"She just has to know how to select a pleasing print font and the presentation task is done"

And that's the way it should be. Cursive writing sucks. "No, no, no!! Tink, it's double loop and then a squiggle!!" Pfffffft. My third grade teacher was like THAT anal about it.

:D

**shivers at the thought of those practice sheets she gave out**

N, m, pffffffffffffffffffffft....:D

When I was in second grade at St. Margaret Mary school in Southern California, two of my classmates got into a giggle fest that they couldn't get out of. The reason? They found it hysterical that on the cursive example banner above the blackboard the capital letter Q looking like the number two. The nun asked them to go sit outside until they could control themselves. I think I thought it was more neat-o than hilarious.

I haven't written anything in cursive writing since high school.

If I were going to live to be a thousand, I'd like to learn calligraphy. But that's one of those things, like learning Irish Gaelic, I'll probably never get around to doing.

How do kids sign their names?

`R

I am a Baby Boomer but before my generation there was the Palmer Method of teaching handwriting. As I had several schoolteachers in my family, this is the way I was taught. Not much of it stuck, but my mother and my aunt the teachers both had lovely handwriting in that form with the big Qs that looks like weird Ss. Something is lost in this technology. Great post, Catherine.

Even our kids' teachers don't do cursive. It's a lost art. Everybody prints. It used to infuriate me, but finally I realized it was time to get the hell out of the way of the wave of the future.

The only "Unsatisfactory" mark I ever received in grade school was for my handwriting. It's still bad, but at least I know how to do it. Although some of my cursive now contains the "print" forms of letters, like the capital "G", "S" and "Q". I wonder how many people would recognize those in their cursive forms anymore.

And as Larry said, how do people sign their names these days?

I'm sitting in a seminar class. There are sixteen people and the professor. I am looking around and can't see a single pen being used. Everyone, me included, has their laptop opened. I don't remember that last time I wrote something. I may have printed something but, other than writing my name on forms and checks, it has to be years.

I am wondering the same as Larry; how do they learn to have a signature?

I can still remember how the paste smelled in my school at Jefferson elementary school in Berwyn, IL during WWII.
Where did the time go??
Did I really put a ' between Berwyn and IL?
Nobody bothers anymore.
Most people don't even bother to learn anything amymore as if they expect everyone else to do it for them.

As I've gotten older(a lot), I began to realize that cursive writing means spelling out words such as shit, damn it, SOB, etc.
It's all cursing, isn't it.

The nuns called it penmanship. I think cursive will go the way of geography, diagramming sentences, and reading music that were once taught in schools. Don't get me going on education. Thanks for this. R

I am having this fight with my son's school currently. They tell me cursive is not important. I asked the principal, "Do you understand that because R can't write cursive he also can't READ cursive? The spelling list in his book is in cursive." Dead silence. How embarassing would it be to receive a post-it on your desk from your boss and you can't read it?

I am paying a tutor to teach R cursive and to make him read aloud--another thing they no longer have to do in school. If you don't listen to how you pause when reading for periods and commas, how do you know where to put them when you write?

I think we're doing kids a real disservice when we let these skills go by the wayside.

I remember what a big girl I felt when we started cursive writing in the second grade. Hours and hours spent copying letters over and over. Wow did this make me feel old. Pretty soon our notebooks will in the the Smithsonian.....

Boy that brings back memories of nuns and penmenship. I don't think all schools have stopped. What happens if we lose all power? Maybe it just isn't needed anymore. Interesting to think about.

After the Apocalypse, you can pen our party invites, CF

If you think you feel old, I feel ancient after reading this. I wonder if blu is still using a hammer and a chisel for writing and an abacus as a calculator!

Blu may be cutting edge, as there's a movement in progressive education circles to bring abaci back. Heard something on NPR the other day, unless I was hallucinating.

Clockwise or counterclockwise?

CF--

As a fellow Boomer, I too learned cursive writing. In fact, learning such was one of the signs of not being A Little Kid anymore who could only print.

I agree that while cursive writing may not be necessary, neither are thank-you notes or manners--old-fashioned but nice to know. Sorta like wearing pantyhose; much as I hate them, wearing them just polishes and completes a woman's outfit.

There's just NO way a woman can look really professional in bare legs; to me, that says, "take it or leave it, I don't care." What most women fail to grasp in the Great Pantyhose Debate is, they don't really know how they look FROM BEHIND. Besides support for my replaced knees, I don't want anyone to watch me walking from behind and think: two cats fighting inside a bag...

My 9 year old is learning cursive...a bit of it...but I am glad that I don't have many opportunities to write...especially after a handwriting analyst that I met at a workshop did a major double take when I wrote my name and number for her.

My daughters' school begins the cursive writing program at second grade. I know of other private schools that begin at K level (not that I think that healthy). As a teacher I know what you are saying. Many students could not read cursive writing from the board.

This is just another reminder today of how much I miss writing letters with ink and in long hand.

You can wax poetic all you want, especially if you want to write it in script, but my handwriting was, is, and always will be atrocious. I type whatever I can; otherwise I scrawl notes in print, and even then nobody but my assistant and I can read them.

My teenaged daughter and I are members of a mother/daughter philanthropy group which requires handwritten thank you's, yes, in cursive. We also are required to wear pantyhose upon occasion!
As a writer whose brain has always worked much faster than my fingers, I actually prefer typing and texting...
Cursive is a lost artform.
R

Just before I logged on and saw this post, I was looking at my late mom's art pieces, many of which hang in my house. I was noticing in particular her signature. For some reason, the combination of those letters in that distinctive handwriting made me feel closer to her in that moment than looking at the artwork.

At my son's school (where he is now in Grade 3) cursive writing is expected, *but not taught*! During the parent-teacher conference it was made clear that we were expected to work on penmanship at home...

Even though I had a hard time writing legible cursive as a kid, this is very sad!

Sad but true. I shudder to think what else will be lost when our generation passes into the Great Unknown.

Hi Catherine
My third year old is being taught cursive in her public school. In fact, they are also first taught pre-cursive, something called manuscript writing. So all is not lost!

I use to love my fountain pen and sea blue turquoise ink.
Ahh the days..
rated with hugs

I have a cousin who teaches elementary in a big city on the East Coast, and he told me this. It is mildly disturbing, but as you say, these kids are typing much more. It reminds me of a Chemistry teacher that I had in high school who insisted on teaching us to use a slide rule. It dragged all of our grades down, and no one uses one now. We all thought he was nuts because this was in the early years of programmable calculators. But I agree with you, this seems a bit more disturbing.

I think this may a bit of nostalgia for it's own sake. Is there really any need for cursive? If not, should time be spent on it instead of something else?

They're learning typing in elementary school. I didn't. That was high school and it was an elective.

Wow, does this bring back memories. In grade 2 I won for best printer. We were taught the Palmer method also and it has stuck. No matter how hard I try I cannot scribble my name or anything for that matter. Great post. -R-

The thing is, Catherine, letter writing has been an art form practiced by most of the world's great writers. Using cursive slows the process so that one can choose one's words for the greatest creative effect. Have a glance at Emily Dickenson's letters some time. My mom had beautiful handwriting. Mine is ugly, but I would be lost without it. I think of this as one of your best posts.

Lovely. Remember the special paper used to teach cursive? Bold lines on top and bottom, with a dotted line in the middle, to help you measure each part of your letter.

I love beautiful cursive writing and callligraphy - and still write in pen. Some youngsters don't even know how to hold a pencil properly. I've seen much of that in my teaching. Many could also not tell the time on an analog clock.
♥

I never considered not teaching my boys cursive. Seems we're either in a transition or a learning blip (after which schools will return to teaching cursive). I would think cursive is important as a way to write at a decent speed in situations where electronics fail, run out of juice etc or if anything happens to the grid for a while.

My kids learned to write cursive, but not with the same precision that I learned -- and I find that the more I type (and I type very very fast...far faster than I could ever write by hand) that my handwriting, even the printing, has deteriorated dramatically and it was never pretty to start with. I'm not sure what should be done about it. Do we let it go, consider handwriting an antiquated concept? Or do we go back to the days of practice drills -- which is really the only way to train the hand, practice practice practice? Neither solution seems right.

I thoroughly enjoyed this post! I'm 28 and although I learned cursive in elementary school, by middle school we were allowed to write in print. I'm a little sad that I don't really remember cursive, apart from the letters in my name. But hold firm! And see if you can teach your cursive to the curious child....

Scary.

-R-

I suspect that within a generation or two contemporary cursive writing will be akin to 17thc secretary hand-- legible to those only with the specialised training to read it.

Cursive will survive only as long as it is actively used.

That being said, I use a number of francophone texts with my daughter, and many of these expect children to read cursive from age 6. Further, yesterday I wrote a note in cursive to my daughter's teacher-- I sure hope she was able to read it!

@cartouche: I am using a chisel and a hammer (actually a rock). That's why my words will live on forever and yours will disappear when your hard drive crashes.

I'm old fashioned. I still write a lot, and use cursive all the time. Well, it's sort of a hybrid print/cursive that I developed in my teens. But I love it, and feel it is almost an artistic expression of myself. The loss of cursive is a major bummer.

In fourth grade Sr. Marie Annette reinforced our handwriting by having us practice with specially shaped pens - from the ball point tip the plastic body of the pen formed an hourglass shape and narrowed to a very long stem. They were red. We held the pen with index finger and thumb where the hourglass indented and a styrofoam ball in the remaining fingers. The ball was not allowed to touch the desk as we wrote. She also accommodated the four left-handers of the 10 kids in the split class and we all came away with good handwriting that was atypical for lefties. I don't remember the specifics of that though I believe it's why I write with the side of the piece of paper turned to parallel my body. It allows me not to turn my hand at to awkward angle most lefties use - note the president's hand as he signs bills. If I'm really concentrating I turn the paper almost upside down. I'm told I have very nice handwriting, especially "for a leftie." Meh. It's never nice enough.

I think not teaching cursive will turn out to be a mistake. It must to something to brain development, like so many basic school subjects.

We held the ball as we wrote and neither it nor any part of our hand was allowed to touch the desk as we wrote.

I'm a college professor, and I often write notes on the board in cursive. Every now & then I'll have a student who says, "I can't read cursive," and I say, "You need to learn."

I don't understand it. I'm younger than most of you on here and I learned how to write in cursive (though it's probably because I went to a Catholic grade school) and I still write in cursive. I prefer it and actually have a hard time printing without making it a hybrid.
This really hurts the nerd in me.
Thanks for writing this.

My third grader still learns cursive in public school. Like Bellweather says, handwriting is not emphasized nearly as much as it used to be. I used to take a lot of pride in my penmanship, but with disuse, my handwriting is starting to look scratchy, too.

The end of the message in a bottle? I must have had cursive drilled into me because a while back I saw something I'd written when I was 9 and my handwriting has barely changed since then. It's pretty bad if more young'uns can't even read the stuff.

My mother knows how to write in cursive, we, her children, do not know how to do it and whenever she sees our handwriting she goes like: aughhhh what a terrible handwriting you have.. God what do they teach you these days?

jhehehe

Rated.. great post... as usual

I hear you, Catherine. I have terrible handwriting from years of being an entertainment critic writing in the dark, but I still write quite frequently. I notice that a few of my students still take notes -- maybe it's more of an American thing?

I had no idea this was happening. I, too, would like to know what now passes for a signature.

Lezlie

I love this topic - I won't go on and on about it, but thank you for raising it.
We here learned to print, first. On slate.
In third form we learned copperplate, with nib pens and inkwells - ( Leonardo wrote backwards for a very good reason : he was left-handed. )
By sixth form we were writing cursive with biro's.
I miss the emphatic downstrokes a nib provides.
I miss the hand-madeness of it all.
Typing definitely requires that we find other means to the same end, but there will never be anything like the feeling : your name, in a loved one's handwriting, on the outside of an envelope.

If this prints twice, please delete this (second ) attempt - more than 3.5 minutes for a comment to download is longer than I can wait. Thanks, Catherine.

When was the last time you saw a real cash register in a restaurant? Now, they have touch screens with the items. Nobody punches in numbers or the like.

My Mother's generation all had exceptional penmanship it seemed, beautiful, Palmer perfect penmanship-not the generation before or after.

I ask a pharmacist what P.O.D. meant and he said "rookie" because only residents use it.

My son was born just at the wrong time. He would have been happy to go to school today - only a few short years ago, he labored over cursive. You can imagine how hard it was for a dyslexic child to master this, and of course he never did. All that time wasted in special instruction, the only accommodation he was allowed, and all the tears and frustration, just so he could dispense with it when he entered high school. He still can't read it, though, which sometimes poses a problem in college, but not much. Computers really have brought us ages ahead, haven't they?

When everyone composed their writing by hand, the speed of cursive and the need for legibility meant that learning penmanship was a priority.

Now, to get thoughts on paper quickly, the need is for typing skills. Kids rarely need to compose more than a paragraph of writing by hand. With just a paragraph, the time wasted with slower printing instead of cursive is unimportant. Typing means the final product is a hell of a lot easier to read.

If schools spend the time to teach cursive AND typing, something else has to go. What do you suggest?

Bill,

My father was a mining engineer. He had one of the nice slide rules with the hard leather case. I can still remember he kept it in the center desk drawer.

Anyway, one of my kids found it and wanted to know what it was. At that time, I could remember how to use it enough to show him. I couldn't do it now.

My handwriting skills have gone the way of the slide rule, bad to worse. My signature has turned into an unreadable chicken scratch.

I took an entire course in college which was nothing but completion of every workbook in the Zaner Bloser series. They still teach cursive in SW MO and they teach it here in PA, as well. Handwriting Without Tears has a campaign in which parents can join together to bring handwriting standards to their districts. I find that Spelling receives less focus than handwriting in both districts we've been in. Spelling has become an independent study or rather is an activity to be taught and mastered at home under the guidance of parents. Given a choice of the two, I choose Spelling.

Big mistake not to teach cursive, at least for college bound students. I agree it's an obsolete skill (I type everything but notes for myself), but the SAT essay requires handwriting, and cursive is a more efficient way to write.

Flowerchild,

Yes, we write things in notepad (well, if I ever expect anybody else to read it). In terms of that, hand printing does great for scratching notes to yourself. Nobody is saying that people shouldn't learn to print.

One of my (none-to0-bright) coworkers once asked me how I possibly have a master's degree in writing. Reason: she couldn't make out my terrible penmanship.

Rated.

I learned cursive as a kid, but not all that well. I developed a hybrid version. On a good day, I can still write it legibly. I'm afraid that after so many years of heavy typing, my handwriting has deteriorated terribly.

reading aloud . . . If you don't listen to how you pause when reading for periods and commas, how do you know where to put them when you write?

Schools aren't teaching reading aloud? Huh? Now that makes no sense at all in terms of maintaining real literacy. Punctuation is falling by the wayside, making everything less readable.

ugh

It's easy to ascertain~tell, if you don't know what ascertain means.lol~how important these things are to all of us by the number of comments.
I used to have neat penmanship. As I aged and my hands were increasingly damaged by work and other things, my penmanship deteriorated.
I may not be able to write neatly in cursive butt, I'm glad for what I was taight in school and what I still remember.
I still remember the strips above the blackboards with cursive and block letters in alphabetical order.
There's something else about which I wonder.
How many people actually know the alphabet in correct order?
Are they taught any damn thing in school anymore?

Cursive. Yep. I recognized the handwriting of my high school boyfriend forty years later. The fact that he actually WROTE snail mail is another dead give-away. Cursive is good for your brain development, They say. Maybe typing is too?