The Buckets by Greg Cravens for April 27, 2014

I confess I didn’t know that was the origin of cursive writing. But it does make a lot of sense.. And I’m glad that for once Toby was made to look smart.

Jolly good of him to suggest a comprimise

I learned cursive in school, like everybody else did back then, but I’ve lost the ability to write that way.

I learned cursive then joined the military and went to block print. Now my poor handwriting suffers from multiple personality disorder and goes back and forth from print/cursive/block print. It is horrible I type now.

It would be nice if it was true, but cursive was simply a shortcut from the official and stately gothic or other lettering. It allowed people to write way faster on documents that weren’t legal, religious, political… So it was used in private, or by merchants. As more people learned to write it became the norm. OK, I admit that caligraphy is one of my hobbies.

I learned cursive, like everyone else, and then learned to type, and then learned drafting, and then learned comic strippering. I can technically still write cursive, but only in a ’doctor’s handwriting’ crippled sort of way that’s neither faster nor better. Sorry if you don’t agree with the blotting story. It’s what I was taught when I learned to ink and draw with dip pens. And it’s technically accurate information, even if it’s not the actual impetus for the creation of cursive writing. I still think it’s the actual impetus, of course. It’s what I learned.

Modern cursive English is derived from cursive medieval Latin, which itself was inspired by Arabic. In any case, today’s strip was wonderful on several levels.

I can’t remember whether cursive was taught in 3rd grade, or that’s when I was forced to learn it (I wasn’t enrolled in school until the end of the 2nd grade). I do remember it being one of the harder things for me to learn. I’m torn on the question of whether it should still be taught. So much of my education has been useless to me as an adult. I do wish I had been taught shorthand instead of cursive. Much harder to learn, but being able to write at the speed of dictation would be useful to me even now.

Do what i do…I print-write or is it write-print? Some letter come ou as printing and some like cursive. I don’t think it matters as long as it’s legible.

Ditto what mdcdjg2008 said, except it wasn’t the military that forbade cursive, rather an 8th grade teacher. Now even I have a hard time reading my daily writing.Yet my calligraphy is beautiful and I do several scripts with ease. And yes, I do use a quill for calligraphy, and iron gall ink I make myself.

Thank you Toby!

Me too, gardenwitch, a combo sort of print-writing. Most people’s handwriting evolves over the years; my mom’s the only person I know whose writing stayed just like the handwriting manual we used in school. At one point I tried to determine what “rules” my brain was using for which letters to print vs cursive-write, which sometimes depends on where the letter is in a word, what’s next to it (I’m a psychologist, always interested in how the brain works). I figured out that I’d evolved a method even faster than pure cursive, at least for me (now that we have pens that don’t blot!):

Whenever the stroke that basically completes the letter-form ends with a leftward stroke, such that a reversal of direction and/or a bit of retracing would be necessary to make the ligature to the next letter (p, for example), I just pick up the pen and skip to the start of the new letter. Same for when the strokes necessary to define a letterform require some over-tracing in cursive to get to the beginning point for drawing the letter (like d or t). I also usually dot i’s and cross t’s immediately after making that letter — the small-motor-movement of breaking my writing flow to cross a “t” immediately takes up less time than the larger motor movement of moving my whole hand leftward after reaching the end of the word (however, if the word is very short, or the t/i is very close to the end of it, then I’m likely to let the crossing/dotting wait til I finish the word).

I found this a fascinating example of my brain moving toward greater efficiency without any conscious effort or intent. Our brains work for efficiency in all sorts of ways all the time, of course, but it’s rare that we can so clearly see its logic and process in doing so.

Also, although I don’t see the need for spending so much time in school on learning to make perfect letterforms, children really do need to learn cursive well enough to at least be able to read it. I know a couple of kids who go to a school where cursive is not taught, and they can’t even read the birthday cards they get from Grandma!

A long time ago, I bought a batch of cashiers checks prior to a trip to South America. The bank clerk boggled that my cursive signature on each check was almost identical. I can’t do that anymore. My handwriting is a mish-mash of cursive & block. Learning to use a keyboard 35+ years ago ruined my handwriting.

That last bit sounds preferable…

xxx

Is it rude of me to point out that as powdered wigs were dwindling as a staple of fashion that several wealthy wig-makers petitioned their governments to make failure to wear wigs illegal, for reasons including public health and proper patriotic tradition? Grandparents must have been very disappointed to see their children’s children go without correct headgear.

Personally, I always printed my writing … until I realized how much quicker it was to use cursive. Of course, my cursive is a lot messier, but for convenience’s sake, I’ll never go back—in my typical writing, at least.

Cursive is also a lot quicker than writing in print for the same ‘fewer strokes’ reason.

My cursive was always dreadful (I don’t think it helped that I’m left-handed). 46 years later, I can recall my 3rd grade teacher showing me how she could draw herself (a large dot) in the space I left between the two legs of a lower-case ‘t’. I gave up on cursive long ago. The only thing I regularly write in cursive is my signature, which looks almost identical on each occasion. I write it quickly and with a certain amount of panache, but the letters have minimal resemblance to the cursive they attempted to teach me in school.