Lost art - cursive writing

Parent Cafe
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<p>I had those too… I think I learned cursive in 2nd or 3rd grade. I always had “neat” handwriting, at least compared to the guys. Some people still say I have neat handwritting, but it’s not really, though it is much nicer than some people’s. I write mostly in print, but some letters are connected (like if an ‘e’ and ‘n’ are next to each other).</p>

<p>I did some diagramming in middle school… my parents kept asking about it and finally it happened, but not that much. I couldn’t do it today.</p>

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<p>Public opinion is a powerful tool in shaping the world and changing it (Just attended a talk by Noam Chomsky on this very topic last night–not handwriting!). Must be the reason why children and parents are just printing nowadays. Cursive is no longer valued. Interesting. The only students that I interact with who really know how to use a form of cursive are coming out of the British school system. The French and Greeks have another style. The kids coming from a private school in NYC all use computers and type. In my classes the kids use cursive. I think it is important to learn to handwrite before typing. Just me. I am glad that I understand cursive because I do historical research and have to read lots of “old” letters. Knowing cursive helps though I have had to learn earlier versions. :)</p>

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<p>I always print on my checks, however i do sign my name in cursive. </p>

<p>And i’m one of those people who likes to write in all caps.</p>

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<p>I write in all caps. Cursive is used only for a signature. Diagramming is a necessary evil. Cursive should be taught only for signature purposes.</p>

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<p>I predict mass unemployment of handwriting analysts - what will they have to analyze if people can write only their name in cursive?</p>

<p>Whether or not one continues to use cursive is irrelevant; I think it is important for cursive to be taught in elementary school because of its role in the development of fine motor skills.</p>

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<p>michuncle & Duke: Diagramming is still taught at our public elementary school. At the insistence of an old time male teacher who had it drilled into his head by nuns. I believe ther is nothing better for learning sentence structure & helping kids avoid errors in syntax. It’s so visual. Lots of kids are visual learners. </p>

<p>The kids learn cursive, too. But it’s not the Palmer (?) method I learned from the nuns. Many of the letters look odd to me, and my left-handed, cross-dominant son has really struggled with the cursive. I do think that it helps him compose his essays because he has ADD & the extra concentration needed for cursive seems to improve his overall focus on any given assignment.</p>

<p>mini: My son definitely prints faster. That’s why I like the cursive. It slows him down & he doesn’t leave words out of his sentences, like he does when printing. His printing, at times, looks as if it was done with his feet!</p>

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<p>that’s odd, i cursive like five times quicker than printing (but then again i print in caps)</p>

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<p>What is the French and German method of writing that is not cursive or printing?</p>

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<p>licking?</p>

<p>I have no clue :)</p>

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<p>Cangel, it is just a different style of cursive. Different than what I am used to. And with Greek, it is different letters. So when working with all these styles and letters, I try to be more flexible. I guess I am a cursive “early years” proponent.</p>

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<p>Graphomotor ability (the ability to use a writing implement for writing) is a memory based task (unlike most other fine motor tasks, including drawing- which have much lower memory demands). Fluent writers quickly and automatically recall and implement letter forms by programming the right muscles to perform functions. The best writing is done (the fastest that is) when you do not actually look at your hands- you just know where your fingers are by positional sense.</p>

<p>When you write in Manuscript, you have to recall 26 upper and 26 lower case letter forms. It doesn’t matter where a letter is in a word, you make it the same way.</p>

<p>When you write in Cursive, you have to recall a very high number of letter forms. The formation of any letter depends on where it is in the word, what is before and what is after it. </p>

<p>Manuscript is more difficult for some people because when you lift and place the pencil tip you might lose the sensory position (this is referred to as finger agnosia).</p>

<p>But, more typically, cursive is difficult because the memory recall demands are very high. </p>

<p>In my opinion, kids can be taught cursive and if they like it it may well be because it meets their sensory needs and they should use it. On the other hand, if they dislike it or find it hard…why bother.</p>

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<p>I can’t imagine that schools allow anyone out of the 3rd or 4th grade without the ability to write cursively. Whether it makes sense to fill out a check by printing or cursive is irrelevant. Cursive writing is a tool which greatly increases the speed of writing. While we might consider penmanship to be obsolete, that is not true of writing. </p>

<p>IMO, touch typing is also a tool that is absolutely essential for modern life. Hunt and peck just doesn’t cut it since with equivalent practice the speed will be double for touch typing. We would not let our D use the internet or IM until she learned to type. She learned very quickly.</p>

<p>I also feel the same about arithmetic. I have a learning disability when it comes to simple addition and multiplication. I have found work arounds but basically have suffered with this deficiency all my life. I cannot imagine just letting those skills slip because we have ready access to calculators.</p>

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<p>One day in the bookstore I picked up a copy of a book on graphology or handwriting analysis and enjoyed learning about it for fun, When there were personnel issues at my husband’s office, I would look at the person’s handwriting and say, oh you never should have hired this one - look at all those dishonest, self-centered tendencies in their handwriting! The fact that handwriting is becoming a lost art may put graphologists out of business, however!</p>

<p>Some fun facts (to be taken with a grain of salt)</p>

<p>The scariest trait in handwriting is when people are very consistent in their slant and then all of a sudden on an ending “D” for example, they will suddenly slant all the way to the right. This trait is so common in criminals that it’s called the “manic D”. People who show this can go along fine for a long time and then one day just flip out!</p>

<p>A large first initial followed by much tinier writing in the rest of the name shows a big ego.</p>

<p>In general, writing large shows an extroverted personality and small writers are more introverted. However, microscopic writers are sometimes scientific types who can concentrate very deeply!</p>

<p>Large or elongated lower zones, for example in lower case "f"s or "z"s can show someone who craves more in a material or physical sense. Larger upper zones indicates a more cerebral thinker</p>

<p>Those who cross their "T"s up high are ambitious One book said this is one of the best traits to look for in hiring someone!</p>

<p>Strong pressure on the pen shows a high energy person and vice versa</p>

<p>Rounded “garlands” or connectors between letters are a friendly sign, whereas sharp points between letters show more aggressive tendencies.</p>

<p>False garlands are connectors that appear to connect correctly but really don’t = they show some evidence of dishonesty.</p>

<p>Ditto people who have hooks in their writing.</p>

<p>If you leave your '“O” s and "A"s open instead of closing them all the way, you are an open book, honest and spontaneous</p>

<p>Someone who writes downhill may be depressed. Writing that goes up and then flattens is someone who gets all excited about a task and then fizzles out!</p>

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<p>roshke~</p>

<p>I should scan a copy of my handwriting and send it to you! :eek:</p>

<p>:) :smiley: :slight_smile: :smiley: :)</p>

<p>~b.</p>

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<p>LOL, anytime, berurah! It’s so funny that after I read about this I began to unconsciously change my own writing style! I cross my Ts much higher now!</p>

<p>Also relevant to this thread are the essays on the SAT and the ACT writing section. I read somewhere that an equivalent essay was scored higher if the handwriting was more pleasant to read.</p>

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<p>That not just legible but attractive handwriting could influence the writing score on the SAT wouldn’t suprise me much - can you imagine having to read all those essays and then give a score in just a matter of minutes? </p>

<p>Penmanship does count and chicken scratches lose points. Then again, in my younger days, my father used to console me by telling me not to worry because I could always learn to type - I always knew that he was ahead of his time.</p>

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<p>“microscopic writers are sometimes scientific types who can concentrate very deeply!” This is my younger son. It was very interesting to watch him learn how to write. Unlike my older son, who is “strongly” left handed, S2 is fairly ambidextrous. When he was learning to write he would start with his left hand, then switch to his right when he got to the center of the paper. We were taking bets to see how he would end up.</p>

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<p>My cursive is okay but my printing has been likened to Ariel Narrow. I guess it’s the scientific type in me. ;)</p>

<p>We were taught cursive in the third grade, but taught a form of it that I didn’t particularly like. Some of the letter forms are awkward, unpleasant to look at, and don’t make writing any easier. So I print.<br>
<a href=“http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/fc.gif[/url]”>http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/fc.gif&lt;/a&gt;
Is the “F” I was taught, which just does not seem pretty. It’s clunky and awkward.
Likewise, the “I” <a href=“http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/ic.gif[/url]”>http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/ic.gif&lt;/a&gt; is just not a good letter.<br>
The “D” takes too much work: <a href=“http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/dc.gif[/url]”>http://www.handwritingforkids.com/handwrite/dc.gif&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I was a very literal child and followed those forms exactly. Problem is, they make for really lousy script.</p>

<p>Professors love my printing. They get all excited when they get to a test they can actually read. Neat writers, by the way, may have to be more structured in their writing because they don’t have nearly as much time to write.</p>

<p>I do wonder if I would use cursive more if I were taught a different version of it. The handwriting that my grandmothers use is so very different from what we were taught in school. </p>

<p>My signature is unique - it slants backwards. Almost impossible to forge.</p>

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<p>My handwriting is…interesting. It’s neat, no doubt, but the r’s look just like the i’s and the only thing that’s ever cursive (besides my signature) are my e’s and l’s. Wouldn’t my 2nd grade teacher be proud.</p>

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<p>“Cursive writing is a tool which greatly increases the speed of writing.”</p>

<p>Tested, and proven false, unless you write with a quill.</p>

<p>"Mr. Lucas, my sixth grade teacher at Public School # 131 AND Three-Quarters in New York City (I’ve changed the number to protect, well, I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to protect, but it seemed like a good idea) had a plan. We were all going to leave his 6th grade class with absolutely perfect handwriting, and he was going to make sure that it happened his way. You see, he understood that our current state of imperfection wasn’t our fault. It was a result of poor teaching and a lack of attention to detail in the earlier grades, and he, being in charge of us before we made the great leap forward to junior high school, was there to ensure the incoming students from P.S. 131 3/4 were not going to be found wanting. Or least not if he had any say in the matter.</p>

<p>Mr. Lucas was a former military man who fought in North Africa in WWII. One of his preferred activities was to regale us with stories of imbibing diverse varieties of African bug juice, thus making all the girls, including Stacy Schwartz who was already too hot from her new training bra (did they really need to be trained?), extremely uncomfortable. (Would “bug juice talk” now be considered a form of sexual harassment?) So his plan was simple: handwriting was to take place 45 minutes every day. During this time, beginning with capital “A”, we were each to write ten lines of ten perfect letters (100, all the same), in Roman military formation, and once we had accomplished this and had them checked by him, we would be promoted on to the next letter.</p>

<p>Now my last name begins with “A”, which had condemned me to the front-row righthand-side desk near the door for the past seven years, and made it difficult (but not impossible) for me to stare out at my favorite tree in the schoolyard. Occupational hazard, that last name beginning with A, and I was lucky not to have developed a permanent crick in my neck from perennially being forced to look left, or to have been permanently disfigured as a result like a galley slave chained in perpetuity to a single oar on the left side of the ship.</p>

<p>So, anyway, I did my ten lines of ten capital “A’s, all with my Waterman cartridge pen as neatly as I could (quite a trick, as most of the ink used to leak out all over my shirt pocket), and brought my paper up to Mr. Lucas’ desk, behind Johnny LoSassini, the class artist, who was onto the capital “J”s before I could manage his name once without a lisp. Mr. Lucas, pen in hand, began to put big red “X”s (capitals or smalls, I couldn’t tell) over a third of my “A”s, mumbling “Potato-head” or “Looks like a squished pear” or “Needs to go on a diet”, and sent me back to my desk to create another century.</p>

<p>Days, and then weeks went by. At first, I used to approach Mr. Lucas’ desk with some concern, hoping that my “A”s would finally pass muster so I could go on to “B”s. But no such luck. There were always potato-heads or beer-bellies or squished pears and lots of red “X”s on my paper. After about three weeks, with everyone else in my class moving ahead except me and my friend “A”rthur (wouldn’t you know it? and Stacy, still in training, was already on “P”!), I began to become embarrassed, and then ashamed. After six weeks, the shame turned to barely concealed anger, and then, maybe three months into this exercise, I discovered that I didn’t care anymore, and that it was really all right. After all, no matter where you were in the alphabet, you still had to spend your 45 minutes in handwriting.</p>

<p>In four-and-a-half months, and including more centuries assigned in daily homework, I drew a total of 27,923 capital “A”s. The reason I know the count to this day is that my friend Arthur and I started to keep tabs, and wore the number of our red-stained “A’s as badges of honor (I can’t claim to have read The Scarlet Letter yet, but when I finally did, I imagined a black, cursive capital “A” with big red “X” on it. We were, however, deeply immersed in The Red Badge of Courage, which may have been more on point.)</p>

<p>I never would have escaped capital “A”, except that in January, Mr. Lucas, normally a man of iron – a veritable Cal Ripken of the schoolteaching world – who ruled the schoolyard during recess like the army lieutenant he was, and without a winter coat, got sick for two days, and a substitute came in who didn’t quite know the rules. She, rather shapely as I remember, would walk around the room in a haze of cheap toilet water (I told this to my older daughter, and she burst out laughing, and the term still makes me inwardly smile), and as she passed your desk, if you’d hastily scribbled barely a line or two she would check your paper and you were on to the next letter. In two days, I went from capital “A” to lowercase “m”.</p>

<p>I honestly don’t remember if I ever finished the alphabet, but I do know that from that year forth, my handwriting has deteriorated into the inscrutable, and most of the letters between capital “A” and small “m” are a veritable wasteland. Oh, and what of Arthur, my partner in this tale of scrawl? He became a famous Park Avenue cardiologist, and I think he now uses a self-inking rubber stamp for his signature.</p>

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<p>“Cases of dysgraphia in adults generally occur after some trauma,” reports the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health. Hmm.</p>

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<p>Q: “Do you teach Zaner-Bloser or D’Nealian handwriting?</p>

<p>A: “I think Zaner-Bloser and D’Nealian are perfectly capable of learning handwriting by themselves.”</p>