The Lost Art Of Writing

[KateGladstone]

Columba Livia ... Thanks for the samples. Your "printing" is, in form, actually a hybrid of printing and Italic (and not as nice -- yet? -- as your Spencerian) so the samples compare a proficient version of one style with a not-so-proficient version of the other. may that affect results?It's likely enough that, as you say, some do better with and others without) loops and/or joining -- if this proves true, how should a handwriting program be constructed so that every child learns and performs to his/her best potential in this subject?

[KateGladstone]

Beak -- I mean that certain joins are more efficient than the corresponding pen-lifts, but that certain other join are less efficient than the corresponding pen-lifts.

Edited June 5, 2011 by KateGladstone

[beak]

Beak -- I mean that certain joins are more efficient than the corresponding pen-lifts, but that certain other join are less efficient than the corresponding pen-lifts.

I'd say that was probably right, without testing it, but don't see how the statement progresses the speed argument.

[KateGladstone]

Further: Beak, you're doubtless right about your own practices which you described in your points 1 and 3 -- and I think your practices are good ones -- my concern is that such practices (despite their known usefulness) are generally considered impermissible by those schoolteachers who still teach cursive. There are, in North America at least, teachers who would rather see an inept handwriting fully joined than see a rapid and legible cursive that even occasionally omitted or simplified a join. Such teachers and textbooks force cursive-learners to choose to sacrifice reasonableness (legibility and speed) to prescription on joining. (If they did not require such sacrifice, I'd have far fewer objections to cursive as it is taught ... When it is still taught in any fashion.)

[KateGladstone]

Beak -- my speed argument involves the greater speed and accident-resistance of a more efficient motion.

[beak]

Further: Beak, you're doubtless right about your own practices which you described in your points 1 and 3 -- and I think your practices are good ones -- my concern is that such practices (despite their known usefulness) are generally considered impermissible by those schoolteachers who still teach cursive. There are, in North America at least, teachers who would rather see an inept handwriting fully joined than see a rapid and legible cursive that even occasionally omitted or simplified a join. Such teachers and textbooks force cursive-learners to choose to sacrifice reasonableness (legibility and speed) to prescription on joining. (If they did not require such sacrifice, I'd have far fewer objections to cursive as it is taught ... When it is still taught in any fashion.)

 

AH. Now we get to the root of the difference of opinion. You, if I have you correct, are talking about a different thing; textbook learning patterns and copybook school-stuff. My reaction is that early teaching would necessarily concentrate on standard fully-formed examples. Mostly, I should say that this is an understandable starting point.

 

However - and it's a big one - most of us adapt those forms once experienced in school, as each requires, in order to assemble their own balance between speed, legibility and aesthetics; our own handwriting.

 

I can well imagine that those requiring a textbook form of script will take more time to form their writing than those slobs such as myself who have other priorities, though those who really persist at textbook forms will become rather speedy in execution, I should say.

 

In any event, given the balance of these things required by any individual, a comparison maintained to the same standard between both forms (printing or running) will show greater speed in the cursive.

 

Depending on the current requirements of the piece of work (rough note to self vs. letter to the Queen) I should think that everyone has several forms designed to accommodate a different balance of speed, aesthetics and so on.

 

My standard balance, as I gave above, moves far from copybook forms, and is quicker than the equivalent standard of printing. I have yet to hear anything that can convince me that this is not generally the case.

Edited June 5, 2011 by beak

[beak]

Beak -- my speed argument involves the greater speed and accident-resistance of a more efficient motion.

So does mine.

[publishing guy]

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.

Yes ... the world does move on ... for better and for worse. But it is nonsense to suggest that all forms are intrinsically equal. The computer is unquestionably BETTER for crunching "gobs" of data than the calculator or the abacus. When the topic is expression, I think an argument can be made that ease may be the enemy of quality.

I have seen -- in a lifetime of reading communication professionally -- a degradation in the precision of the language (not to mention the poetry) that I believe can be posited at the feet of the computer and our passion for speed. Our ideas are better expressed when our words are chosen carefully, and we choose our words more carefully when our pace is slowed and our communication is more difficult to modify.

Almost everyone has witnessed the sinking precision (and poetry) as we went from handwriting or typewriting to email to text messaging -- often communicated with symbols as opposed to words. I do it, too. To "correct" yourself on hand-written letter or a type written manuscript often required starting anew. Hence, we thought before we wrote. Now, we can spit forth our communication instantly and effortlessly under the assumption that spell check and grammar check or whatever check will make it OK without our thinking about it.

Look even to publishing, we generate millions of volumes of garbage. When the type was set (beautifully) by hand, we published only the best. Only a little less ture when skilled (and expensive) craftsmen set the type mechanically. Now we have more, cheaper and decidedly not better. As a culture, we chose inexpensive store-bought bread when we all prefer homemade.

Your children ... and the world ... will be ever so fine when they can read cursive no better than I can read Latin.

But we need not assume nothing will be lost.

One way or another, we will need keepers of the ancient flame, I suppose.

 

We have more communication, not better. Look even at publishing. We create all

[andru]

There is a study with some hard data:

 

The results of the study may be briefly quoted/stated as follows:

 

1. In legibility, manuscript [i.e. neatly printed] writing had a significant margin of superiority as compared with cursive writing. This margin is due to the independence of the letters, good spacing between words, and economy in line space.

 

2. In rate of production, manuscript writing is more rapid than cursive writing in Grades II-V. The difference in rate between the cursive writing and the manuscript writing in [the] Grade VI [group] is not large enough to be significant.

 

The number of specimens of each form of writing which were read is as follows: Grade II, seventeen; Grade III, twenty; Grade IV, twenty-four; Grade V, eighteen; and Grade VI, thirty-six.

 

There must be more recent data (this was from the 1930's)...

[DAYoung]

There is a study with some hard data:

 

The results of the study may be briefly quoted/stated as follows:

 

1. In legibility, manuscript [i.e. neatly printed] writing had a significant margin of superiority as compared with cursive writing. This margin is due to the independence of the letters, good spacing between words, and economy in line space.

 

2. In rate of production, manuscript writing is more rapid than cursive writing in Grades II-V. The difference in rate between the cursive writing and the manuscript writing in [the] Grade VI [group] is not large enough to be significant.

 

The number of specimens of each form of writing which were read is as follows: Grade II, seventeen; Grade III, twenty; Grade IV, twenty-four; Grade V, eighteen; and Grade VI, thirty-six.

 

There must be more recent data (this was from the 1930's)...

 

Interesting, Andru. Who were the readers?

[andru]

Interesting, Andru. Who were the readers?

I haven't read the whole paper, but from what I can tell, all we know is the readers were "adult" -- so, the schoolchildren wrote all samples, but legibility was determined by adults. The author(s) tried to avoid bias in a number of ways. I'm sure there are more pertinent results since? This is not my area! Just thought I'd try to ground the topic somewhat by pointing to a disciplined study.

[beak]

Re the study mentioned, I'm floored by the use of the term 'manuscript' as distinct from cursive! Manuscript = written by hand as opposed to printed in published form. Manuscript sometimes extended to include an original typed document. We are in danger of serious confusion.

 

Cursive: running writing; joined (largely) letter to letter within words.

 

Printed handwriting: letters made individually, not joined as in cursive. A more descriptive term required - unjoined?

 

Again, the study is of young people part-way to establishing a form of handwriting. So hardly conclusive in itself. Anyone know of a similar study of fully-formed techniques comparing the speed of legible joined and unjoind hands in the same person?

[DAYoung]

The study's interesting, but I'd just like to know a little more. By the 30s, cursive was already waning. Orwell reports this in the late 'forties, but writes as if full cursive were finished long before. It's possible that some of the adults were already more accustomed to printing.

 

Also, we don't know anything about the social situation of the adults, e.g. education, class, status. If some were unaccustomed to cursive, this does not necessarily invalidate cursive.

[DAYoung]

Beak, this study also uses 'manuscript' for script (i.e. unjoined). It also reports that a mixed hand (mostly cursive) was most legible (judged using Larsen and Hammill's Test of Legible Handwriting).

[beak]

The study's interesting, but I'd just like to know a little more. By the 30s, cursive was already waning. Orwell reports this in the late 'forties, but writes as if full cursive were finished long before. It's possible that some of the adults were already more accustomed to printing.

 

Also, we don't know anything about the social situation of the adults, e.g. education, class, status. If some were unaccustomed to cursive, this does not necessarily invalidate cursive.

You're referring to the Tribune piece of Feb 1947? I see no mention of any form of printing (unjoined writing) in this article, only comparisons between various forms of joined writing. I note that Orwell uses the term cursive to indicate a sub-type of joined writing, not as an umbrella term for all joined styles, and to be frank, I don't know to what actual style of hand his use of cursive refers. I don't see any indication in the article of the rise of unjoined writing, and my guess is that there was little of it to be found then, but I could be wrong in that.

 

 

[beak]

Beak, this study also uses 'manuscript' for script (i.e. unjoined). It also reports that a mixed hand (mostly cursive) was most legible (judged using Larsen and Hammill's Test of Legible Handwriting).

 

So it does. I just think the usage very misleading, unclear and unhelpful, not to mention completely incorrect, IMO. Anyone know the origin of this usage?

PS

DAYoung - is your joined quicker than your unjoined?

Edited June 5, 2011 by beak

[DAYoung]

The study's interesting, but I'd just like to know a little more. By the 30s, cursive was already waning. Orwell reports this in the late 'forties, but writes as if full cursive were finished long before. It's possible that some of the adults were already more accustomed to printing.

 

Also, we don't know anything about the social situation of the adults, e.g. education, class, status. If some were unaccustomed to cursive, this does not necessarily invalidate cursive.

You're referring to the Tribune piece of Feb 1947? I see no mention of any form of printing (unjoined writing) in this article, only comparisons between various forms of joined writing. I note that Orwell uses the term cursive to indicate a sub-type of joined writing, not as an umbrella term for all joined styles, and to be frank, I don't know to what actual style of hand his use of cursive refers. I don't see any indication in the article of the rise of unjoined writing, and my guess is that there was little of it to be found then, but I could be wrong in that.

 

Yes, you're right. Hasty judgement on my part. It doesn't back up my earlier points at all.

[DAYoung]

Beak, this study also uses 'manuscript' for script (i.e. unjoined). It also reports that a mixed hand (mostly cursive) was most legible (judged using Larsen and Hammill's Test of Legible Handwriting).

 

So it does. I just think the usage very misleading, unclear and unhelpful, not to mention completely incorrect, IMO. Anyone know the origin of this usage?

PS

DAYoung - is your joined quicker than your unjoined?

 

It is odd, I agree.

 

My unjoined is much quicker. Though my hand's often a combination of unjoined and a little joined. I'll give some examples. The first is a review for FPN. The second is a manuscript page, for my book-in-progress.

 

Unjoined

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n5/DAYoung_2006/hitlist.jpg

 

Joined & unjoined (note the joined 'o' and 'g')

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n5/DAYoung_2006/Asa-Gao.jpg

[beak]

Your second is a very interesting mix of the two, and a hand that many would feel similar to their own, I'll guess. To me, being more of a 'joiner', I'd ache to link the letters in 'often' near the top of the page!

 

Looking at this makes me wonder if the ballpoint pen and any grip intended to suit it has had any effect on the rise of unjoined writing? Not that you are using a Biro here. Probably nothing in this (?) but worth the question.

[DAYoung]

I learned to write with ballpoints. It's possible this influenced my hand.

 

Having said this, we learned cursive at school (as is my son now). But I clearly didn't take much in. Interestingly, my handwriting - with a ballpoint - is almost identical to my male friends'. Fountain pen is another story.