Is Cursive Dying?

[Spray]

Here, in Poland, it isn't uncommon, it's not even called "cursive" or "joined-up" writing, it's simply writing.
The very first time children learn writing letters and words, they immediately do it that way.

Although, given that I'm writing print anyways - I guess it didn't do much.

But overall, I don't think it's dying, it's still the best form of writing, can't deny that. It needs time to get used with, but once mastered it's WAY better than print, I learned it hard way attending to the university...

[pucGG]

I like cursive. My handwriting looks like it could have been done with an excavator, though, but still...

[Deleted]

But overall, I don't think it's dying, it's still the best form of writing, can't deny that. It needs time to get used with, but once mastered it's WAY better than print, I learned it hard way attending to the university...

YMMV... it was taking notes at high speed what made me switch to type-characters!

[Deleted]

I think it looks nice, I can't read it half the time though. I think shorthand is a better skill to teach people. My aunt can write shorthand and it takes up so little space and it looks awesome.

I need to learn it, it sounds really useful when taking notes. I believe it is used to mimic the sounds words make. So you would have a stroke that is a certain sound and when put together it is a word. I am sure nobody uses shorthand anymore though lol, I guess someone would just use it for personal use.

I also think shorthand should be taught. I taught myself in school and it was a godsend at uni being able to take notes so much easier.

[Deleted]

According to studies, over half of people who graduate grade school are functionally illiterate, and this does not improve that much in college either. If people can't read and understand regular print, how could they do so with cursive?

[Deleted]

What amazes me is how many people in this thread claim that:
- cursive is hard to read
- cursive is slow to write
- cursive is hard to learn

You guys must really suck at cursive to think that . With just a little practice cursive is just as easy to read as print and much faster to write.

Of course you don't have to strictly stick to the original. Developing your own handwriting is part of growing up too. And yes to me both writing speed and reading speed are pillars of education.

It saddens me when I see how badly some people struggle (both reading and writing) while filling out forms in the clinic I work at.

[Zogarth]

When i write for myself i always write in cursive as it is simply faster in every way. But when i write to others i write every letter individually, since it simply is easier to read.

[Lemons]

Of course you don't have to strictly stick to the original. Developing your own handwriting is part of growing up too. And yes to me both writing speed and reading speed are pillars of education.

It saddens me when I see how badly some people struggle (both reading and writing) while filling out forms in the clinic I work at.

Writing speed doesn't matter...at all. Anything anybody writes of any length is going to be typed. Anything people handwrite is usually like...less than a paragraph and writing in cursive is going to save about 20 seconds, but I guess that's going to give them more time to peruse the 6-month-old copy of People down at the ol' clinic...time well spent, right?

[Reeve]

Facepalm...

Look at the shape of the lower case.... You do know its in that shape because it flows better when writing in cursive? It literally exists and and is in that shape because of the cursive style of writing.

I don't know how else to put it.

That may be the reason for the shapes chosen for lower case, but they could have just as easily chosen any shape and upper/lower case could be a thing. Besides, stopping using cursive right now doesn't preclude the use of upper/lower case in the future.

[Simulacrum]

What amazes me is how many people in this thread claim that:
- cursive is hard to read
- cursive is slow to write
- cursive is hard to learn

You guys must really suck at cursive to think that . With just a little practice cursive is just as easy to read as print and much faster to write.

Of course you don't have to strictly stick to the original. Developing your own handwriting is part of growing up too. And yes to me both writing speed and reading speed are pillars of education.

It saddens me when I see how badly some people struggle (both reading and writing) while filling out forms in the clinic I work at.

How do you not see that the premise of your argument premise rests upon accepting the very thing you're arguing aganist...

[Hiricine]

Writing is dying. Ends up people push buttons faster than they write things with a pen. They discovered this in Asia almost 1000 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press

[Armond]

You guys must really suck at cursive to think that .

Probably. After all, we've made hundreds to thousands of posts on the internet using our keyboards. I for one am out of practice. :<

With just a little practice cursive is just as easy to read as print and much faster to write.

Here's where you start contradicting yourself, though. It's not "a little practice", it's literally hundreds of hours. My grade school spent something like three hours a week of formal practice (with the paper and the lines and the copying), plus all of our homework needed to be done in cursive. Multiply that across three years and you have a not insignificant amount of time. There's a number of things I'd rather my kid be taught in that time (foreign languages and Dvorak keyboard typing come to mind).

As for developing your own handwriting - that's exactly what makes it hard to read for a lot of people and, perhaps more importantly looking to the next several decades, computers.

[Collegeguy]

cursive should die

[Vizardlorde]

I spent 6 years of my life writing cursive and I dont want to go back there. It's time consuming and awful people will say they don't understand your handwriting when its almost as clear as a calligraphy book.

[Collegeguy]

how else would you write? I mean how would you denote words... if you break the letters apart there is no word just random letters...

Edit: After looking it up ... people actually prefer printing? I find it to be really tiresome to both write and read lol ... glad we never learned it in school cause it seems retarded to me.

You never learned how to print?

[Vizardlorde]

You never learned how to print?

I guess his books are handwriten from before 1492.

[Deleted]

How do you not see that the premise of your argument premise rests upon accepting the very thing you're arguing aganist...

I don't see where the contradiction is. I for one don't know anyone who writes print (because it is much less effective). So to reach the conclusions that I have outlined people must be somewhat bad at it and probably should have practiced more in school.

Writing speed doesn't matter...at all. Anything anybody writes of any length is going to be typed. Anything people handwrite is usually like...less than a paragraph and writing in cursive is going to save about 20 seconds.

I don't know which jobs or activities you pursue that require you to type everything out immediately. Typing is so goddamn slow. I for one would argue that lab books, manuscripts, translations and even most transcripts are done in handwriting (it is simply more efficient that way).

But hey if you want to TeX all of your equations and ideas right as you come up with them then by all means go for it.

[Caliph]

I live in MN and as of recent, Cursive has been removed from the curriculum. I HAD to learn cursive in grade school because they said High school ONLY uses cursive( which was false but w/e)

Should Cursive be removed from schools? Do generations after us need to know how to read/write cursive?

Personally I think yes. How will they learn how to sign a signature? Most signatures are in cursive, so they wont be able to read them (not that most are legible anyways).

Isn't already dead? everyone uses technology now. when i sign somethng i just chicken scratch it and that's it. no need for cursive.

[Vizardlorde]

If you ask me cursive is very graphic hell I would call it artistic, the only way cursive would be faster than print would be if you chicken scratch, aka butchering the letters in a way that you understand it and other ppl reading your work need you to translate it.

[vrsick]

When I got to college, almost all teachers said they would not accept anything written in cursive and would just throw it away.

Whats annoying is that I encounter some people in my job who have a terrible cursive/printing hybrid handwriting style and it looks like gibberish. Like every other letter switches styles.