Young People Have Lost The Ability To Read Cursive.

[andreasn]

I'm 16 right now and many people my age and younger are unable to read my cursive handwriting and it would seem cursive in general.

 

This troubels me since I'm planning on writing in cursive for the rest of my life. Could it be that when I get older, almost no one is going to be able to read my handwriting.

 

Here's my handwriting so you can see that it's quite legible:

 

Older people tend to be able to read it clearly.

 

I'm worried about my generation.

[pitquim]

I'm 49 and really used to read 16 year-old's handwriting because I work as Chemistry teacher ;-)

 

I think you've got a very beautiful handwriting, not "difficult" to read for me, but if it was just a little bit more vertical it'll be easier...

 

Just my two cents

 

Greetings

[Cyber6]

I am up in the 40's.. ... and I grew up in latinoamerica. We were taught the Palmer method at primary school.

 

Example of Palmer cursive writing:

 

 

I can read your handwriting... and I will understand if people have problem reading it too. Try writing a little more vertical and it would make a huge world of difference.

 

 

C.

[TXKat]

Where I am at (Texas), they have taken cursive writing out of the curriculum stating there is no need for it because everyone uses a computer!

 

Do NOT get me started on the backward thinking....ugh!!!!

 

Here's to all of those thinking this was a great idea and wondering, when their own grandkids can't read a birthday card sentiment!!

[pyramidValley]

Sadly, i'm in this group. I'm not used to reading cursive. I can read your handwriting, but only at a slow pace. It looks beautiful though.

[Manalto]

I am up in the 40's.. ... and I grew up in latinoamerica. We were taught the Palmer method at primary school.

 

Example of Palmer cursive writing:

 

 

 

 

Is the line variation an aspect of the Palmer method, or an embellishment?

 

I learned the next generation of cursive after Palmer; I don't know the name, and none of my searches has turned up an exact match. The capital letters are without flair, but I must admit it's an easy style to read.

 

My students are from all over the world, and many of them whose languages use a completely different set of characters. They complain that they can't read cursive, but when I wrote on the board, they figured it out pretty quickly.

 

Andreas, I think your writing has an outstanding quality of consistency and grace, plus I like the ink. I agree with the others that coming back toward the vertical just a few degrees will help legibility considerably. It will also give you more flexibility in the formation of your letters. Well done!

Edited April 29, 2015 by Manalto

[FayeV]

I just asked my 10 year old to take a look at this and read it aloud. She had no problems at all, however she read it at a slower pace than me. I'm in my 40s and had no problems reading it either. Your handwriting is beautiful and I wish my handwriting had been as elegant when I was your age.

[WaskiSquirrel]

I just got done grading a bunch of handwritten papers about the Hudson Bay lynx/hare data. All of my own personal writing is done in cursive, but I will say that reading a paper written in cursive is slower for me than reading one which is printed. Somewhere I have read data that backs that up, though I couldn't put my finger on the source right now.

 

That said, it could be the school where I teach, but a lot of people say they can't read cursive, but really mean that it's a lot harder to read it, and it's easier just to say they can't. I have a few pen pals, some of whom are foreign, whose handwriting is extremely difficult for me. I persevere because I want to, even though it would be much easier just to throw in the towel.

[inkstainedruth]

Where I am at (Texas), they have taken cursive writing out of the curriculum stating there is no need for it because everyone uses a computer!

 

Do NOT get me started on the backward thinking....ugh!!!!

 

Here's to all of those thinking this was a great idea and wondering, when their own grandkids can't read a birthday card sentiment!!

Some friends of mine with a third grader and one roughly 2 years old were decrying the state of elementary education ("Core Standards") in PA and describing the "New" Math, which involves some vast number of operations to add and subtract numbers (instead of just teaching the kids "carry the one..."). Or, as Heather said "They BROKE math!"

But at least their school district is still teaching handwriting....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[brunico]

Your handwiting is perfectly legible.

 

Even so, looped styles of handwriting - North American 'cursive' being only one of many - tend to be harder to read, or at least demand more familiarity to read fluently. There are various reasons for this, including the busyness of the styles and their tendency to diverge from standard book or newspaper letterforms from Garamond to Arial: x-heights are relatively small, the loops in descenders are more prominent than the bits that differentiate g from y, for instance, and letters such as lowercase r and many of the capitals bear no resemblance to anything people are constantly seeing in print.

 

I must have processed a hundred thousand letter rs that all have the same basic shape - in books, in newspapers, at work, on shop signs, on the internet, in text messaging - for every 'cursive'-style r that I've come across in someone's handwriting.

 

Other handwriting styles also take some practice to follow: search Google Images for Sütterlin, and I'm sure you'll see why familiarity is so important.

 

Sutterlin and legibility

Edited April 30, 2015 by brunico

[FayeV]

But at least their school district is still teaching handwriting....

 

 

At my daughter's school, they started teaching the cursive form in Kindergarten (5 yrs old), and students were required to do all their written assignments in cursive by the latter half of 2nd Grade (7 yrs old).

[ironwampa]

Not being much older than you andreasn it took me a bit of time looking at your writing to figure out what turned out to be e's but after that point I could easily read at my normal pace. That sort of taking extra time to read the first sentence someone wrote is typical for me.

 

I'm not sure if the above statement should be reassuring in a good way or a bad way.

 

The lawyers who make these decisions about what to teach and what materials to use never read the the text books before approving them and seem to be completely unaware of the lack of substitutes for handwriting in mathematics and the sciences. So all comments on this thread about problems with education are to be expected.

[httpmom]

I'm 16 right now and many people my age and younger are unable to read my cursive handwriting and it would seem cursive in general.

 

This troubels me since I'm planning on writing in cursive for the rest of my life. Could it be that when I get older, almost no one is going to be able to read my handwriting.

 

Here's my handwriting so you can see that it's quite legible:

 

 

Older people tend to be able to read it clearly.

 

I'm worried about my generation.

“I understand that most American schools no longer teach cursive writing. There will be generations of people who cannot read script...doesn't that make them illiterate?” httpmom (that’s me)

 

I am worried about your generation as well…in more ways than not learning cursive handwriting. We have had this discussion many times around our dinner table with friends and family. I am 63 and have a 25 year old daughter who will be graduating with a degree in Soil Science next semester from Iowa State University. She plans to get her masters with a specialization in soil and water conservation. We are very proud of her accomplishment. But we have always felt that she was on the cusp of everything falling apart in her education and society. The biggest problem we see is the huge shift from young people participating in all kinds of activities outdoors to a sedentary life in front of a TV, iPhone, Computer, etc. We had reasonable rules (I am not a Helicopter or Tiger mom) regarding use of things other than your brain or body to engage your mind. Since there was no music, art, or science in the curriculum when she entered grade school, we supplemented her early education with outside activities that included art, music, science, and lots of horseback riding (she was literally raised in a barn). Homework was done together with friends and family (we had a neighborhood study group) first thing after school every day. After, came horse riding, dinner which did not include TV, and always reading together at bed time. Her TV or computer time was maybe 4-5 hours a week. She became a very independent young person and chose her own career path (which she loves) based on the fact that it involves science in the field and the lab.

 

I have a degree in Art and another in Graphic Design. I worked for 18 years until our daughter was born. My husband has his own business in Mechanical Engineering and Product Development. He employees 60 people. He has noticed that with each year passing, the younger people joining the company are much less creative and less motivated. He contributes this directly to their having spent more time with a device (computer, TV, iPhone, etc) and less time “doing and making”. I don’t think the new generation is less intelligent... just eminently different from the previous. Maybe I rant like an old lady, but I am not sure yet if this is a good or a bad thing.

BTW your cursive penmanship is wonderful!

Edited April 30, 2015 by httpmom

[Manalto]

Humans thrive under adversity. Brain scientists tell us that displacement (usually ejection from the nest) of any animal stimulates creativity and imagination to a remarkable degree; an evolutionary reaction to ensure survival. Without this we become complacent couch potatoes. But who is going to invite adversity? We strive to avoid it.

[httpmom]

Also, I am not sure when cursive writing as we know it today came into being. If you look at some of the old manuscripts, Italian for example the letters are each separate as in not connected. So basically they printed in the 16th century. Cursive was probably started in an attempt to write faster, I would think. Also, it seems it would save on paper and maybe on quills? I have no idea when it became popular.

Anybody?

[Manalto]

Wikipedia has an entry for it:

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

 

The Industrial Revolution stimulated the growth, before the advent of good efficient typewriters, (http://mytypewriter.com/underwoodno51900s-1920s.aspx) of cursive business writing and methods, with an emphasis on speed, and as a consequence, simplicity.

 

I used to think cursive was what you wrote when you lost your temper.

Edited April 30, 2015 by Manalto

[pmhudepo]

I had no problems reading your writing sample, but I agree with previous posters that writing a bit more upright would make it easier to read.

 

edit: When I write the same sentence in both looped-cursive ("Palmer") and italic, italic often takes up less space. Seems to me that all those loops mostly serve the purpose of speed, reducing the number of pen lifts needed. But I'm no expert in handwriting, so this may well be due to my own quirks and mistakes.

Edited April 30, 2015 by pmhudepo

[Manalto]

I found this and thought it was interesting. In the early part of the 19th century, the custom developed of turning the page 90° and continuing with the letter to conserve paper and save on postage.

 

Edited April 30, 2015 by Manalto

[ehemem]

Examples of forms of cursive writing go back to antiquity (BCE) and cursive was used for quick and informal documents, often meant not to have a long shelf life. Italic was developed from the combination of non-cursive late northern Italian Carolingian and cursive Blackletter and was a small (2-3mm) cursive hand, used for documents and as a book hand. Non-cursive Italic (what is sometimes called "Formal Italic") makes an appearance after the appearance of the first Italic typeface.

[Maurizio]

httpmom: you're not ranting and you're not an old lady either. Interesting observations from your husband re the lack of creativity in some of the younger folks.

 

Computers and the internet are great, I wouldn't want to go back (and we certainly can't anyway), but I also think the advent of this ostensible "information age" has made the general population dumber. How many people actually take the time to read books (and paper v digital's another conversation), or tinker in the garage, or pursue art or some other craft as a hobby, and thereby develop some skill and sensitivity for manual dexterity and aesthetic appreciation? Instead, it seems, many people would prefer to diddle with "social media" which is more like a vast gossip board than anything enlightening or stimulating.

 

Those of us who hang around here are not Luddites, but folks who appreciate the sensitivity of a good writing instrument (and sometimes obsess a bit too much about it), who can appreciate the varieties of good paper and ink, who wish to send nicely executed handwritten notes in personal and business correspondence - which stand out against today's ubiquitous flood of email, or who might be taking up a form of calligraphy (I practice italic), or wish to improve their ordinary handwriting for self-satisfaction. What I like about all these activities is that they are exercises in self-development, or simply taking pleasure in an engrossing hobby which I find [value judgment alert] a far better way to spend one's time than in the stupifaction and distraction of "social media". If excessive TV watching was the mind-killer of older generations, "social media" playing seems to be that for the younger generations.

 

Re the development of cursive. English Roundhand aka Copperplate was developed from the Renaissance styles such as (formal) italic and chancery cursive as England entered the industrial revolution and there was a need for faster correspondence. These styles "jumped the pond" to America where they were further developed and practiced; but were eschewed by American William Platt (sp?) Spencer who developed his own style of handwriting which was ostensibly more natural than Roundhand. I believe American cursive writing is derived from and is a simplified form of Spencerian script. I'm sure one or two IAMPETH members might want to weigh in here on this.

Edited May 1, 2015 by Maurizio