reading cursive

[KateGladstone]

Please explain "bias sound" and "bias frequency."

If it matters, one of my handwriting teachers sometimes played classical-music recordings during lessons, but we kids never found this making a difference.

[Renzhe]

It will never die, as it is functional, and its relationship with print and italic letters is simple and easy to learn.

 

Renzhe -- in your view, what makes cursive "functional"? Research shows that the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive -- they join some, not all, letters (making the easiest joins, skipping the rest) and tend to use print-like shapes for letters whose printed and cursive forms "disagree."

 

The relationship of cursive letters to other forms is "easy to learn" if competently presented, indeed -- but I would scarcely call that relationship "simple." (At least, I don't find particularly "simple" the relationship of typical North American cursive-model G/I/J/Q/S/T/Z/f/r/s/z to their printed or Italic counterparts -- the simplicity of any relationship between writing-styles must depend on the forms used in the styles, and North American cursive models notoriously have far more complex forms, particularly for the capitals, than most other models of cursive.)

 

It is functional because I (personally) write cursive faster and more regularly than I write italic or especially print.

The relationship between cursive and other forms is easy to learn and simple if properly taught (and if the cursive model isn't stupid).

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

I could never figure out how anyone could write italic faster than cursive. Kate, I 've seen you mention this before but I still don't believe it!

 

Well, this may help ... go to http://www.handwritingsuccess.com/images/page-two.jpg (a list of 26 names written twice: once in an Italic style, once in a conventional cursive style) and compare how far your pen has to travel from beginning to end of the capital "G" in "George" (for example) when you use the Italic "G" versus the conventional one. Then make the same comparison for each of the other letter-shapes in the name-list, "A/a" through "Z/z" (every name on the list includes both the capital and the lower-case form of a particular letter) and you will see *one* of the things that allow people writing in Italic to write legibly at higher speeds than people writing the same material equally legibly in conventional cursive

 

Other things that let Italic gain faster speed for equally legible writing:

 

/1/ In conventional cursive, such joins as "sc" or "pa" or "qu" or "gl" consist of multiply-curved lines -- in Italic, instead of producing curved motions on paper to join these letters, you can (and often must) produce straight-line motions in the air. The straight line (the shortest distance between two points) saves so much time in the movement between letters that the time saved actually exceeds the time used in having the pen slightly leave the paper during this movement.

 

/2/ (a biggie) -- In conventional cursive, every time you write the letters "t/i/j/x" you must wait until the end of the word to finish the letter (by adding the needed dot or cross-bar), which means that you have to backtrack all the way leftward to the letter you need to finish, then place the dot/crossbar (and most writers need to slow down, for this purpose, if they wish to ensure that the dot or crossbar goes onto the correct letter instead of landing on some other letter), and then you must reverse your course again in order to move forward once more to the end of the word so that you can then -- only then -- begin the next work.

In Italic, though, when you write a "t/x/j" you normally make (and when you write the letter "i" you CAN make) the dot or crossbar without waiting for the end of the word and back-tracking: lift your pen, add the dot or crossbar (adding it immediately makes sure that the dot or crossbar stays on the correct letter), then proceed with the rest of the word ... and when you reach the end of the word, in Italic you HAVE ended the word (no need for backtracking!) and you can just go right on to the next word.

 

(When I teach large groups -- e.g., classes of physicians or teachers --

very early in the lesson I divide the group in half [left vs. right side of the room]

and have everyone [at a given signal] start writing some word such as "thyroidectomy":

with the folks on the left side crossing/dotting in "proper" cursive fashion

while the folks on the right side lift their pens to cross and dot,

I have them all write the word 5 times on one line of the paper,

as legibly yet quickly as they can while adhering to their group's particular condition,

and I ask that each person should announce when he or she has finished the task

by saying loudly "Finished!" and standing up:

in other words, changing just one variable in the writing [at this stage]

to measure the effects in terms of the observable speeds among each group of writers.

Invariably -- and always surprisingly/annoyingly to the "proper dot/crossing" folks on the left --

the group on the right [crossing/dotting in Italic style] averages a far earlier finish:

generally, half of them will finish before any of the "proper" crossers/dotters do so,

and inspection of their work will show that the "proper crossers/dotters" have written more poorly

(e.g., their crosses/dots tend to miss the letter far more often

than those of the "improper" people who finished faster and who lifted their pens to dot and cross.)

At this stage, someone will usually suggest

that all the faster writers must have

just happened to sit on the right side of the room that day --

so I do the experiment over, switching sides,

and [so far] we always get the same results.

Once, when I did this with a group of teachers,

one of them assumed that I must have used some kind of optical illusion,

or that I must have magnetized the clocks and watches

to somehow make the slower people LOOK as if they wrote faster:

he quickly realized, though, that no way existed to do so --

playing tricks with timepieces, if I had done so,

could not make one person finish and stand up before another person.

In another group of teachers, I had a nun from a teaching order

who actually cried as the results came in.

When I asked her "Why?",

she explained that she had once flunked a fifth-grader

for asking her for permission to carry out a very similar experiment

as part of the school's Science Fair.

She had explained to the fifth-grader that

"it would be wrong to compare the speed of correct cursive with the speed of anything else,

because we already know that correct cursive must be fastest, or it would not be correct."

Now, she said, she believed that she had committed a great sin that day --

and she would therefore have to take it to confession.

I have no idea -- perhaps some of the Christians here can tell me? --

what kind of sin the Catholic Church would classify this as,

and what kind of penance the priest would likely impose ... )

 

Re:

"I can write italic but not nearly as fast as I can write cursive."

 

In my experience and observation, this means either that you are (as yet) less accustomed to Italic (perhaps you reserve it for special occasions), or that you have learned one of the more rigid/calligraphic (and/or less-joinable) varieties of Italic.

 

 

Re:

"Would love to see a side by side comparison video."

 

I may well make a video, someday soon -- at least, if more people ask me to do this. (Until then, catch me at a Pen Show and I'll gladly demonstrate. I'll have a Handwriting Repair table at the Chicago Pen Show -- will also do at least one workshop there, in addition to private one-on-one sessions throughout the Show -- so if you plan to come to Chicago for the Show, you can ask me there. If so, feel free to film me as long as I get a copy!)

 

Actually, about 13 - 14 years ago the (then) CEO of Zaner-Bloser Handwriting (a Dr. Clinton Hackney) asked me to do something similar. Specifically, he wanted me to travel to the company headquarters to engage in a speed/legibility "writing duel" before his staff -- feeling confident, as he frankly stated, that I would lose by a great margin both on grounds of speed and on grounds of legibility -- and he invited me to phone him any time to set a date. So I phoned him back, but found him always "just stepped out" (for over a month!) -- then sent him a handwritten fax (I didn't yet have e-mail) -- then sent him a *real* handwritten letter (still no reply) ... then, finally, after ANOTHER month of trying to reach him (as he had invited me to do), I finally managed to reach his personal secretary (not the other secretary who had given me the "just stepped out" story every time), to whom I detailed all the above. She excused herself to talk to him, and returned within two minutes with the following:

"Although Dr. Hackney was and is sincere about this offer, the Board of Trustees has decided that it cannot possibly be accepted because the outcome may not be in the best interests of Zaner-Bloser handwriting. The Board has determined that, if you did indeed wish to persuade Dr. Hackney to go through with this offer, it would need to be made clear to you in advance that we believe that objectivity requires that the team evaluating your speed and legibility against Dr. Hackney's would have to consist entirely of Zaner-Bloser employees including Dr. Hackney himself, as we believe that only Zaner-Bloser staff members are capable of correctly evaluating the speed and legibility of handwriting. It has also been determined that you, as a representative of a handwriting program other than Zaner-Bloser, would have to agree to use only Zaner-Bloser handwriting while producing your handwriting samples for comparison with Zaner-Bloser samples, because our method of evaluating handwriting correctness and quality requires basing the evaluation on conformity with the Zaner-Bloser model because the Zaner-Bloser model is the correct model. For example: if you visit us for a handwriting comparison of Italic versus Zaner-Bloser speed and legibility, and you write your Italic while Dr. Hackney writes Zaner-Bloser, you automatically lose because not one of your letters will be the same as a Zaner-Bloser letter, and therefore obviously not one of your letters will be correct: we cannot give credit for the speed or legibility of an incorrect letter. So, although the offer was sincerely made, Dr. Hackney has agreed with the Trustees to rescind the offer, and he agrees with the Trustees that he should therefore consider himself the winner because you obviously could not have won in any comparison of the type that he proposed."

 

In other words -- Zaner-Bloser first invited a submarine to join a boat-race, but then told the submarine captain: "You must put sails and an open deck on your submarine, and it's disqualified if it goes under water!"

 

Re:

"if you joining letter in a smooth flowing line, how can any type of printing be faster?"

 

Some "smooth flowing lines" (the ones that curve in various directions) actually take LONGER than straight-line motions.

A straight-line or nearly straight-line join (like the ones we see in "an" or -- in some cursive styles -- "on") takes little time, whether you make it on the paper or in air: Italic uses these quick, easy joins BUT Italic doesn't use the other, more difficult joins (the conspicuously curved ones) that conventional cursive uses to join "sc" or "qu" or "nd" or "pa" or "gl" or many other combinations.

 

Re "how can any type of printing be faster?"

I don't write "any type of printing" -- I write Italic (and the first published books on Italic called it "cursive").

Fast printing, when it works well (as it often does) tends to resemble Italic -- enough so, that I often say that many people are re-inventing Italic without knowing it!

 

Mike S.

 

[msacco]

Well,Kate,

thanks for a well-stated case.

 

Mike S

[KateGladstone]

I entirely agree that:

"The relationship between cursive and other forms is easy to learn and simple if properly taught (and if the cursive model isn't stupid)."

 

I've my own opinions (strong ones, which many here will know) about what makes a cursive model "stupid" or "not-stupid." So I'd like to hear your own opinions on the matter: what makes a particular cursive model "stupid" (or the opposite), and could you perhaps list various cursive models in the order of, well, their intelligence? (I don't care whether you start with "most intelligent" and work downward, or start with "stupidest" and work upwards, as long as you indicate which ... )

[Paddler]

Please explain "bias sound" and "bias frequency."

If it matters, one of my handwriting teachers sometimes played classical-music recordings during lessons, but we kids never found this making a difference.

 

In an audio tape recorder, there is an oscillator that produces a frequency that is usually much higher than the sound being recorded (I don't have an actual number at hand). This frequency is mixed with the input from a microphone or other sound source that you wish to record. Without this higher "bias frequency" the sound signal won't magnetize the tape very well and fidelity will be very low. When the tape is played back, this high frequency component is filtered out.

 

I was making an analogy with an apparent "bias sound" of Bach fugues making Latin vocabulary lodge itself in my memory. Organic chemistry seemed to go in better to other baroque music. I made no measurements, but allegro movements seemed to work better than andante or largo movements. Seems crazy, doesn't it? Hah! Maybe I could elaborate on it a little and flog it to George Noory on Coast to Coast some night.

 

Paddler

 

[captnemo]

It would be great fun to have some kind of gallery of examples of "cursive" handwriting from different times and places. Folks could try to decode the various examples.

 

A liitle googling surfaced this:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Early-Americ...y/dp/080630846X

 

which looks wonderful.

 

I just posted something that might interest you here:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...howtopic=101368

 

Those handwritten records from West Virginia go back at least to 1810.

[KateGladstone]

Please explain "bias sound" and "bias frequency."

If it matters, one of my handwriting teachers sometimes played classical-music recordings during lessons, but we kids never found this making a difference.

 

In an audio tape recorder, there is an oscillator that produces a frequency that is usually much higher than the sound being recorded (I don't have an actual number at hand). This frequency is mixed with the input from a microphone or other sound source that you wish to record. Without this higher "bias frequency" the sound signal won't magnetize the tape very well and fidelity will be very low. When the tape is played back, this high frequency component is filtered out.

 

I was making an analogy with an apparent "bias sound" of Bach fugues making Latin vocabulary lodge itself in my memory. Organic chemistry seemed to go in better to other baroque music. I made no measurements, but allegro movements seemed to work better than andante or largo movements. Seems crazy, doesn't it? Hah! Maybe I could elaborate on it a little and flog it to George Noory on Coast to Coast some night.

 

Paddler

 

Thanks! And why *not* promote your theory on Mr. Noory's program? Heck, you might even persuade him to promote better handwriting, too!

;-)

[Judybug]

I can't remember a time when I didn't admire the written word - maybe because my mother was a writer. I do remember that I could not read cursive until I learned to write it in the third grade. I had learned to print in first and second grade. I thought the third graders were quite grown up because they wrote cursive like my mother did. Moving from second to third grade was an exciting prospect and I looked forward to it. I don't remember having any difficulty learning cursive.

 

I learned cursive in the third grade in northern Florida in 1954. The class had 40 children in, and it was a combination 3rd & 4th grade class. At the beginning of the school year parents complained about this combination and the size of the class. But there was no rememdy since there was a teacher shortage at the time. Apparently the grandmotherly Mrs. Davis who taught us that year was quite capable. I don't remember anyone having difficulty learning cursive. I guess I've taken my cursive teacher for granted all these years. Now that I read about the difficulty some have had learning cursive due to inadequate teachers, I have a greater appreciation for dear Mrs. Davis - God rest her soul!

 

Judybug

[jmkeuning]

I hate cursive. I will never write it, and when I have to read it I wonder what the heck people are thinking.

 

Now that I consider it, I do not know anyone who uses cursive in crucial correspondence. Of course, we type most, if not all, of our documents, but if you need to send an important message, don't use cursive.

[msacco]

Wow, reading some of this stuff, I feel cursive is getting a bad rap.

For me it's the most beautiful of hands, even outshining italic, and the most relaxing to write.

Long Live cursive!!

 

My cursive, Ornamental Script really, is the best it's every been. But I'll confess it's more calligraphy to me as it's not written for notes or functionality. Purely to be beautiful. I'm doing the classic Zaner/Tamblyn/Madarasz, and other Master's Ornamental Shaded script using a pointed pen and oblique holder.

 

HEre's an interesting blog about cursive and the book Script and Scribbles. I like Zaner 's (a hero of mine in Ornamental penmanship) quote. Very true!

http://penpoints.com/

 

 

Mike S.

Edited March 31, 2009 by msacco

[spotted and speckled]

I learned how to read cursive by writing it, and my third grade teacher, Mrs. Totem Pole, would have it no other way. By the time I was in 5th grade, I was glad because Mr. Callahan (no one dared give him a nickname) struck fear into many a schoolchild's heart by throwing erasers at him for poor penmanship, or general stupidity. I was not afraid!

 

Today, my standard handwriting is a mix between the cursive and printing. Kind of like Spanglish. But there are still letters that burst forth on occasion from my hand that look like my mother's writing, the "T" with 3 scrolls across the bar, or the "D" with the large wavy downstroke prior to the letter itself. Those suprise me, because I obviously absorbed that from my mother, and was not something I was taught or cultivated in school.

[amh210]

I learned to read and write cursive in 3rd grade. I gave up using it after college as I didn't write legibly and my printing was somewhat easier to read than my cursive.

 

As I became involved with fountain pens I found that I didn't automatically write in cursive even when I tried to. I noticed that I had many printed letterforms mixed in, notably those that seemed simpler, i.e., the G, S, etc.

 

My current (still poor) handwriting is an inconsistent mix of cursiive and printed letters, sometimes within the same words. However, I can read it and I write primarily for my own amusement these days. Any correspondence that is "important" is either hand printed or goes by computer.

 

I still have samples of my grandmother's handwriting and it is beautiful. My mother's handwriting is beautiful as well and I still get some handwritten notes from her. Unfortunately, handwriting quality is not hereditary; it takes care and use and practice.

 

The printing company in the poll can continue to compete in a shrinking market but I don't think that market will ever shrink to zero. Cursive handwriting will become an "art" rather than a daily tool. This happened with italic writing years ago. Someday, our modern cursive will just be another italic form, practiced by artists, hobbyists, and specialists.

 

The question of whether handwriting as a normative communication tool is a really interesting question. I'm afraid that unless our civilization collapses, all handwriting will become just an art form practiced by specialists. The rest of us will just talk to the screen, or someday, think our words onto the screen.

 

Just my 2 cents,

 

Andy

[hamadryad11]

For me, a large stumbling-block had come from believing my teachers when they said that no relationship at all existed between one set of symbols and the other, and that therefore pure brute reasonless memorization would inevitably prove both necessary and sufficient

What a completely bizarre thing for them to say. I can't remember if that's the same attitude that my teachers had, but I should hope they weren't that silly. I think the relationship between the cursive and print versions of letters is less obvious with upper-case letters than it is with lower-case letters (for the most part), but to say that there is no relationship at all doesn't make the slightest bit of sense to me. Did they seriously think that cursive writing just appeared spontaneously and had no relationship to earlier letter forms? At least, I seem to remember reading that cursive is a relatively recent development in writing, so I figure it must be based on something that came earlier. Not that many things are completely original, no matter what people might claim to the contrary.

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

"Did they seriously think that cursive writing just appeared spontaneously and had no relationship to earlier letter forms?"

 

Well, actually they seemed quite seriously think that cursive-as-we-know-it had just appeared spontaneously as the earliest (and therefore "most traditional") form of handwriting ever used in our alphabet.

 

Similarly, when I talk with North American schoolteachers today and ask them when/where they think that today's cursive handwriting originated, many of them say things like "I never thought about it, but it seems obvious that the cursive styles we are teaching today have to be around 3000 years old or more, and obviously they must have been first used by the Phoenicians, because the Phoenicians made the first alphabet" or "I believe that cursive as we have it today must be over 2500 years old at least and must have been used by the Romans, because I remember reading somewhere that the alphabet used for our language is called 'the Roman alphabet.' "

 

I have also -- occasionally, but on far too frequent occasions for my liking -- heard: "We can't possibly know anything about how cursive came about, or even how handwriting or writing in general came about, because obviously before there was any writing there would have been nobody to write that down! So obviously" [that teacher of English/reading/handwriting continued] "we can't know how it happened. Probably there was always printing, and there was always cursive, just as we have them today, because it's impossible to imagine that this would ever have been any different. Handwriting isn't an invention -- writing just IS -- because obviously it would be impossible to invent something as complex as writing if you didn't even know how to write." [Later, I learned that the same teacher also taught history.]

 

A couple of teachers (who taught at Christian schools) have answered that "Well, obviously God must have taught Adam and Eve how to write, probably before they sinned and left Eden, so that we could have the Bible." They each justified that guess by saying "how could people just invent writing if they were illiterate? Somebody had to teach them ... "

 

?!?!?!

[hamadryad11]

Re:

 

"Did they seriously think that cursive writing just appeared spontaneously and had no relationship to earlier letter forms?"

 

Well, actually they seemed quite seriously think that cursive-as-we-know-it had just appeared spontaneously as the earliest (and therefore "most traditional") form of handwriting ever used in our alphabet.

 

Similarly, when I talk with North American schoolteachers today and ask them when/where they think that today's cursive handwriting originated, many of them say things like "I never thought about it, but it seems obvious that the cursive styles we are teaching today have to be around 3000 years old or more, and obviously they must have been first used by the Phoenicians, because the Phoenicians made the first alphabet" or "I believe that cursive as we have it today must be over 2500 years old at least and must have been used by the Romans, because I remember reading somewhere that the alphabet used for our language is called 'the Roman alphabet.' "

 

I have also -- occasionally, but on far too frequent occasions for my liking -- heard: "We can't possibly know anything about how cursive came about, or even how handwriting or writing in general came about, because obviously before there was any writing there would have been nobody to write that down! So obviously" [that teacher of English/reading/handwriting continued] "we can't know how it happened. Probably there was always printing, and there was always cursive, just as we have them today, because it's impossible to imagine that this would ever have been any different. Handwriting isn't an invention -- writing just IS -- because obviously it would be impossible to invent something as complex as writing if you didn't even know how to write." [Later, I learned that the same teacher also taught history.]

 

A couple of teachers (who taught at Christian schools) have answered that "Well, obviously God must have taught Adam and Eve how to write, probably before they sinned and left Eden, so that we could have the Bible." They each justified that guess by saying "how could people just invent writing if they were illiterate? Somebody had to teach them ... "

 

?!?!?!

OK, you have just completely shattered what little faith I still had in our educational system.

 

Our children are being taught by idiots.

Edited March 31, 2009 by hamadryad11

[KateGladstone]

Re:

"Our children are being taught by idiots."

 

As far as I can tell, the current gang of educational idiots learned their idiocy (as schoolchildren) from the previous gang of educational idiots.

 

I suspect that a lot more idiocy gets into some subjects, more of the time, than into others:

 

if it turned out (for example) that 40% of elementary-school arithmetic classes

had schoolteachers who had never learned how to count up to 20

(or who had incorrect notions on that subject -- "seventeen, fifteen, eight, nine, two, eleven, four, pi, cookies, minus, and zero"),

 

the matter would fill newspaper headlines, magazines' front covers, full hours or half-hours of investigative news-broadcasts, etc., etc. ...

Outraged parents -- perhaps even outraged children, if they'd gotten low marks for counting and adding *correctly* -- would march in protest, wave banners, and more ...

 

but if it turned out one day that

(in one or more states, cities, towns, districts, or schools of -- for example -- the USA)

40% of elementary-school teachers could not write legibly and did not consider it important enough for them to try to change this

 

(very likely --

I have seen teachers who wrote "a" and "u" and "n" and "r" and "v" alike,

trying to teach children how to read and spell words that the teacher wrote on the board),

 

in that case I do not think that people would bother to do a thing about it ...

or, if they did, they would do very ineffective and/or very occasional things and then point to the small results/non-results as a reason for leaving the problem to grow worse.

(Pen-people, please prove me wrong!)

 

[Dimitri]

Where is the option for I can read most cursive but I tell everyone I cant read almost all of it.

 

Dimitri

[KateGladstone]

Where is the option for I can read most cursive but I tell everyone I cant read almost all of it.

 

Dimitri

 

I didn't think of that one! Call it "other"!

 

;-)

[Dimitri]

Well its just I find it's easier to claim you don't know it then being asked by them young kids to read something for them.

 

Dimitri