that reminds me a bit of my own youth. And the recent development of decaying precision of handwritten letters is also well known to me.

Nevertheless, the long gone times were not so much better. In the past I had only one fountain pen, now I have 34!  

[Bo Bo Olson]

Pessimism aside, there will always be some who can read and write well............like the scribes of Egypt, few and far between.

 

If one is a wise worshiper of Mammon, he/she will insist on a written section of the job interview......to delete pure babble barbarians right off the bat.

 

Red Badge of Courage was the start of modern no frills writing.

 

 

 

[txomsy]

[kazoolaw]

On 10/15/2023 at 8:37 PM, Doc Dan said:

I had to teach special classes so that PhD students could learn to write sentences more complex than five words in length, use proper prepositions and pronouns, and then build simple paragraphs of longer than five to seven sentences….

 

When I showed my students sentences from classic literature of seventy to three hundred words in length they were unable to find the main subject, verb, and object. 

We are not in the Golden Age of literacy.  At the other extreme, there are writers in certain fields (including mine) who substitute lengthy sentences and professional jargon for clarity of thought or even the absence of thought.

 

All from the boy who never could earn a Palmer Handwriting certificate.

[TSherbs]

6 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

...Red Badge of Courage was the start of modern no frills writing.

 

Crane was a journalist by trade, and so he had an eye for physical detail and objective description. At times. But RBOC is neither an exercise in the brevity of sentences nor an emphasis on external reality: the bulk of the story is an attempt to put into elaborate impressionistic pictures and metaphors the interior mentality of a young soldier at war. RBOC is not "no frills." His story "Maggie" might be a better choice.

 

Besides, a much more famous American document--famous all over the world--and much more "no frills" and much earlier was Franklin's Autobiography. Franklin's Almanac also had much more sway--and much earlier--over the style of American English. Twain's plain prose also came earlier and had more influence than Crane. One might also consider the effect of the writing by Horatio Alger and his wildly popular rags-to-riches series (also first published in magazines). Interestingly, Franklin, Twain, Crane, and Alger (you can add Whitman, too) all wrote for magazines and newspapers before publishing longer pieces (part of that was the economics of publishing).