The Lost Art Of Writing

[KateGladstone]

I can solve anagrams, when I am informed that they are anagrams. Otherwise, I do my st to read what is written — and to identify the unreadable as exactly that. Do you find something wrong in this?You may feel "sure" that I can do easily (or at all) whatever you can easily do. Those feelings d not, however, confer upon me the ability to do it.

[Nonsensical]

I take the effort to fill in the blanks, where you may have missed a letter or two (st -> best, d -> do)...I may have assumed that you do the same. If not, I apologise for the assumption.

[beak]

.......................

 

I don't understand, Beak. .............

Sorry for delay in reply - been out shopping; glorious day here; too good to waste inside. But the point was made by Nonsensical anyway - thanks.

 

I guess the bellicose nature of some threads stems from one person offering that another's experience is simply not so. Seems unproductive when put that way. One might offer that it is uncommon, based on different / wider experience, but hardly refute it, I should say.

 

The neurological stream is a little beyond me - Oh, had I the time - so shan't comment.

 

Sure, in the past, many things were done for the sake of 'form', but I think cursive handwriting and its inherent speed cannot be thought to fall under that heading. I just cannot see it surviving for so long if it were as inefficient as some here seem to suggest. Add to this my personal experience of relative speeds, and there seems no case to answer.

 

Many personal justifications for printing at the expense of learning cursive properly can be made, but all seem to fail the test of one person who is proficient at both comparing their relative speeds. I can accept 'Printing is faster for me because I haven't taken the time to master cursive.' but not 'Therefore printing is faster because my printing is faster'.

Edited June 4, 2011 by beak

[KateGladstone]

I don't always notice my own typing errors (I am still learning to manage the iPad's occasionally unresponsive keyboard), but such lapses don't confer on me the ability to read others' intentionally scrambled text. (Oddly, though, I am very quick at cracking simple substitution ciphers.)

[KateGladstone]

I know at least three people who learned cursive properly as children — if winning a Palmer Method Medal indicated having learned it properly — and who then found that they could produce a semi-joined or even (in one case) an unjoined style with equal legibility at greater speed.On this network, I suspect that we have more than one person who has ably practiced and mastered more than one style (Caliken springs to mind, and likely there are others) — I hope that some of them are reading this and that they will feel moved to submit comparative samples (and times in legible letters per minute) for each of the styles that they write.

[Nonsensical]

Well, my cursive handwriting is terrible. This is my normal handwriting, and the speed is listed above.

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/815/05192011080436pm.jpg/

[beak]

I know at least three people who learned cursive properly as children — if winning a Palmer Method Medal indicated having learned it properly — and who then found that they could produce a semi-joined or even (in one case) an unjoined style with equal legibility at greater speed.On this network, I suspect that we have more than one person who has ably practiced and mastered more than one style (Caliken springs to mind, and likely there are others) — I hope that some of them are reading this and that they will feel moved to submit comparative samples (and times in legible letters per minute) for each of the styles that they write.

Again, I'm not sure sure to what extent gold medallists in a particular style are relevant to ordinary, everyday handwriting as is practised by the majority of us, and I've no idea of the criteria used to judge the competitions that you mentioned, so cannot comment on their relevance to this. I suspect that forming a particular join exactly in the 'book' manner would be the sort of thing used to judge such work, and the particular 'proper' shape of a loop. but how many of us would care about such things in our ordinary hand? We would surely all have our (perfectly legible) variations on these themes, but they would win us no prizes in such a test.

 

There seems to be a thought that the 'perfection' of one of the standard styles is the touchstone by which to judge all cursive scripts, even the humble attempts of many of us, and I don't think that this is helpful in judging what most of us do. Again, 'calligraphy' seems irrelevant to my ordinary style of writing, where speed is concerned, and I would guess that this is a common thought.

 

My point rather, is that, given basic legibility, and competence in both systems, I am at a loss to understand how cursive can be described as slower.

[caliken]

......I can at least a hazard a guess at what has been written when I look at the original archive documents to do with my family's genealogy - census forms, birth, marriage and death certificates for instance.

I can't alway read it first time, but if I stare at the word long enough usually it comes to me what has been written.

 

Someone gave me a tip, a long time ago, which I've used from time to time, when attempting to decipher either old or badly- written, new handwriting.

 

If I trace a difficult word with a ball-point pen, at normal writing speed, I can often tell what the word is meant to be, just from the sensation of following the shape of the original writing.

 

Ken

Edited June 4, 2011 by caliken

[KateGladstone]

To Beak:

Here's how joining all letters can be slower than not doing so —

 

Many of the joins — but not all of them— are faster than pen-lifts: the rest are more complexly shaped (hence, slower to do legibly) than a pen-lift would be.

 

For example, the joins "pa" and "sc" and "qu" and "gh" each contain multiple curves, which inevitably take more time than straight or near-straight lines. So these joins take more time to form competently than do simpler joins like those seen in "an" or "on" — unlike those simple joins, they even take more time than pen-lifts in the corresponding locations would take instead. (The straight line permitted by, and formed during, a pen-lift is the shortest — hence the quickest — route between two points: so much so, that this more than compensate for the time used to move the pen momentarily off the paper in thus moving between the letters in "sc" or whatever other letter-combination would require compound curves if joined.)

[Mickey]

 

Someone gave me a tip, a long time ago, which I've used from time to time, when attempting to decipher either old or badly- written, new handwriting.

 

If I trace a difficult word with a ball-point pen, at normal writing speed, I can often tell what the word is meant to be, just from the sensation of following the shape of the original writing.

 

Ken

 

Absolutely brilliant, using one's own muscle memory to decode what the visual systems won't.

[Columba Livia]

For example, the joins "pa" and "sc" and "qu" and "gh" each contain multiple curves, which inevitably take more time than straight or near-straight lines

 

Out of interest, I gave those pairs a try, seeing how many legible combinations I could produce in one minute with a gel ink pen (Blue uniball Jetstream (http://www.cultpens.com/acatalog/Uni-Ball_Jetstream_SXN-210.html)), and the results were as follows:

 

Printing "pa": 40 pairs

American cursive (i.e palmer style) "pa": 39 pairs

 

Printing "sc": 50 pairs

American cursive "sc": 44 pairs

 

Printing "qu": 38 pairs

American cursive "qu": 37 pairs

 

Printing "gh": 45 pairs

American cursive "gh": 46 pairs

 

I then tried some words with those combinations in. Legible words in one minute

 

Printing "pair": 24 words

American cursive "pair": 26 words

 

Printing "scum": 25 words

American cursive "scum": 26 words

 

Printing "quit": 22 words

American cursive "quit": 27 words

 

Printing "ghat": 25 words

American cursive "ghat": 29 words

 

So I would have to say that I personally find (American) cursive faster to write than printing. I also found the rolling rhythm of American cursive much easier on my hand than the stop-start of printing. It "clicked" when I wrote in cursive, in a way which I didn't experience when I printed. It feels more intuitive and natural.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Columba Livia

[KateGladstone]

Okay, so we have a cursive-versus-printing comparison from someone who does both. How about a cursive-versus-Italic comparison from someone who does both?

[nicholasyeo]

Wow, such beautiful artefacts!!!

[Mickey]

Part of the problem with this discussion is the lack of clearly defined terms. For example, does legible mean universally legible or is consistently legible by the writer the proper standard. I would think, as regards absolute maximum speed, the latter is the correct standard. Legibility is always going to degrade with speed and with writing intended for the eyes of others, speed must be sacrificed for legibility. So without qualifying what sort of legibility is required, we are comparing apples to screwdrivers.

 

I wouldn't say I've mastered any hand, but I've studied or been taught several. I was taught to print by my grandmother, whose cursive writing was clearly Spencerian. (She used the Spencer copy books in her classroom both as a student and later as a teacher.) I was taught Noble in school. Later I learned Italic (Chancery), dabbled in copperplate, and am now learning Spencerian.

 

For absolute speed, I revert to Noble. It isn't pretty and at full speed is reliably decipherable only by myself and (usually) "she who must be obeyed." Italic cursive for me is noticeably faster than printing and more legible, but it's what I've mostly used for the last 25 years or so. Notice the trend. The more consistently joined the hand, the greater the speed. Legibility is the trade off.

 

I've only been working on Spencerian for a few weeks, but it's pretty clear that it will eventually rank up with Chancery for speed and legibility.

 

Once the standard joins are learned, I don't think any joins, other than some of the elaborate ones used in ornamental penmanship, incur as much of a time penalty as lifting the pen. Arguing against cursive writing because of little used, arcane, elaborate, or novel joins is akin to requiring that all printed hands must include serifs.

[KateGladstone]

Columba Livia — Did your comparisons change only the single variable of joining/not joining, or did you also adopt the other (and far less efficient) aspects of printing along with the only change that I was actually asking about?

[KateGladstone]

Mickey — you ask important questions. Here's how I answer:/1/ I take legibility to mean forming a letter so that it cannot possibly be read as anything other than itself: e.g., "u" should preclude any possibility of regarding it as "n" or "a" or "U"/2/ Comparison of apples with screwdrivers is entirely possible, along numerous dimensions (e.g., weight, aerodynamics, chemical content, provenance, rapidity of oxidation at standard temperature and pressure, etc., etc., etc.) It is a poor intellect that cannot compare one object or concept with another.;-)/3/ If Mickey is right that his Spencerian "will eventually rank up WITH [my emphasis]" his Chancery/Italic "for speed and legibility," then he expects the two to end up about equal — which will much discomfit those who aver that anything ceaselessly joined must be faster than anything with fewer joins. I look forward to the results of Mickey's Spencerian/Chancery comparison, when he is equally adept with both & deems himself eady to attempt comparison  — I'd also like to see similar comparisons of (e.g.) Palmer and Italic, from those who are dually adept.

[KateGladstone]

When, as Mickey notes, "legibility is the trade-off," this makes evident the value of seeking an"optimax" for both legibility and speed. That's why I ask for a comparison of LEGIBLE letters per minute, instead of merely letters per minute.

[Mickey]

It is a poor intellect that cannot compare one object or concept with another.

 

But it is frequently challenging to develop methodologies which yield comparisons that are other than purely subjective, and some comparisons yield results so unilluminating as to be meaningless, e.g., the relative effectiveness of a piece of a non-citrus fruit to effect household repairs.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Mickey

[Columba Livia]

Re legibility, that is a tricky thing, especially when ones takes into account familiarity with someone's writing or a particular model. Anyhow, FWIW this is how it was with my writing:

 

http://i56.tinypic.com/16035m9.jpg

 

I used the special t for the endings of words there, and since I use the "reverse r" someone familiar with my writing would surely guess from context that the thing on the end of a word is a t, but some people not familiar with my writing, without an r to give context might mistake the t for an r in some cases, I suspect. Legibility is a tricky thing.

 

When I printed, I made each letter in one movement (i.e not like the ball and stick method, except for the crossbar on the t and dotting the i). I held the pen in the same tripod grip for both printing and cursive, and I did move the paper and my arm around on the table as I wrote with both cursive and printing.

 

My feeling is that joined up handwriting is faster than printing; but that there is no one true model for joined up handwriting out there, instead it varies from person to person depending on their individual traits. Some people may do better with loops, others without, some with joining every letter (perhaps even words sometimes), some joining only a few.

Edited June 4, 2011 by Columba Livia

[beak]

To Beak:

Here's how joining all letters can be slower than not doing so —

 

Many of the joins — but not all of them— are faster than pen-lifts: the rest are more complexly shaped (hence, slower to do legibly) than a pen-lift would be.

 

For example, the joins "pa" and "sc" and "qu" and "gh" each contain multiple curves, which inevitably take more time than straight or near-straight lines. So these joins take more time to form competently than do simpler joins like those seen in "an" or "on" — unlike those simple joins, they even take more time than pen-lifts in the corresponding locations would take instead. (The straight line permitted by, and formed during, a pen-lift is the shortest — hence the quickest — route between two points: so much so, that this more than compensate for the time used to move the pen momentarily off the paper in thus moving between the letters in "sc" or whatever other letter-combination would require compound curves if joined.)

 

1. I, and I doubt that I'm alone in this, don't join all the letters.

2. 'Many of the joins - but not all of them are faster than pen-lifts'. Which defeats the argument, I should say, unless I misunderstand you; do you mean that most joins are faster (QED) or something else - I don't yet find your point here.

 

3. I, and I doubt that I am alone, either simplify potentially complex joins (as might be given by pattern books of standard hands) or omit them.

 

I, and I doubt that I am alone, make all of the joins you mention (again) at lighting pace. As has been pointed out, these joins are more complex in theory than in practice. The joins you mention require nothing but a flick or a naturally-made and easy, shallow curve; IMO you overemphasize their complexity in ordinary, everyday handwriting. Perhaps you steer nearer the truth when considering 'text book' award-winning work, I don't know, and confess that such is of little interest to me; I am speaking only of attaining a legible, fast hand for general use.

 

Catching up on Mickeys definitions point, mine are; legible: that readable to more or less anyone who can read cursive. Cursive, in this discussion, ordinary joined writing for everyday use, not textbook patterns or copybook hands.