The Lost Art Of Writing

[The Good Captain]

I don't know how many of you might have read this but there was a brief comment in one of the UK newspapers, referring to this item from the New York times. Here is the link.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.html?scp=1&sq=cursive%20writing&st=cse

Worth a read.

[Kaych]

I really don't understand people who say they can't "read" cursive. Aside from a few letters (i.e. f,b, and z namely) most of the letters are formed the same way. And even then, you can guess what those letters are based on the rest of the word.

[Dino Silone]

My grandparents could write and read cursive. They couldn't type. My kids don't do as well with cursive. But they can type very well.

 

My grandmother knew how to build a fire and cook on a wood stove, but she never really got the hang of using the telephone. My kids wouldn't have a clue about cooking on a wood stove, but they can use the phone like nobody's business, and are comfortable with talking, texting, you name it.

 

My father was amazing with a slide rule, but never got the hang of the computer - it came in just as he was retiring. My kids (middle school & high school) don't have a clue about how to use a slide rule, but they can and do use Matlab on the computer to crunch gobs of data, to generate graphs, to manipulate matrices as easily as we manipulated scalars, to do all sorts of things in ways that my father would have been overjoyed to embrace if they had been available when he was young.

 

My grandparents went as far as third grade in school, and probably spent a good part of those three years developing a pretty handwriting, and their handwriting was beautiful to look at. My kids didn't get so much emphasis on handwriting in school, and their handwriting is horrible. But they're doing math in middle school that most of us didn't see until high school, and by the time they're out of high school, they'll have had more math than most of us had in college.

 

The world moves on. We live in a world that moves a lot more quickly than the world my grandparents lived in, and different skills have risen to the top of the priority list, while other skills, formerly very important, have sunk. This has always been the case.

 

I love to learn and use traditional skills and technologies - that's why I love to make, fix and write with pens that use real ink, to wet-shave with a straight razor, to make furniture out of wood using human-powered hand tools, to listen to and play music that was written hundreds of years ago on instruments that kill no electrons. But I know it's just for fun - I have no illusions that these are intrinsically "better" ways of doing these things. And I'd much prefer that my children spend their time learning how to survive in THIS world. They can take up cursive as a hobby, if they like, after they've gotten the hang of all the things they need to survive in the 21st Century. Nostalgia is great, but when it gets militant, I start getting turned off.

Edited May 5, 2011 by Dino Silone

[Mr Ink]

  On 5/4/2011 at 10:24 PM, Kaych said:

I really don't understand people who say they can't "read" cursive. Aside from a few letters (i.e. f,b, and z namely) most of the letters are formed the same way. And even then, you can guess what those letters are based on the rest of the word.

 

I have to agree.

 

I still remember my early school days when I was taught the alphabet and how to write individual letters by my teacher with extra coaching by my mother. When my class started to learn how to write words we were initially instructed to print individual letters together (i.e. write non-cursive). I remember our teacher announcing one day that we would be taught to write "joined up" in the near future when we were all "ready for it". That wasn't good enough for me because I wanted to imitate my older siblings' neat, cursive handwriting as soon as possible (I admit that I have always been a little impatient), so I asked my eldest brother, Victor, to teach me how. He told that there was nothing to it except to try to write one letter after the next without lifting the pen off the sheet of paper too many times. Although I was little sceptical at first (surely, I thought, there must be more to it than that if I have to be "ready for it"), I remember that I started to write cursive that very evening. It wasn't very neat back then, but I found it to be dead easy and I always wrote that way afterwards.

 

So, thank you very much, Victor, for showing me how easy it is and also for teaching me that I need to try things for myself no matter what other people (including teachers) say.

[spinningtrees]

Some handwriting is easier to read than others. The really pretty stuff is often the least legible.

I agree that the world is changing, and we must adapt with it. Hand-written letters are used less and less, and I do see that something is lost with the changing times.

It takes more time to use a fountain pen (unscrew the cap, fill the ink, blot the nib, etc) but it is the extra time that makes us slow down and think more about what we are writing. It is the beauty of both the writing and the instrument that attracts me to fountain pens.

I wish I could write cursive, but except for my signature I have forgotten most of it. But even my printing looks better when I use a fountain pen!

[Dino Silone]

  On 5/5/2011 at 5:43 PM, spinningtrees said:

Some handwriting is easier to read than others. The really pretty stuff is often the least legible.

I agree that the world is changing, and we must adapt with it. Hand-written letters are used less and less, and I do see that something is lost with the changing times.

It takes more time to use a fountain pen (unscrew the cap, fill the ink, blot the nib, etc) but it is the extra time that makes us slow down and think more about what we are writing. It is the beauty of both the writing and the instrument that attracts me to fountain pens.

I wish I could write cursive, but except for my signature I have forgotten most of it. But even my printing looks better when I use a fountain pen!

Something is always lost with changing times. And, we hope, something is gained.

 

I've heard the argument that using a fountain pen and writing more slowly leads to better writing. Can we demonstrate that somehow? I'm sure it's not true in my case. My writing is infinitely worse (though a lot more fun) when I write by hand versus writing with Word or something like that. Part of it is the ability to edit easily, even as I write.

 

I'll keep using my fountain pens because they're fun. But I don't think I'm about to start writing Palmer Script again - I was very glad to say goodbye to that!

Edited May 5, 2011 by Dino Silone

[Merrib]

I still remember being taught writing both cursive and printing in grade school with a dip

pen. I just cannot fathom how cursive writing is a dying form. It seems like computers and keyboards are

the norm now, and cellphones are in vogue. Who would have thought that it could happen.

[Ernst Bitterman]

  Quote

My grandparents could write and read cursive. They couldn't type. My kids don't do as well with cursive. But they can type very well.

 

Surely, though, your grandparents could read something that came out of a typewriter.

 

Given the number of script, semi-cursive and mock-cursive fonts loose in the world, it seems a little disingenous for people to declare they can't read it. It smacks of being simply unwilling to put in the little bit of effort required to perceive the meaning. I'm not saying that this is a conscious unwillingness, either, just an assumed inability. Let me give an example of a similar thing:

 

My cousin lives in Japan, has done for many years, is married to a Japanese woman, and gets on quite well in Japanese both written and spoken, but he is very plainly not Japanese, being of a profoundly European pattern. One day while in an unfamiliar city, he found himself turned around, and asked a passerby for directions, hailing him in Japanese. The response, also in Japanese, was, "I'm sorry, I don't speak English"

 

"That's fine, I speak Japanese."

 

"No, I can't help you, I do not speak English."

 

See? The assumption of impossiblity renders one incapable even in the face of evidence that it's actually easy. I've seen this in a lot of people on this continent, too, who declare, "Oh, I couldn't understand that guy because he spoke with an accent," even when the accent was BBC Standard Pronunciation, or worse people who can't watch a black and white movie because it's "not real". I occasionally have a little trouble with other people's writing ("modified italic"?) but a little consideration and the immediate context generally provides the answer, and I wager that if people who "can't read that squiggly stuff" came at it with a more open mind they'd have better success.

Edited May 6, 2011 by Ernst Bitterman

[kernando]

  On 5/5/2011 at 5:43 PM, spinningtrees said:

...

I wish I could write cursive, but except for my signature I have forgotten most of it. But even my printing looks better when I use a fountain pen!

 

Just don't lift up the pen until you get to the end of each word. There isn't that much to remember. There are majuscules A, E, F, G, I, J, L, Q, S, T, Z, and miniscules b, f, r, s, and z. And with the majuscules, it's pretty easy to see how those are related.

[beak]

  On 5/5/2011 at 10:23 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

.................... and I wager that if people who "can't read that squiggly stuff" can at it with a more open mind they'd have better success.

Although we can't / shouldn't / might not / OK I will then - generalize, I'm in basic agreement with Ernst all the way. But he has put it in a slightly milder form that I'm about to. Certainly I sympathize with those who have not been introduced to cursive writing. I empathize when it comes to deciphering poor handwriting, of any type. But I want to weigh that against something else.

 

I see all around me the instant rejection as 'irrelevant / impossible / silly / stupid' of anything challenging or anything that can be perceived as challenging. To many, and perhaps more people all the time, are on the lookout for things to be interpreted as insults or tests of their education / way of life / limitations, as the attitude is constantly reinforced by the mass media and particularly by cheap TV, One catch-all excuse handy to the so minded is, of course, the computer and other electronic aids; 'That's a waste of time because I can google (verb) that if I ever need to know it' and so on.

 

I'm sure to many this is now habitual, and that little bit of effort is not made for simple fear of un-instant success, let alone (an I apologise for use of a non-word to the PC brigade) failure.

 

We have already seen in FPN someone being instructed by an employer not to use cursive because his students might not understand it - I wonder how long before this becomes more general!

 

I associate all of this (perhaps incorrectly) with a general downward trend in 'western' society's model of what is to be respected; I for one can remember when the erudite and intelligent were those to whom we looked for correct forms and meanings and interpretations where the subject was beyond our experience. Now I find that the stupidest, most reductive, but most popular / in / cool / now - view of things is the one so many would seek in preference, and the mass media are only too happy to supply an endless stream of such model behaviour and thinking, or lack of it.

 

I believe that the mass media have pushed the young in particular away from a position where they feel the slightest need to test their own attitudes and opinions against anything but their own desires or the attitudes of their peers - well, the ones who watch the 'right' sort and amount of poor TV, anyway.

 

PS - Can I put in a request to FPN that they provide a new emotion-con thing depicting a grumpy, judgemental old Fart sounding off?

 

ETA: I haven't mentioned, and it was a mistake not to, all those younger people who do make 'the effort' generally, and are not satisfied with the half-baked and semi-digested standard fare. I applaud them!:clap1:

Edited May 6, 2011 by beak

[Moppeh]

I was in 4th grade 10 years ago, and my teacher must have been an old-fashioned sort, because I remember spending A LOT of time on cursive--both 4th and 5th grade. I can't say I enjoyed it, but I was certainly glad of it later when I was the few people in high school who could both read and write it with ease. Now that I'm in college I'm horrified by some of my peers' handwriting. They can't write in straight lines (even on ruled paper), their letters are different sizes, and it frankly looks quite a lot like what a 6 year would write.

 

I know that computers are replacing the need for being able to write legibility, but I still pity the professors who have to grade out in-class essays, and wish that handwriting wasn't a 'dying art'. I mean, it's really not that hard to at least reach an acceptable level.

 

And I completely agree with beak.

[kernando]

I read the article last week, and I think it was from this post, but it must have been moved from Chatter, as I don't tend to read the Creative Expressions group.

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php?/topic/194332-the-case-for-cursive/

 

And if I ever meet someone who claims it's too hard to read cursive, I hope I laugh.

[Dino Silone]

  On 5/5/2011 at 10:23 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

  Quote

My grandparents could write and read cursive. They couldn't type. My kids don't do as well with cursive. But they can type very well.

 

Surely, though, your grandparents could read something that came out of a typewriter.

 

Given the number of script, semi-cursive and mock-cursive fonts loose in the world, it seems a little disingenous for people to declare they can't read it. It smacks of being simply unwilling to put in the little bit of effort required to perceive the meaning. I'm not saying that this is a conscious unwillingness, either, just an assumed inability. Let me give an example of a similar thing:

 

My cousin lives in Japan, has done for many years, is married to a Japanese woman, and gets on quite well in Japanese both written and spoken, but he is very plainly not Japanese, being of a profoundly European pattern. One day while in an unfamiliar city, he found himself turned around, and asked a passerby for directions. The response was, "I'm sorry, I don't speak English"

 

"That's fine, I speak Japanese."

 

"No, I can't help you, I do not speak English."

 

See? The assumption of impossiblity renders one incapable even in the face of evidence that it's actually easy. I've seen this in a lot of people on this continent, too, who declare, "Oh, I couldn't understand that guy because he spoke with an accent," even when the accent was BBC Standard Pronunciation, or worse people who can't watch a black and white movie because it's "not real". I occasionally have a little trouble with other people's writing ("modified italic"?) but a little consideration and the immediate context generally provides the answer, and I wager that if people who "can't read that squiggly stuff" can at it with a more open mind they'd have better success.

My kids can read cursive, and were taught it in school. But, as the article said, they didn't spend nearly as much time on it as they did on other things, so, while they can read it, they don't write it very gracefully. It's likely that their children will never be taught it at all.

 

But that will be OK, since, by that time, almost nobody will use it, except as a hobby. I'm not worried about that generation not being able to read the Declaration of Independence in the original cursive. Not many people can read Aramaic, yet the bible still seems to be a popular book...

[Dino Silone]

  On 5/6/2011 at 1:36 AM, beak said:

  On 5/5/2011 at 10:23 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

.................... and I wager that if people who "can't read that squiggly stuff" can at it with a more open mind they'd have better success.

Although we can't / shouldn't / might not / OK I will then - generalize, I'm in basic agreement with Ernst all the way. But he has put it in a slightly milder form that I'm about to. Certainly I sympathize with those who have not been introduced to cursive writing. I empathize when it comes to deciphering poor handwriting, of any type. But I want to weigh that against something else.

 

I see all around me the instant rejection as 'irrelevant / impossible / silly / stupid' of anything challenging or anything that can be perceived as challenging. To many, and perhaps more people all the time, are on the lookout for things to be interpreted as insults or tests of their education / way of life / limitations, as the attitude is constantly reinforced by the mass media and particularly by cheap TV, One catch-all excuse handy to the so minded is, of course, the computer and other electronic aids; 'That's a waste of time because I can google (verb) that if I ever need to know it' and so on.

 

I'm sure to many this is now habitual, and that little bit of effort is not made for simple fear of un-instant success, let alone (an I apologise for use of a non-word to the PC brigade) failure.

 

We have already seen in FPN someone being instructed by an employer not to use cursive because his students might not understand it - I wonder how long before this becomes more general!

 

I associate all of this (perhaps incorrectly) with a general downward trend in 'western' society's model of what is to be respected; I for one can remember when the erudite and intelligent were those to whom we looked for correct forms and meanings and interpretations where the subject was beyond our experience. Now I find that the stupidest, most reductive, but most popular / in / cool / now - view of things is the one so many would seek in preference, and the mass media are only too happy to supply an endless stream of such model behaviour and thinking, or lack of it.

 

I believe that the mass media have pushed the young in particular away from a position where they feel the slightest need to test their own attitudes and opinions against anything but their own desires or the attitudes of their peers - well, the ones who watch the 'right' sort and amount of poor TV, anyway.

 

PS - Can I put in a request to FPN that they provide a new emotion-con thing depicting a grumpy, judgemental old Fart sounding off?

 

ETA: I haven't mentioned, and it was a mistake not to, all those younger people who do make 'the effort' generally, and are not satisfied with the half-baked and semi-digested standard fare. I applaud them!:clap1:

I don't know if you have school-age kids. But my kids are in middle school and high school. They took (or are taking) a year of algebra and a year of geometry in middle school (two years earlier than we were required to), and by the time they finish high school (that's 12th grade, in the USA), will have had two semesters of Calculus plus at least one math elective. Because it's assumed that they have access to the internet, the quality of research that's demanded of them for the papers they write, as well as the quality of their finished output for projects for science, history, etc ... far exceeds what was required of my generation - and I went to a high school that catered to people who were headed for careers in the sciences.

 

Though a lot of us are fond of claiming that the current generation is averse to making an effort and doing things that are difficult, my experience is that it's not true. The effort is just directed differently, and more appropriately to what's required to survive and thrive in today's world. I'd rather have them spend their effort learning mathematics than learning how to write prettily, especially since they're probably going to type almost everything they produce.

[Ethereal Winter Wind]

  On 5/5/2011 at 4:10 PM, Dino Silone said:

My kids (middle school & high school) don't have a clue about how to use a slide rule, but they can and do use Matlab on the computer to crunch gobs of data, to generate graphs, to manipulate matrices as easily as we manipulated scalars, to do all sorts of things in ways that my father would have been overjoyed to embrace if they had been available when he was young.

 

I bow down to your kids I am in the second year of my engineering degree and we haven't even been introduced to matlab yet, been mentioned a few times but we've never had to use it yet

 

  On 5/5/2011 at 10:23 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

My cousin lives in Japan, has done for many years, is married to a Japanese woman, and gets on quite well in Japanese both written and spoken, but he is very plainly not Japanese, being of a profoundly European pattern. One day while in an unfamiliar city, he found himself turned around, and asked a passerby for directions. The response was, "I'm sorry, I don't speak English"

 

"That's fine, I speak Japanese."

 

"No, I can't help you, I do not speak English."

 

Maybe if he had asked in Japanese? Maybe he genuinely couldn't speak english and didn't understand that your cousin could understand japanese. Because I assume people can recognise english and know the phrase "I can't speak english" even when they don't know know how to speak english.

 

People saying they can't read cursive is a more general statement about cursive than their ability to read it. As where I live anyone who writes in cursive, their writing is only comprehensible to themselves, not even to other cursive writers and they freely admit that. The writing I see you guys post up is perfectly legible, maybe it's more about whether people nowadays are taught/develop legible cursive?

Edited May 6, 2011 by Ethereal Winter Wind

[mstone]

  On 5/6/2011 at 7:42 AM, kernando said:

And if I ever meet someone who claims it's too hard to read cursive, I hope I laugh.

 

That seems fairly rude. It's like anything else: experience & practice makes it easier. If you never read cursive, it's not at all approachable as it only vaguely resembles the original letterforms. If you read it often, it's no effort at all--but that's a result of the familiarity, not an inherent quality of the writing. I'd guess that if I were to drop something I work with on a daily basis (and find easy) on you with no prior exposure you would find it fairly incomprehensible. Hopefully I'd manage not to laugh.

 

I've actually been switching to an italic hand specifically because I've noticed people having more trouble with/being less familiar with cursive. The primary purpose of writing is communication, after all...

[Dino Silone]

  On 5/6/2011 at 2:09 PM, Ethereal Winter Wind said:

  On 5/5/2011 at 4:10 PM, Dino Silone said:

My kids (middle school & high school) don't have a clue about how to use a slide rule, but they can and do use Matlab on the computer to crunch gobs of data, to generate graphs, to manipulate matrices as easily as we manipulated scalars, to do all sorts of things in ways that my father would have been overjoyed to embrace if they had been available when he was young.

 

I bow down to your kids I am in the second year of my engineering degree and we haven't even been introduced to matlab yet, been mentioned a few times but we've never had to use it yet

To be fair, they didn't get Matlab in school - I use it for my work, and my older son (10th grade) thought it was cool and asked me to show him how to use it. I showed him a few things, and he took off with it. Yes - we're geeks. Geeks with lousy handwriting

[Ernst Bitterman]

  On 5/6/2011 at 2:09 PM, Ethereal Winter Wind said:

  On 5/5/2011 at 10:23 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

My cousin lives in Japan, has done for many years, is married to a Japanese woman, and gets on quite well in Japanese both written and spoken, but he is very plainly not Japanese, being of a profoundly European pattern. One day while in an unfamiliar city, he found himself turned around, and asked a passerby for directions. The response was, "I'm sorry, I don't speak English"

 

"That's fine, I speak Japanese."

 

"No, I can't help you, I do not speak English."

 

Maybe if he had asked in Japanese?...

 

I was unclear in my anecdote-- that whole exchange took place in Japanese.

 

...and now I've edited it to be more obvious. Sorry about that.

Edited May 6, 2011 by Ernst Bitterman

[Dino Silone]

  On 5/6/2011 at 3:19 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

  On 5/6/2011 at 2:09 PM, Ethereal Winter Wind said:

  On 5/5/2011 at 10:23 PM, Ernst Bitterman said:

My cousin lives in Japan, has done for many years, is married to a Japanese woman, and gets on quite well in Japanese both written and spoken, but he is very plainly not Japanese, being of a profoundly European pattern. One day while in an unfamiliar city, he found himself turned around, and asked a passerby for directions. The response was, "I'm sorry, I don't speak English"

 

"That's fine, I speak Japanese."

 

"No, I can't help you, I do not speak English."

 

Maybe if he had asked in Japanese?...

 

I was unclear in my anecdote-- that whole exchange took place in Japanese.

 

...and now I've edited it to be more obvious. Sorry about that.

It could have been his accent. I grew up speaking Italian at home - I spoke Italian with my father, and a mixture of Italian and our dialect with my grandparents. While my father's accent is Roman, mine is a blend of Abruzzese and a little Italo-Americano. I never had any trouble speaking with anyone in Italy as long as I was anywhere from Tuscany down to Campania. But, when I traveled to the North, it wasn't so easy. Once, I had a woman direct me to someone across the street to answer my question, saying that the people across the street knew how to speak French!

 

That was pretty humbling...

[kernando]

  On 5/6/2011 at 2:11 PM, mstone said:

  On 5/6/2011 at 7:42 AM, kernando said:

And if I ever meet someone who claims it's too hard to read cursive, I hope I laugh.

 

That seems fairly rude. It's like anything else: experience & practice makes it easier. If you never read cursive, it's not at all approachable as it only vaguely resembles the original letterforms. If you read it often, it's no effort at all--but that's a result of the familiarity, not an inherent quality of the writing. I'd guess that if I were to drop something I work with on a daily basis (and find easy) on you with no prior exposure you would find it fairly incomprehensible. Hopefully I'd manage not to laugh.

 

I've actually been switching to an italic hand specifically because I've noticed people having more trouble with/being less familiar with cursive. The primary purpose of writing is communication, after all...

 

It's better than taking the person seriously, and if he or she takes it as rude, it's his or her fault for saying something so silly in the first place. Then the person reads the writing if he or she was joking. If it wasn't a joke, I'd have to tell the person to sound out the words, and failing that, I'd have to read along slowly.

 

I'll take what you mean, but wording it as "original letterforms" opens up a lot of holes. The cursive r is from the half R. And all the miniscules came from different versions of the majuscules, and now so many of them look different in Roman and Italic. Cursive has more majuscules that look like the miniscules. Ugh, I can't believe the spell check built into this OS recognizes neither "majuscule" nor "miniscule".

 

Italic, at least how I understand Chancery, came about to write more easily and quickly. Of course, when we say cursive Italic it doesn't mean connected, but if you join up your letters, you're halfway to (just plain) cursive. I'm sorry you have so many of these people to deal with that you have to dumb down your handwriting.