Another lefty here. Everything I write in cursive looks like Tammy Faye's mascara after a good cry.

db2: So the chief advantage of cursive is speed, right?

[i48.photobucket.com image 614x254]

Checkmate.

That fit in your pocket?

John Dewey: good f*cking riddance

done in one. I just cannot read 75% of other peoples handwriting if they join up the letters.

Of course this means hipsters will now only write in cursive to give us another reason to hate them.

dletter: I don't know how old you are (I'm 39), but, I do remember "learning" to write it the "2" way in school, but, heck if that ever really stuck with me.

I'm 45. But my "2" Q looks nothing like what I've seen people 20 years older than I do.

There was a method that my parents mentioned that they surely did not teach me in the first half of the 70s.

kmmontandon: I still write pretty much everything in cursive - it's faster, and just looks better to the non-mouthbreathers.

*looks up*

Oh, right. Some people have no appreciation for aesthetics. Everyone make sure to eat a few pork rinds and wash them down with Brawndo[tm] before posting.

So other people being able to read what you have written (the core function of writing) is lower on your list than how pretty it is?

Do you own a mac?

John Dewey: good f*cking riddance

Done in one.

Relatively Obscure: It doesn't really have much of a purpose anymore. There are better ways to write faster and more legibly.

and two.

Darth_Lukecash: I'm sure there was a similar concerned for hieroglyphics.

and three.

Not a single person I work/worked with has ever kept their lab/engineering notebooks in cursive. Every single one printed their notes. It's faster, more legible, and makes far more legible copies because there is less variance in how dark certain parts of the letters are.

I hope they don't waste the better part of a year teaching kids that waste anymore.

I think my cursive looks pretty much the way it did in 5th grade, half-ass. That was around the time we were given the choice of cursive/printing. I much rather preferred printing and was told mine looked like a typewriter. Add 5 years of mechanical drawing/wood shop and my printing is still very good. I do get an occasional comment about my 9s...

/Fark cursive.
//Too girly for my style.
///Off my lawn.
////I will poke you with my pencil.

CavalierEternal: Good f*cking riddance. Every goddamn word my first grade teacher said about us needing to know cursive when we grew up was a filthy lie.

Yup, and the same goes for those weekly genital lice inspections.

StandsWithAFist: Sprachkundige:

[i50.tinypic.com image 500x194]

PYROY: CavalierEternal: Good f*cking riddance. Every goddamn word my first grade teacher said about us needing to know cursive when we grew up was a filthy lie.

Yup, and the same goes for those weekly genital lice inspections.

A++++++ Would lol again!

I wonder how many patients have died because of doctors' illegible cursive handwriting.

Cursive sucks. When I was a kid, I refused to learn cursive and never did. I also refused to write with a pencil. Pencils were for people who made mistakes.

Analog

I have no preference when it comes to READING, cursive or block print. I've seen some dandies. The only time I rue people who write cursive, is when they get really lazy with the l's and t's, and e's, i's and s's. And when you can't write your vowels legibly, there goes most of English.

I take block writing faster. And since my job requires it, I find it's no problem for me.

/i can fake a real good doctor

JonnyG: Cursive sucks. When I was a kid, I refused to learn cursive and never did. I also refused to write with a pencil. Pencils were for people who made mistakes.

actually, even in school i could never write legibly with a pen. would end up smudged, ink everywhere, all messed up looking, but with a pencil my handwriting was very nice.

fark pens. also fark mechanical pencils. good ol' number 2 pencils are all I would use.

I had to learn cursive in second grade.

Schools are dumbed down so much now, they're just holding pens for retards. More so.

Some of these cursive examples are actually very pretty. Even the bad ones are worlds away from a doctor's handwritten prescription.

I had no idea cursive made people this upset.

Memoryalpha: I've been writing cursive since I was in first grade. My mother taught me. In second grade a substitute teacher took a ruler to my hand for doing my lessons in cursive instead of block print. To this day I won't write a letter or a note of any kind that isn't in cursive. If the recipient is so poorly educated that they can't read cursive, that is their problem not mine.

I've been writing in Latin since I was in first grade. My mother taught me. In second grade a substitute teacher took a ruler to my hand for doing my lessons in Latin instead of English. To this day I won't write a letter of a note of any kind that isn't in Latin. If the recipient is so poorly educated that they can't read Latin, that is their problem not mine.

Gramma: Sprachkundige: My children will have good handwriting, dammit! Or they will keep practicing until they do.

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You sound like my mother. I had to write page after page of cursive every day after school to improve my handwriting. I hated it and my handwriting never improved. Year after year of this. It was torment. I could never understand why teachers would force me to use cursive rather than printing and then gripe about not being able to read it.

BurnShrike: I've been writing in Latin since I was in first grade. My mother taught me. In second grade a substitute teacher took a ruler to my hand for doing my lessons in Latin instead of English. To this day I won't write a letter of a note of any kind that isn't in Latin. If the recipient is so poorly educated that they can't read Latin, that is their problem not mine.

Frigus fabula, frat'.

I farkING FOUND IT. I farkING FOUND WHY MY CURSIVE LOOKS LIKE shiat. BECAUSE IT COMES FROM OVER 100 YEARS OF DUMBING DOWN!

I WAS ROBBED!

LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT THIS BEAUTIFUL EXAMPLE OF PENMANSHIP! IT'S CALLED SPENCERIAN AND IT WAS A STANDARD OF BUSINESS WRITING! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GIS FOR "SPENCERIAN SCRIPT" AND YOU SEE BEAUTY ALL AROUND!



Now look at this example of Palmer, which my parents learned.



Simplified, and slightly ugly.

Now look at what crept into my late elementary and early middle school years. Just in time to start farking me up.



All in the name of bloody efficiency.

Isn't that farking ugly? It's farking UGLY! It's awful! Where is D. Neal? I want to beat him bloody!

Right, and we are better off today? First, kids today can barely communicate in anything remotely legible or understandable, if at all. The GD cell phones and other screens are killing social skills, they have no idea how to interact with other people and have to be told very basic interaction skills. Younger kids (4, 5,6 year old) have to be taught HOW TO PLAY.

snuff3r: I communicate almost entirely digitally nowadays. Since heading back to study a few years ago i had an incredibly hard time coping with exams, all hand written. Two years later i still can't handwrite for shiat. Hand cramps, unable to master proper letter formation, etc. Eugh. I'm curious if i lose marks in my exams due to untidy handwriting.

This is the reason I stopped LaTeXing my homework. I fell out of he habit of doing full problems by hand and it started to hurt my performance on exams (slowed me down, etc.). There's a lot of muscle memory when solving physics problems by hand; for example, writing down Schrödinger's equation is muscle memory for me, just like typing passwords on a keyboard is.

\still write is cursive on equation
\\though never for anything school related

Like many in this thread I type much more effectively than I write. Block letters are my preferred method, and It's been so long since I've used cursive (15 years or so) that I've completely forgotten how to make some of the letters.

I guess that's why I consider block lettering to be faster. I don't have to think about how a letter is formed.

db2: So the chief advantage of cursive is speed, right?

[i48.photobucket.com image 614x254]

Checkmate.



Point, Game, Set, Match, Tournament!

Can't say that I'll be sad to see it go. Due to some slightly faulty wiring in the ol' nervous system, my handwriting looks it was by a mentally retarded 3rd grader. My cursive is just illegible. Thank God for computers.

bubo_sibiricus: I farkING FOUND IT. I farkING FOUND WHY MY CURSIVE LOOKS LIKE shiat. BECAUSE IT COMES FROM OVER 100 YEARS OF DUMBING DOWN!

Interesting, I've never seen that script from 1900 but the way I sign my name has initials that are very similar to the J - A - H displayed in that picture.


/the Palmer method looks farking sloppy

To find out why I use cursive, read this post.

/wait, sorry. That's recursive

bubo_sibiricus: Now look at this example of Palmer, which my parents learned.

Hrmmm I have a question about the palmer method. If you look at the lowercase section, what the hell is the letter after "r" and then it appears again slightly larger with inverted curves after "t".

MythDragon: Am I the only one that writes in some bastard form of cursive-block mix? I tend to write in half block/half cursive. For example, I'll do a lower case cursive g, but I don't like the upper case g's so I block print them and I'll block print lower case r's unless they are preceded by a lower case o so I can flow from the top of the o to the r.

I can't be the only one.

You're not alone.

I think that as we get more and more digital, the only thing people will need to learn to write is their name.

Also, if the blogger really wanted to make a plea to save cursive writing, why type it? Write it out longhand and then scan it. It's tragic that Fark posters can figure that out but not someone blogging for a major publication.

trappedspirit: Dude, you need to start carrying around a quill pen and ink jar and stop so much typing.

Fountain pen. I'm gonna start carrying one and learning how to change line width. I saw it demonstrated. As you press down, the tip splits and you get a wider line.

Now i have a justifiable reason to dislike ballpoint pens, which I always disliked.

Kinda how old drafting pens worked with the thumb screw, but ... freehand.

Tenatra: Hrmmm I have a question about the palmer method. If you look at the lowercase section, what the hell is the letter after "r" and then it appears again slightly larger with inverted curves after "t".

I believe that is the end-of-word lowercase R.

Cursive became obsolete after pencils because cheap to make and the ball-point pen so the 1800's

My handwriting is at the level of a third grader. Which is about when I stopped using it on a daily basis.

By the time I got to 6th grade, papers had to be typed or the teacher would throw them out.

I haven't handwritten anything that wasn't a signature or a note-to-self in probably years.