Cursive - Teach It Or Don't?

[Alvecia]

I was taught cursive in primary school, but I was crap at it then and I’m crap at it now.
These days I write in print. It’s easier for both myself and everyone else to read.

[Western Vale Confederacy]

Friendly reminder that cursive is hellish for left-handed people since you just smudge ink everywhere and get sore from hovering the pen to avoid it so much?

[Alvecia]

Friendly reminder that cursive is hellish for left-handed people since you just smudge ink everywhere and get sore from hovering the pen to avoid it so much?

Does that not still happen with print though? Your hand is still going to move over/smudge the letters you’ve just written. Whether or not the letters are joined together wouldn’t make much of a difference, I would think.

[Western Vale Confederacy]

Friendly reminder that cursive is hellish for left-handed people since you just smudge ink everywhere and get sore from hovering the pen to avoid it so much?

Does that not still happen with print though? Your hand is still going to move over/smudge the letters you’ve just written. Whether or not the letters are joined together wouldn’t make much of a difference, I would think.

Cursive requires you to keep the connection between letters though, and it eventually gave me painful sores from having to keep my hand hovering constantly.

[Altion]

Does that not still happen with print though? Your hand is still going to move over/smudge the letters you’ve just written. Whether or not the letters are joined together wouldn’t make much of a difference, I would think.

Cursive requires you to keep the connection between letters though, and it eventually gave me painful sores from having to keep my hand hovering constantly.

As a left handed person, I have never agreed more with a single statement.

[Latin Islands]

Cursive writing is a subject that's nice to learn as an elective. Because of technology, writing in cursive should no longer be mandatory. (Back then handwritten letters were common, at least that's what I surmised from an English book published in the 1980's.)

Personally I find seeing and reading cursive Roman/Latin writing manageable. (Have you seen cursive Cyrillic? It's a headscratcher!) I learned to write in cursive because I wrote slowly in print/block when I was in elementary school. (I couldn't help but perfect my block letters, hence the slowness.) Eventually cursive writing became my usual handwriting style.

[Alvecia]

Does that not still happen with print though? Your hand is still going to move over/smudge the letters you’ve just written. Whether or not the letters are joined together wouldn’t make much of a difference, I would think.

Cursive requires you to keep the connection between letters though, and it eventually gave me painful sores from having to keep my hand hovering constantly.

That makes sense I guess.

[Risottia]

I learned cursive in elementary school and for several years they made us write assignments exclusively in cursive. In middle school, there were some things we were made to write in cursive but by then we started typing things and printing it out. First day of high school, teachers say: Every assignment will be typed, we do not accept anything written by hand. Except for worksheets, in which case we were told to print legibly. College, not once single graded thing was ever handwritten.

Wut, seriously? So you can't do your job if you lack access to a computer AND a printer, or at least a typewriter? And you do your exams with a computer? Seriously, what kind of schools are those?

[Page]

I learned cursive in elementary school and for several years they made us write assignments exclusively in cursive. In middle school, there were some things we were made to write in cursive but by then we started typing things and printing it out. First day of high school, teachers say: Every assignment will be typed, we do not accept anything written by hand. Except for worksheets, in which case we were told to print legibly. College, not once single graded thing was ever handwritten.

Wut, seriously? So you can't do your job if you lack access to a computer AND a printer, or at least a typewriter? And you do your exams with a computer? Seriously, what kind of schools are those?

I can write words on paper with a pen. Maybe it's a misunderstanding of terminology, might be different in some places. "Printing" in terms of handwriting doesn't mean printed pages on a computer, it means writing each letter individually.

Like so, except I don't write in all caps because I find that obnoxious:

http://www.handwriting-graphology.com/w ... .-2jpg.jpg

[LimaUniformNovemberAlpha]

Then provide tablets or laptops for every kid in every school so they can make themselves understood. Many standardized statewide and nationwide tests still require students to write essays in handwriting, and people are too lazy to learn how to write legibly.

The unfortunate consequence of this is that when teachers are grading the state exams which require students to hand write their responses, and are pressured to grade 150 essays a day, for a week, with an average time allotted to each essay of no more than four minutes, students do poorly on tests not because they don't know the material, but because it can't be read.

https://blog.prepscholar.com/does-messy ... ssay-score

This needs to be put to a referendum, really.

Suppose opponents of teaching cursive writing were divided into several subgroups; one of which wanted tablets/laptops/anything else with which to type, another of which would rather students answer the test question by speaking into an audio recording device, another of which didn't want "essay" questions on standardized tests, another of which didn't want standardized tests in the first place, etc...

None of these subgroups would need to be, strictly speaking, a majority even of opponents of teaching cursive writing, let alone of the public, for them combined to constitute a majority of the public. (Well.. IF they constitute a majority. Not sure whether or not they do; this is just for the sake of argument.)

A referendum would force the issue, by forcing either cursive writing or one particular alternative to it to win the day.

I'd be curious of any financial analysis of whether "tablets or laptops" would be more cost-effective than "not teaching cursive" and/or using audio recording devices instead. Or whether or not even within typing there are more cost-effective methods than tablets or laptops.

[Kombinita Socialisma Demokratio]

Friendly reminder that cursive is hellish for left-handed people since you just smudge ink everywhere and get sore from hovering the pen to avoid it so much?

School just made me become right handed, so I avoided that.

[Major-Tom]

Used cursive until my Senior Year of HS, I refuse to use it again out of sheer principle.

[Astoriya]

I say don't teach it, on the grounds that little to no one, if ever, uses cursive in day-to-day life

[Kombinita Socialisma Demokratio]

Friendly reminder that cursive is hellish for left-handed people since you just smudge ink everywhere and get sore from hovering the pen to avoid it so much?

This is why mirror writing should also be permitted, and taught to lefties if writing is taught.

[Greed and Death]

Only learned cursive for a total of maybe two months in third grade, ain't used it since. Fuck that shit.

I'd rather just print or type.

But Trump's new election regulation says ballots must be written in cursive.

[Des-Bal]

I can do my signature and that's about it. Cursive is shitty, it's harder to read, it's not faster to write, and teaching it doesn't make sense.

[Valrifell]

In theory it's quicker to write in cursive than in print, given everything is connected and you save precious nanoseconds by not lifting your hand from the page between letters.

In reality the difference is mostly negligible and the script in cursive is too foreign to make learning it worth it. It's weird that we still even use it for signatures.

[Durzan]

Cursive used to be the normal way of writing back in the first half of the 20th century and before. It was essential back then, as you couldn't erase your words and picking up the pen could cause ink to spill. Nowadays we have pencils and computers, so it's a moot point.

[The Isle of Beithe]

I have mixed opinions.


Opinion 1:

Since cursive is now used mainly for signatures, and most people have 100% illegible signatures, how about we just teach random scribbling?


Opinion 2:

I suffered through using cursive from 2nd grade through high school, so these little brats can suffer too.

Opinion 3:

Honestly, I like using cursive....but does anyone remember how to do an upper-case 'Z' in cursive?

[Zitravgrad]

Opinion 3:

Honestly, I like using cursive....but does anyone remember how to do an upper-case 'Z' in cursive?

..............

No.

[Palioxixis]

I don't think it should be compulsory, however, I've noticed my handwriting has kind of evolved into this half printing, half-cursive, mostly because I tend to write quickly. i'm not sure if it came to me naturally or if because I had prior experience with cursive

[The Blaatschapen]

My angle to this topic is: Yes, try and teach kids the fine motoric skills needed for cursive.

[Risottia]

Friendly reminder that cursive is hellish for left-handed people since you just smudge ink everywhere and get sore from hovering the pen to avoid it so much?

No, it's not. Just angle the sheet.
Also, use a bloody ball-point pen if you smudge ink.

[Risottia]

Wut, seriously? So you can't do your job if you lack access to a computer AND a printer, or at least a typewriter? And you do your exams with a computer? Seriously, what kind of schools are those?

I can write words on paper with a pen. Maybe it's a misunderstanding of terminology, might be different in some places. "Printing" in terms of handwriting doesn't mean printed pages on a computer, it means writing each letter individually.

Still "typing and printing it out" means using a keyboard and a printer. Same for "no single graded thing handwritten" and "assignment will be typed".

Anyway, writing in print-like script is way slower than cursive. "Cursive" means exactly "running", "flowing". It's faster if you do it properly.

[Page]

I can write words on paper with a pen. Maybe it's a misunderstanding of terminology, might be different in some places. "Printing" in terms of handwriting doesn't mean printed pages on a computer, it means writing each letter individually.

Still "typing and printing it out" means using a keyboard and a printer. Same for "no single graded thing handwritten" and "assignment will be typed".

Anyway, writing in print-like script is way slower than cursive. "Cursive" means exactly "running", "flowing". It's faster if you do it properly.

I did use the word "print" in both contexts, sorry for any confusion.

For me in college, it was that every graded thing was typed on a computer and printed or sent digitally. But you can google cursive vs. printing to see examples of the word print being used to mean "writing block letters", there are lots of documents for example which say "please print" which mean to write every letter individually to make it more legible.

Anyway, cursive is faster, that's one apparent advantage. But while there are still situations in which one must write words on paper with a pencil and a pen, are there really any situations these days when one would have to write down a large amount of words very quickly?