Who Uses Connected Writing?

[recluse]

 

I think the question is more dire than "writing styles". I'm sorry, but I just can't print as fast as I "write". Taking off the nib from the paper surface for each letter is far more time consuming than writing one continuous line. A quick google seems to agree.

 

But why would you need a superior writing speed if all you output in terms of words is Twitter message?

 

Which is probably why those who write more tend to use cursive more often; thoughts sometimes do fly away (I think Erich Kastner likened it to a small animal... or a table running away. Someone jog my memories) and printing each letter just won't do. But typing all the time means you might run too fast and your "legs" may get jumbled. Handwriting in cursive it is.

 

I think, if we forced the students to write "five page essay in 30 minutes, GO" since year 3, they'd soon be using cursive. When you're scribbling away, printing isn't going to work.

 

But as it seems a global thing to have students "write less", I'm guessing "less cursive" is also going global. The high school students I see are writing minimal amounts, both in terms of notes and just writing assignments, and using technology. Even grading is done online.

 

It's not difficult to propose a system of drills, which will make people write monoline. After all such systems were implemented quite widely not so long time ago. The problem is that if particular requirement is significantly promoted, there are better solutions. If fast writing is needed then it's better to teach special models, some sort of shorthand. This, of course, would be ridiculous in the modern world from the perspective of public education. In any case, the mere objective of fast composing texts of different length is best achieved by other means than writing.

 

There's a problem with joint cursive writing. It's too sensitive to slight variation of individual forms due to the lack of skills, or excessive speed, or improper environment and so on. I was taught writing in joint cursive, of course, being a Russian and attending the elementary school in the end of 70s. I write a lot, even if only texts are counted. So, I have a lot of practice. And still, my regular, not very fast, hand is close to illegible to people around me. This kind of problem was recognized long time ago. At some point people tried to address it within the framework of public education and, as a result, we have script writing all around. This is yet another illustration of what happens, when particular requirements are promoted as the most important.

 

Recently I've tried to confirm for myself that indeed joint cursive is more convenient for moderately fast writing than disjoint cursive. There's no point to consider very fast writing since, anyway, it should be done in a special way with a lot of abbreviations and so on. I was surprised finding that disjoint cursive is only a bit slower but much more legible. And then I remembered that I actually wrote like this some 25 years ago, after seeing my grandfather writing. And his writing was fast. This is not that surprising. The reason why disjoint cursive is fast is because each letter is written in the most efficient way regardless what was the previous letter.

 

At the same time, I dislike the rhythm of disjoint cursive and writing script is a chore for me. I prefer my hand to run almost in a single motion. It's not a strict monoline, of course, but most connecting strokes are there.

 

I see downsides of widespread oversimplified hands not in slower or more tiresome writing but rather in the whole ideology of copying and recognizing simple forms. Not only motions are reduced to few straight lines but understandable patterns as well. Whether this is indeed an issue, I've yet to understand for myself.

[GabrielleDuVent]

 

It's not difficult to propose a system of drills, which will make people write monoline. After all such systems were implemented quite widely not so long time ago. The problem is that if particular requirement is significantly promoted, there are better solutions. If fast writing is needed then it's better to teach special models, some sort of shorthand. This, of course, would be ridiculous in the modern world from the perspective of public education. In any case, the mere objective of fast composing texts of different length is best achieved by other means than writing.

 

There's a problem with joint cursive writing. It's too sensitive to slight variation of individual forms due to the lack of skills, or excessive speed, or improper environment and so on. I was taught writing in joint cursive, of course, being a Russian and attending the elementary school in the end of 70s. I write a lot, even if only texts are counted. So, I have a lot of practice. And still, my regular, not very fast, hand is close to illegible to people around me. This kind of problem was recognized long time ago. At some point people tried to address it within the framework of public education and, as a result, we have script writing all around. This is yet another illustration of what happens, when particular requirements are promoted as the most important.

 

Recently I've tried to confirm for myself that indeed joint cursive is more convenient for moderately fast writing than disjoint cursive. There's no point to consider very fast writing since, anyway, it should be done in a special way with a lot of abbreviations and so on. I was surprised finding that disjoint cursive is only a bit slower but much more legible. And then I remembered that I actually wrote like this some 25 years ago, after seeing my grandfather writing. And his writing was fast. This is not that surprising. The reason why disjoint cursive is fast is because each letter is written in the most efficient way regardless what was the previous letter.

 

At the same time, I dislike the rhythm of disjoint cursive and writing script is a chore for me. I prefer my hand to run almost in a single motion. It's not a strict monoline, of course, but most connecting strokes are there.

 

I see downsides of widespread oversimplified hands not in slower or more tiresome writing but rather in the whole ideology of copying and recognizing simple forms. Not only motions are reduced to few straight lines but understandable patterns as well. Whether this is indeed an issue, I've yet to understand for myself.

 

My point was not that we need faster writing, but that there is no longer any need for people to write, which has led to the demise of cursives. If the students today were forced to do writing drills, as I was, then they'll start using cursive, because printing just takes far too much time when you have a page quota within a time limit.

 

I've never heard of "disjoint cursive", to be honest; cursive is synonymous with "joint writing", and so, to me, "disjointed joint writing" is an oxymoron.

[recluse]

 

I've never heard of "disjoint cursive", to be honest; cursive is synonymous with "joint writing", and so, to me, "disjointed joint writing" is an oxymoron.

 

Well, there was even this Roman cursive, which wasn't supposed to be connected at all. So, disjoint Roman cursive would be a pleonasm.

Edited October 18, 2013 by recluse

[GeneralSynopsis]

 

I've never heard of "disjoint cursive", to be honest; cursive is synonymous with "joint writing", and so, to me, "disjointed joint writing" is an oxymoron.

 

I think they are referring to hybrid script where certain letters are not joined but most are (in my case i's and j's are never joint to the following letter, and t's are joined via the horizontal crossing stroke)

[honza]

Funny that you ask about Cyrillic. I started learning Russian in 5th grade (at that time Russian was the only compulsory foreign language and everybody had to study it), and one of the first things we did in that class was that we learnt to write connected script Cyrillic. I can still do it almost a quarter a century later. (We had only two year of Russian, since then the revolution of 1989 came and we all switched to either English or German as the first foreign language.)

[amk]

For Francophones, there are mighty documents from the French government on the teaching of cursive writing, with erudite references including sixteenth century handwriting manuals;

 

www.inrp.fr/images/musee/pdf/colloque_alphabet.pdf

and

http://cache.media.eduscol.education.fr/file/premier_degre/46/9/Document_accompagnement_polices_de_caracteres_cursives_260469.pdf (if this doesn't work, Googling "Modeles d'ecriture scolaire document accompagnement" will get the link, and Google doesn't care whether you use the right accents or not).

 

It is, to my taste, rather too prescriptive. English friends of mine have either really poor handwriting, or a good and very personal hand; French acquaintances tend to have quite corect writing but with no personality at all in the hand. On the other hand, my calligraphy teacher is a Frenchman (as is my other half), so I shouldn't be too rude about the French!

Edited October 21, 2013 by amk

[GabrielleDuVent]

For Francophones, there are mighty documents from the French government on the teaching of cursive writing, with erudite references including sixteenth century handwriting manuals;

 

www.inrp.fr/images/musee/pdf/colloque_alphabet.pdf

and

http://cache.media.eduscol.education.fr/file/premier_degre/46/9/Document_accompagnement_polices_de_caracteres_cursives_260469.pdf (if this doesn't work, Googling "Modeles d'ecriture scolaire document accompagnement" will get the link, and Google doesn't care whether you use the right accents or not).

 

It is, to my taste, rather too prescriptive. English friends of mine have either really poor handwriting, or a good and very personal hand; French acquaintances tend to have quite corect writing but with no personality at all in the hand. On the other hand, my calligraphy teacher is a Frenchman (as is my other half), so I shouldn't be too rude about the French!

 

I think the French have a very different take on the language as opposed to the English. I have several thoughts on reasons why, but my take is that the British are far more concerned with "meanings" as opposed to "aesthetics" of the language and the writing as a whole. This probably stems from the fact that English language is a patchwork of about 30 or so tribes/peoples/dialects that required the meanings to be quite clear-cut. Otherwise, "no, I meant something else! That's not how we say it in my tribe!" occurs.

 

There's also Seyes, which really formulates the letters into a gridwork. My education in England didn't involve much "handwriting" instruction, so all my friends' handwritings differ, but American primary school education did involve quite a lot of handwriting instruction back in the late 90's, early 2000's, so most of my friends' handwriting over here looks fairly uniform when it comes to cursive.

 

Then there are those who apparently write in some new alien language during a trance that I have yet to learn, or that's what I assume, because their writing's illegible, even to themselves. When I come across these, I sometimes do wish there would be a prescriptive instruction of handwriting. I sometimes spend a good fifteen minutes trying to decipher a sentence.

[amk]

Fascinating thoughts Gabrielle! For the French aesthetics is part of the norm, whereas for the English I suspect aesthetics is something that gets added on afterwards, a bit like making toothpaste a nice flavour or adding alcohol to your post-prandial cup of coffee...

 

We did have a little handwriting practice at school, a Johnston/Fairbanks hand, but if I recollect it was one of those optional and short-term activities like Danish conversation or wrought ironwork (yes, I did both of those, though I couldn't speak Danish now if my life depended on it) rather than a core part of the curriculum as in France. However, in my childhood I remember "can't do joined-up writing" was a real term of abuse - "joined-up writing" was what distinguished babies from the educated grown-ups, that is, those of us who'd reached the ripe old age of, say, seven or eight.

[Vendome]

A mate nipped round yesterday and he informed me that his Godson, (who is 8 years old) is learning cursive writing in class. So they still teach joined up writing at my local primary school.

[carlosviet]

I came today to this article in the local news, which links many topics of this thread. I found praiseworthy the idea of going through a new language by calligraphy.

 

calligraphy.pdf