The Lost Art Of Writing

[KateGladstone]

Re the question of speed -- when I observe cursive writing and other writing (done at the same size and by people of similar ages and with a similar length of study/experience as hand writers), the non-users of cursive generally write about 1.5 times as fast as equally legible cursive users.

[KateGladstone]

Reading cursive remains very useful ... so keep in mind that one doesn't need to write cursive in order to learn how to read it. One doesn't need to write a letter-style in order to find it decipherable, or most of us could not read even slightly decorative type fonts. (Anyone who can read print - even a five-year-old - can be taught in 30 to 60 minutes to read cursive, whether or not the reader also wishes to learn to write the same way).

[KateGladstone]

For those who (like me) enjoy electronic handwriting recognition: on various smartphones and on the iPad, you can use an app called WritePad which is inexpensive and quite good at reading handwriting.

[in the flow]

Speed? I use a mix of cursive and print, i.e. my handwriting is "selectively cursive". If I write in full cursive, I find it slower because of the extra strokes I need to complete. Then again, maybe it's slower because I don't use it all the time. umm and I dot my i's and cross my t's on the way

 

Taking a look at a small class sample of university students' work, I find: full cursive, cursive+print mix, print, computer type. It's all legible, and some degree of effort has been made in the legibility of the penmanship.

[mstone]

Re the question of speed -- when I observe cursive writing and other writing (done at the same size and by people of similar ages and with a similar length of study/experience as hand writers), the non-users of cursive generally write about 1.5 times as fast as equally legible cursive users.

 

This is very interesting to me - I have always found that, all other things being equal, cursive was the quickest way to write. I realize that I don't have your experience here - what am I missing, do you think?

 

Familiarity and practice -- it's just as hard for people who use cursive exclusively to switch to a different style as it is for people not accustomed to cursive to switch to it.

 

 

As to the other person questioning how to write fast without cursive, look into a joined italic style rather than a roundhand style. It's just as fast, and tends to degrade better. One thing to remember is that those beautiful exemplars of copperplate or Spencerian were not done particularly fast. If you want real speed without typing, then you need to learn shorthand (another almost-dead form).

Edited May 14, 2011 by mstone

[Mickey]

Re the question of speed -- when I observe cursive writing and other writing (done at the same size and by people of similar ages and with a similar length of study/experience as hand writers), the non-users of cursive generally write about 1.5 times as fast as equally legible cursive users.

 

This is very interesting to me - I have always found that, all other things being equal, cursive was the quickest way to write. I realize that I don't have your experience here - what am I missing, do you think?

 

I'm with you on this, Beak. The repetitive lifting of the pen for each letter is wasted motion and energy. This style, when performed rapidly, also tends to decouple the arm and shoulder as potential energy sources, raising the risk of RSI. One may be able to print more rapidly than write cursively for short sprints, but for repeated, long writing sessions, I seriously doubt printing is as fast, let alone faster. It is certainly not as efficient. Remember, the commercial hands, from which modern cursive styles descend, were intended for rapid, continuous writing. Individual character writing styles (e.g., printing) were well known when the commercial hands were created, yet, almost universally, their developers chose cursive as the more efficient process.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Mickey

[KateGladstone]

Beak - you're leaving out the fact that the joins of cursive differ in their efficiency. Some of the joins in cursive -- the easiest ones, seen in "an" and "on" when they're made with joins that are not too curly and are just short horizontal or diagonal lines -- really are faster than lifting the pen ... BUT other, more complexly shaped joins (such as those in the combinations"sc" and "pa" and "gh" and "qu") are harder and slower to form well than a pen-lift would be. The more curves/changes of direction inhabit a join or other shape, the more difficult that shape will be to do well ... and the slower it will be, too: it is the *straight* line that's the shortest distance between two points.So if you compare a 100%-joined "American schoolbook" cursive script with a 100%-joinless "American schoolbook" printing the printing may be slower because even the efficient joins aren't being used ... but most non-users of cursive aren't printing in "schoolbook" fashion: they're using a few of the *efficient* joins within and between the letters.

[Mickey]

Beak - you're leaving out the fact that the joins of cursive differ in their efficiency. Some of the joins in cursive -- the easiest ones, seen in "an" and "on" when they're made with joins that are not too curly and are just short horizontal or diagonal lines -- really are faster than lifting the pen ... BUT other, more complexly shaped joins (such as those in the combinations"sc" and "pa" and "gh" and "qu") are harder and slower to form well than a pen-lift would be.

 

This is mostly a matter of familiarity and practice. I think you have over-weighted the time overhead for these joins, ascribing to them either drawn-hand times or the overhead observed during the skill acquisition phase. By the time a writer is forming common letter groups, syllables, and words as gestalts, the time delta for these "difficult" joins is negligible. Not only that, your argument ignores the optimization possible in a truly speed-tuned cursive, e.g., context-defined alternative forms and joins. This may be trading the ultimate beauty of the resulting script for speed, but beauty is not an important goal when one needs to write quickly. The sensible goals are speed, legibility, and, for long sessions, stamina.

 

I would hesitate gainsaying the wisdom of the pen men and women who designed the commercial hands of the late 19th and 20th centuries, when the combination of speed and legibility where absolute necessities. They could have easily have chose to construct printing hands. Instead, they designed speed optimized cursive hands. N.b., most (if not all?) shorthands are cursive.

[KateGladstone]

Context-defined alternative forms and joins (a simple example would be the way that most lower-case cursive letters must change sfter cursive b/o/v/w) are an obstacle because they impose the task of deciding when to use which form. The consideration is not beauty, but legibility (and the maintenance of legibility at increasing speed). My experience writing in both styles (once I finally mastered both) is that 100% joined styles aren't faster than others unless with some sacrifice of legibility. Of course, I may be a pretty slow writer -- I do not know: my top speed is only around 150 LLPM (legibile letters per minute) and I would be interested to know the LLPMs of expert devotees of cursive. (I would probably write rather faster if I did not write as large as I usually do: typical x-height for me is almost 1 centimeter.)Remember that:/1/"Negligible" instants of time, and instances of effort, add up amazingly with repetition throughout a page or a longer document./2/Among the writings of those who claim it as a _sine_qua_non_ to join all letters for speed, I can usually detect brief unconscious pen-lifts here and there. I've never, for instance, seen anyone write "antidisestablishmentarianism" without a single pen-lift, however brief (I've given this word, sometimes, as a challenge to those who claim that they neither perform nor tolerate any lifting of the pen within any word) ... and seldom if ever have I seen even more ordinary words (such as "grandmotherly" or "thankfulness" or "tyrannosaurus") performed with the pen in constant unlifted motion./3/If completely joined handwriting allowed such advantages in speed, how does it happen that -- when we have the original drafts for documents which were later copied out by a professional penman for public display -- the original drafts usually abound in pen-lifts? Surely a draft involves more speed than a final fair copy. The most famous example of this phenomenon, of course, is the visible difference between Thomas Jefferson's rough drafts for the Declaration of Independence -- http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trt001.html -- and the famous finished copy (written out by professional penman Timothy Matlack) which you have doubtless seen reproduced, but which you can see again at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Us_declaration_independence.jpg ...if 100%-joined writing was the faster kind, then why didn't Jefferson draft the Declaration in a 100%-joined style/3/By the way: at least 50% of shorthands, past and present are *not* 100%-joined (if that is how you are defining cursive).

[Mickey]

Context-defined alternative forms and joins (a simple example would be the way that most lower-case cursive letters must change sfter cursive b/o/v/w) are an obstacle because they impose the task of deciding when to use which form.

 

Faulty premise. The above is true only during the skills acquisition stage of learning. As anyone who ever learned to type would tell you, you don't learn to type t-h-e, you learn to type "the." It is a gestalt, a single gesture, in practical usage requiring no decision making at all. The rest of your argument thus falls with your premise.

 

Learned physical actions are not transmitted to muscles item by item; the neurological overhead would all but paralyze us. You don't need to decide everytime how b/o/v/w are joined; you learn how to make those joins and then do them automatically, unless you are doing a drawn hand, or are impressing some visual aesthetic (other than legibility) on the writing. Perhaps printing might be initially faster for rote copying of text in a language one cannot read or speak, but even then, the gain would disappear once regular patterns of letters were recognized and converted into morphemes (of unknown meaning) and even larger repeating structures which could then be re-sythesized as "gestures." At this point the inherent physical efficiencies of cursive would win out. It is not necessary to know the meaning of "Mxyzptlk" to learn how to write it as a one or two gestures, rather than 8.

 

I also suggest you take a look at some of the pioneering work done by Ben Libet et al. in neurophysiology, particularly regarding conscious volitional acts. You might very well discover that most of what you are assuming is a decision was not really a decision at all. (N.b., the mixing of tenses in the previous sentence was not inadvertent.)

[ildbig]

Re the question of speed -- when I observe cursive writing and other writing (done at the same size and by people of similar ages and with a similar length of study/experience as hand writers), the non-users of cursive generally write about 1.5 times as fast as equally legible cursive users.

 

I imagine that must be just a matter of practice, no?

[Chevalier]

I can't help it, from my european point of view, knowing cursive (not talking about actually using it, some people prefer a mixed print style) and knowing how to use a slide rule (just an example for all those skills, that are basic knowledge) is so important, that everybody, that doesn't know it, is leaving a pretty bad impression behind.

A cv has to be written by hand in some european countries, and being unable to write a cv, in neat and legible cursive, might prevent you from getting the job. Of cause, the education system is to blame in some countries, but that's another story.

 

The excuse that's always at hand (quick as it's lame) is the computer. It's like having a child that never learned to walk, because we have bikes and cars today (or not teaching basic math, just because there are calculators).

 

There is scientific proof, that those things are important for our brain development, because it's a form of direct interaction. Imagine what could happen in 50-100 years. Only few people will know everything in their field (including the basics) and the rest will become trained users (read monkeys), that will be unable to do anything besides using "their software".

 

I am usually not a 1984 guy, but this is how everything started. Ok, I am getting a little paranoid about this matter, but I simply don't get it. Writing cursive (like all those other skills, that pupils aren't learning anymore) isn't rocket science. It took centuries before ordinary people were allowed to learn how to write properly, and we are slowly giving up this privilege now.

[andru]

Chevalier, thanks for posting as I totally missed this thread first time 'round.

 

Just want to add that, I believe the reason I use cursive script is because it reduces the chances of skipping with fountain pens. Simple as that! Particularly the iffy pens/ink I used before joining FPN and "getting serious". I can't help wondering if this was a factor in the development of cursive styles? And the price I pay for a non-semi-detached style is that it is indeed slower than printing. But if I want to write quickly, typing is preferred -- at least 5x faster than printing or cursive!

 

Now back into reading these interesting posts...

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

>Faulty premise. The above is true only during the skills acquisition stage of learning. As anyone >who ever learned to type would tell you, you don't learn to type t-h-e, you learn to type "the."

 

I type 80+ words per minute, and experience each keystroke as separate: in other words, I decidedly do type "t-h-e."(I simply have learned to do it very fast — but must do it consciously: how much soever I practice anything fine-motor, it never gets unconscious.) This may partly reflect the fact that I'm neurologically below average, in ways that affect motor patterns ... but then, by definition 50% of any group is below average on whatever's being measured. (Surely that 50% is not to be left without a reasonable means of handwriting ... )

 

For me — as for many whom I've had to teach —, there is simply no such thing as experiencing an automatized unconscious "gestalt" of voluntary motor sequences, no matter how one trains: the motions must be planned, and planned so that they'll be accident-resistant and can therefore be CONSCIOUSLY sped up without bad results

 ... Even for you more fortunate folks whose neurology works as the textbooks say it should, a decision that was made unconsciously (as in automatized habit) is still a decision that is MADE -- the path taken by the pen from the end of one letter to the beginning of the next is the same path whether it is traversed consciously or otherwise. (When a dog or horse follows a familiar route home, the route has the same twists and turns irrespective of the animal's state of consciouness at the time.) Unconscious, habitual decisions are still decisions.

 

Re:

 

>Learned physical actions are not transmitted to muscles item by item" ...

...

Except for those of us who find perforce that, with some tasks, they ARE. To get any automaticity at all in joining out of b/o/v/w (or in other elements of joining within writing), my practice had to aim at the simplest and most invariant method of producing the letters that these joins would aim toward and into.

"The toad beneath the harrow knows

Exactly where each tooth-point goes —

The butterfly above the road

Preaches contentment to the toad." — Kipling

(Or in your case, you are a butterfly preaching the glories of flight.)

 

Re:

> ... unless you are doing a drawn hand,

 

I write by hand at 130-160 legible letters per minute; I'll leave it to you to decide if that's so slow as to be "drawn," or if it reveals undue conern with nything but writing legibly at a practical rate.

 

Re:

 

> At this point the inherent physical efficiencies of cursive would win out.

 

... Except that, for many of us, they don't.

Certain joins are indeed faster than pen-lifts — certain others, though, are slower than lifting the pen where the join would otherwise occur. Using the former, and avoiding only the latter (which is what I do, rather than "print" as it seems you've assumed) is at least as fast as using the slow joins right along with the fat ones.

 

Re:

>It is not necessary to know the meaning of "Mxyzptlk" to learn how to write it as a one or two gestures, rather than 8.

 

Writing that series of letters, or any other series of comparable length, requires far more than 8 gestures whether you are conscious of the fact or not. Using just 1or 2 gestures would produce just a scrawl — which I am sure you do not produce.

I promise, though, to search out and read Dr. Libet's work. Meanwhile, please explain to me how a decision made by the unconscious parts of the nervous system (either before, or after, some form of habit-training is given to it) is anything other than a decision nonetheless.

 

Re:

>My cursive certainly does have gaps here and there (pen lifts) and from a straw poll of those around me today, I imagine that the vast majority of cursive user's ordinary daily writing does so too. ... Because my script has lifts, would this disqualify it as cursive to anyone?

 

In the USA (unlike most other English-speaking nations), one normally is told that writing with pen-lifts isn't cursive and therefore is wrong if the instrutios are to use cursive — there is simply no name in common use, in the USA, for semi-joined writing: it's all lumped together with printing (as if joining sometimes, or often, equaled never joining & should therefore be forbidden if the aim is to write in cursive ...)

 

Re:

 

>>Re the question of speed -- when I observe cursive writing and other writing >>(done at the same size and by people of similar ages and with a similar length >>of study/experience as hand writers), the non-users of cursive generally write >>about 1.5 times as fast as equally legible cursive users.

 

... and ...

 

>I imagine that must be just a matter of practice, no? 

 

— I am speaking of situations where the amount of teaching/practice had been documentably similar across styles.

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

>Faulty premise. The above is true only during the skills acquisition stage of learning. As anyone >who ever learned to type would tell you, you don't learn to type t-h-e, you learn to type "the."

 

I type 80+ words per minute, and experience each keystroke as separate: in other words, I decidedly do type "t-h-e."(I simply have learned to do it very fast — but must do it consciously: how much soever I practice anything fine-motor, it never gets unconscious.) This may partly reflect the fact that I'm neurologically below average, in ways that affect motor patterns ... but then, by definition 50% of any group is below average on whatever's being measured. (Surely that 50% is not to be left without a reasonable means of handwriting ... )

 

For me — as for many whom I've had to teach —, there is simply no such thing as experiencing an automatized unconscious "gestalt" of voluntary motor sequences, no matter how one trains: the motions must be planned, and planned so that they'll be accident-resistant and can therefore be CONSCIOUSLY sped up without bad results

 ... Even for you more fortunate folks whose neurology works as the textbooks say it should, a decision that was made unconsciously (as in automatized habit) is still a decision that is MADE -- the path taken by the pen from the end of one letter to the beginning of the next is the same path whether it is traversed consciously or otherwise. (When a dog or horse follows a familiar route home, the route has the same twists and turns irrespective of the animal's state of consciouness at the time.) Unconscious, habitual decisions are still decisions.

 

Re:

 

>Learned physical actions are not transmitted to muscles item by item" ...

...

Except for those of us who find perforce that, with some tasks, they ARE. To get any automaticity at all in joining out of b/o/v/w (or in other elements of joining within writing), my practice had to aim at the simplest and most invariant method of producing the letters that these joins would aim toward and into.

"The toad beneath the harrow knows

Exactly where each tooth-point goes —

The butterfly above the road

Preaches contentment to the toad." — Kipling

(Or in your case, you are a butterfly preaching the glories of flight.)

 

Re:

> ... unless you are doing a drawn hand,

 

I write by hand at 130-160 legible letters per minute; I'll leave it to you to decide if that's so slow as to be "drawn," or if it reveals undue conern with nything but writing legibly at a practical rate.

 

Re:

 

> At this point the inherent physical efficiencies of cursive would win out.

 

... Except that, for many of us, they don't.

Certain joins are indeed faster than pen-lifts — certain others, though, are slower than lifting the pen where the join would otherwise occur. Using the former, and avoiding only the latter (which is what I do, rather than "print" as it seems you've assumed) is at least as fast as using the slow joins right along with the fat ones.

 

Re:

>It is not necessary to know the meaning of "Mxyzptlk" to learn how to write it as a one or two gestures, rather than 8.

 

Writing that series of letters, or any other series of comparable length, requires far more than 8 gestures whether you are conscious of the fact or not. Using just 1or 2 gestures would produce just a scrawl — which I am sure you do not produce.

I promise, though, to search out and read Dr. Libet's work. Meanwhile, please explain to me how a decision made by the unconscious parts of the nervous system (either before, or after, some form of habit-training is given to it) is anything other than a decision nonetheless.

 

Re:

>My cursive certainly does have gaps here and there (pen lifts) and from a straw poll of those around me today, I imagine that the vast majority of cursive user's ordinary daily writing does so too. ... Because my script has lifts, would this disqualify it as cursive to anyone?

 

In the USA (unlike most other English-speaking nations), one normally is told that writing with pen-lifts isn't cursive and therefore is wrong if the instrutios are to use cursive — there is simply no name in common use, in the USA, for semi-joined writing: it's all lumped together with printing (as if joining sometimes, or often, equaled never joining & should therefore be forbidden if the aim is to write in cursive ...)

 

Re:

 

>>Re the question of speed -- when I observe cursive writing and other writing >>(done at the same size and by people of similar ages and with a similar length >>of study/experience as hand writers), the non-users of cursive generally write >>about 1.5 times as fast as equally legible cursive users.

 

... and ...

 

>I imagine that must be just a matter of practice, no? 

 

— I am speaking of situations where the amount of teaching/practice had been documentably similar across styles.

[andru]

Kate you did done double posted there.

 

Anyone have trouble with their quills skipping?

[The Good Captain]

I've noticed a few posts on different forums reappearing after the site went down, sometimes more than once.

Could this be the case here? There was an ink comment about a red/pink colour that comes to mind. It suddenly reappeared yesterday having 'gone' on Sunday or so.

[Nonsensical]

As I was taught to write in cursive during primary school (that, and the fact that I often had to decipher my friend's writing, I was one of the few people who could actually read her cursive, beautiful and even as it was), I am able to read cursive.

 

I write using a mix of cursive and print, and one of my friends is determined to call it cursive, whilst I believe it is mainly print...however, I am not able to write as fast as I would like. I can only achieve perhaps...40 wpm whilst writing? Maybe 50, if I'm lucky(Just tested myself, 190 letters per minute BARELY LEGIBLE THOUGH). Typing, on the other hand, 90wpm easily (500+ letters), and a maximum speed of 110wpm when I'm concentrating(and very lucky). Different times call for different measures. :roflmho:

 

I do, however see the need for people to learn to read cursive, however strange an idea that is to most high school students these days. At my University, I have yet to come across a single person who writes using cursive, yet 20% of the students take notes using a laptop...it is a dying art. :ph34r:

Edited June 2, 2011 by Nonsensical

[Mickey]

Re:

 

>Faulty premise. The above is true only during the skills acquisition stage of learning. As anyone >who ever learned to type would tell you, you don't learn to type t-h-e, you learn to type "the."

 

I type 80+ words per minute, and experience each keystroke as separate: in other words, I decidedly do type "t-h-e."(I simply have learned to do it very fast — but must do it consciously: how much soever I practice anything fine-motor, it never gets unconscious.) This may partly reflect the fact that I'm neurologically below average, in ways that affect motor patterns ... but then, by definition 50% of any group is below average on whatever's being measured. (Surely that 50% is not to be left without a reasonable means of handwriting ... )

 

 

You didn't follow my suggestion and do any reading in neurophysiology, kinesiology, and consciousness, did you? What you experience is fairly irrelevant to how your body executes routine activities. Perception of events lags between 1/8 and 1/4 of a second behind the actual event. So it's quite possible for you to "experience each keystroke individually" without actually propagating the nerve impulse responsible for them in the same manner. There is also a profound difference between perceiving pulses and discriminating one pulse from another.

 

Here's a thought experiment for you. Look at the paragraph above and read each character individually. Don't worry about recognizing words or discerning meaning, just recognize each individual character. Time yourself and I believe you will see that your kinesthetic / neurological model is faulty.

 

The whole point of practice is to organize (canalize) individual nerve impulse into groups of impulses, gestures, if you will, which in turn can be fused into more complex gestures. Under your understanding of kinesiology and neurology, this doesn't happen and there is no point in practice.

 

Sorry, the premise still falls.

Edited June 2, 2011 by Mickey

[Nonsensical]

.....

Perception of events lags between 1/8 and 1/4 of a second behind the actual event. So it's quite possible for you to "experience each keystroke individually" without actually propagating the nerve impulse responsible for them in the same manner. There is also a profound difference between perceiving pulses and discriminating one pulse from another.

I'm inclined to agree with you on this point, as it takes time for the brain to send the signal to our muscles, and then for the sensory neurons to send the signal back to the brain...

That and experience tells me that whilst typing (I do not look at the keyboard when typing, nor do I touch type), that 90% of the time I will hit the right key, 9% of the time I will realise that I have hit the wrong key immediately, and correct myself, and the last 1%, well I AM human. :roflmho: