The Social Cost of Cursive Handwriting

[RunDownHouse]

I get a few letters a year. Thos from my grandmother are in cursive, and take me a billion years to read even though they're a page, tops. Those from people younger than my grandmother are printed, and a breeze to read through.

In short, its entirely appropriate that the staunchest defender of cursive in this thread has the username, "Grandma."

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

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[TheRover]

cause I had [censored] else to do during halftime, I wrote part of someone else's post in this thread down in cursive. See if you can figure out which one. Yeah, the camera is terrible.

[Lazy Meatball]

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You people are honestly suggesting that cursive should be completely abandoned? That all handrwitten correspondence, be it a doctors prescription, a love letter, a letter to your mother, etc. should all be written in block letters? It's absurd and it's lazy.

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Do you know the number of pharmacy errors that could be prevented by improving the penmanship of doctors? Switching to print would go a long way in fixing this.

[jman220]

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I had no idea this discussion would be so polarized!

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Its not, its one person (GrandmaStabone) versus the rest of the English speaking world.

[pkr2k5]

[ QUOTE ]
cause I had [censored] else to do during halftime, I wrote part of someone else's post in this thread down in cursive. See if you can figure out which one. Yeah, the camera is terrible.



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close to impossible to read, but the camera is probably partially to blame

[bwana devil]

ive read many threads in 2+2. this ranks up there w/ one of the absolute dumbest. people name calling and defending their camp of writing style.

i think ill go outside and enjoy the day now.

bwana

[captZEEbo]

[ QUOTE ]
cause I had [censored] else to do during halftime, I wrote part of someone else's post in this thread down in cursive. See if you can figure out which one. Yeah, the camera is terrible.



[/ QUOTE ]jack of arcades!

[MrMon]

I can see a lot of people on this thread live in a little box and can't think outside of it.

1. Handwriting is a lot less emphasized than it once was. I have a 10 year-old who's been through a lot less handwriting training than I was 35 years ago, so chill, it is less emphasized. And they do start teaching them to keyboard at a young age.

2. Learning to write both print and cursive is still useful, as long as it doesn't take an inordinate amount of time. There are plenty of times you don't have a keyboard available, so you need to just down a quick note. Pretty handy to be able to do that, don't you think? Some people will print, some will write.

3. There's an awful lot of "I don't do it this way, therefore it useless" type thinking going on here. Gee, could you be a little more authoritiarian? The world does not revolve around you.

4. Finally, writing is a lot more than about writing. It's a fine motor skill, something that keyboarding is not. It's good training for children and gives them a feeling of accomplishment that keyboarding never will. Watch small children learning to write their names, they are VERY, VERY proud of the achievement. I suspect that those of you who don't like writing actually have poor fine motor skills, therefore it's difficult for you. I could be wrong, but it's a pretty good guess.

Sometimes we learn things for reasons that are not readily apparent. Don't discount handwriting, it's there for a reason.

[SoloAJ]

Sorry, I just haven't seen this mentioned (well maybe once) in this thread.

You pro-cursive folk realize that most people don't sign their names in cursive right? They sign it in something that started as 16 cursive letters and deteriorated into a a letter followed by a long squiggly line with a huge line either above or below that mess (depending if they have a 't' or a 'y' in their name)

I understand that some people write in cursive but for the most part it is getting phased out. Beyond long letters, I don't think it saves you much time writing in cursive. And for many people, the saved time writing in cursive just costs the reader time when they can't tell what the hell you're trying to write because it's so sloppy.