I don’t remember people ever writing cursive like what I was taught growing up. People just self-servingly turbo-scribble some chicken-scratch and call it a day. The kid who can’t read our B-movie elvish script isn’t the one with literacy issues.
We either write within the ballpark of standardization, or we don’t. I think kids should be required to put in as much effort into learning cursive, as people put into actually writing cursive. Which is to say, absolutely none at all.
(Sorry to people who actually write legible, clean cursive. I wish I got to read your output in the wild.)
The thing is, it’s easy to read good cursive. It’s just another script. It took me 5 episodes of Last Exile to memorize the Greek equivalents to English letters so I could read all the text without looking up the translation guide. But when their writing looks like Jack Lew’s signature, there’s not a whole lot I can do to decipher it
It’s not that I never learned how to read cursive; it’s that nobody actually writes it legibly.
Facts. Everybody’s “personal flair” on their style of cursive becomes a cryptographic puzzle. I exclusively used cursive until about 7th grade (because it was faster to me), and I still have to decipher most handwritten cursive
Not being able to write cursive I understand.
Not being able to read cursive is an issue that will out your lesser education and put you at a disadvantage in social situations.
How many social situations do you get into where cursive is relevant? Wedding table cards? Pretty sure even people not taught cursive can get the gist since most letters are pretty close to print.
Menus
I don’t remember when I saw a menu that wasn’t print
I’d just leave if the menu was in cursive.
Find better friends, in that case.
Unfortunately not everyone you socialize with is worthy of being a friend. Cursive illiteracy means nothing to me in that regard. But if the pronunciation of .gif and what color text bubbles your phone sends can matter to people. Well.
We just don’t need that sort of negativity in our lives.
It isn’t just cursive. I’ve seen a lot of younger people have issues reading bad copies of older print letters. Part of it isn’t being used to seeing information presented in a certain way or not being found via OCR.
Fuck cursive. Being forced to write in that was absolute torture. The forced use of specific esoteric hand-cramping illegible scribbles is asinine.
There surely was a use for penmanship before the proliferation of ballpoint pens and typewriters, but the way it was taught while I was in school was completely backwards. The intent of writing in script is to quickly flow from one letter to another without needing to lift the nib of a quill; rote learning of individual hieroglyphs with full disregard for the writer’s natural hand movements is at best asinine, and at worst cruel.
The fact that we were tormented decades in the past doesn’t justify more torment now. Be better.
I find cursive is very useful when writing notes that only I will ever need to read. Reading and writing another persons cursive has never been easy for me and it has never impacted my life with one exception. I cannot read post cards from my aunt. Oh, and that time a decade ago when I had to fill out the “I will not cheat” pledge on the back of the SAT.
Turns out if you need to write something with speed we have these things that are like typewriters, but they don’t even jam!
Can you read the original constitution and will your kids be able to?
Never tried. Apparently yes, but I sound like a child reading each word like, “yeah, that’s definitely’vested’ I’m sure!”. I doubt the next generation will except a few people.
I see your point, but I’m not sure I believe somebody could lie about it’s contents even in the distant future with how many legible copies there are.
On another note, this website exists which is super cool! https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/downloads
There are books out there that haven’t been scanned or translated. Even some that aren’t that old. It’s such an easy thing to learn, why wouldn’t you?
Found the weird ammurica fetish guy.
I have heard of this argument many times and it never made any sense. Is it really a big deal that kids these days might have trouble reading the original 1787 hemp copy, The one they keep in a climate controlled room in dc? Even the Supreme Court Justices use print transcriptions. This always seems like a purely sentimental arguement
Oh no imagine not veing able to read the slaveowners manual
Voicing pride that you’ve never read the constitution of a country you don’t even live in is weirder 😬
You mean the one that starts with “congrefs” because the long s was a thing at the time and the letter f had a different meaning?
How much time should we spend teaching school children about 200 year old antiquated orthography?
I was taught cursive and I do not remember it being anything like that. I am sorry for your experiences but I assure you they are not universal
Cursive is dumb anyways. Let’s have a second way to write that’s harder To do, less legible, and designed for old school fountain pens no one uses that have difficulty with upstrokes
Let’s all go back to learning shorthand!
This is what my arthritic handwriting looks like anyway…
wait, that’s an actual script? I thought it was just slang!
It’s way faster and super easy…
It was painful, tedious, and slow.
It sounds like your school sucked.
Harder to write? It’s easier and faster. I take it you don’t know how to write cursive?
It certainly wasn’t in the 3rd grade and it isn’t now
Harder to read, but easier to write.
And not that it matters but there are still fountain pen users, makers, influencers and all that, it’s a niche hobby now.
So, so much harder to write. Painful, tedious, and unnatural.
I have 20-30 fountain pens. Negative on the cursive.
Unrelated, what’s your EDC?
What’s an EDC?
Also enjoy how that commend apparently made people sad lol.
Every day carry?
Im cursive myself but to each their own.
I have a Procyon Platinum, but I stopped carrying it because it would run dry if not left flat. I have not yet found a fountain pen that will work for me if carried vertically in a pocket or backpack.
As far as my preferred daily users, it’s the TWSBI Eco–they hold a whole lot of ink and flow very well. I have rolls full of pen after pen I have acquired over the years. It’s always the Eco that I go back to. I should probably focus my collection there!
Decent choice, and very collectible, I recommend the twsbi VAC mini and the diamond 580 series as they both have decent capacity and are wet writers, a bit more $ mind you but not astronomical
Can we teach the kids that didn’t learn? It’s not a super hard thing since most letters look like the print version.
example: 𝒶𝒷𝒸𝒹𝑒𝒻𝑔𝒽𝒾𝒿𝓀𝓁𝓂𝓃𝑜𝓅𝓆𝓇𝓈𝓉𝓊𝓋𝓌𝓍𝓎𝓏 𝓐𝓑𝓒𝓓𝓔𝓕𝓖𝓗𝓘𝓙𝓚𝓛𝓜𝓝𝓞𝓟𝓠𝓡𝓢𝓣𝓤𝓥𝓦𝓧𝓨𝓩
What’s the advantage though? What benefits does this have besides being able to read book covers written by people out of touch with their audience?
You can read other people’s signatures, the constitution and notes from your older lawyer.
Signatures, not so much.
Lots of completely illegible signatures out there lol
You can read other people’s signatures
Why would you want to
the constitution
Plenty of verified print versions floating out there
notes from your older lawyer
If I’m paying someone 100$/minute, they’d better be able to write in print upon request
Every lawyer I’ve worked with has used email for everything.
You could have your doctored and not be able to read my signature.
It’s faster to write
You know what’s faster? Taka Taka on my keyboard.
Fair point, but if you’re worrying about speed more than anything else, you’re probably writing quite a bit and you’re more than likely taking notes of some sort.
The motor skills involved in writing things down by hand seems to aid memory more than typing it out does. Taka taka’s fun, faster, and not nearly as wasteful, but I’m choosing to stick with my 9,000 pens for retention
My RSI will take taka taka any day.
To start, I’m pro teaching/learning cursive. To respond, my brain barely works fast enough to have letters for print, speeding up the writing isn’t the bottleneck.
The advantage of learning it is being able to read when other people write with it.
I’m not saying it’s common, but it’s not hard to learn to read and I’m sure you will come across it at some point.
being able to read when other people write with it.
They can write legibly if they want me to read what they write.
It’s not that someone is going to write something they want you to read.
It’s more about someone wrote something and by chance you want to read it. The only problem is that it’s in cursive, you can’t.
z doesn’t look like that in cursive, nor do most of the capital listed you listed Better to just post an image of the correct versions
That is how z looks in cursive.
They’re the same thing.
I literally linked to an image showing exactly what it should look like.
That’s just a different font.
I hope you know what fonts are.Edit. Apparently not, lol
Well I’m pretty sure you don’t, since handwriting doesn’t have “fonts”.
Stay in school, kids.
There are many old documents written in hieroglyphs. Most people have come across hieroglyphs at one point or another. I don’t think most people wold benefit from being taught hieroglyphs in their childhood.
How the hell can be people so illiterate??
Not being able to read cursive is not being illiterate
Shit, I was taught it and sometimes go “wait what’s that letter again”
How can you no read cursive? It’s just regular letters!
The ruling class made it a priority to bring back facism it’s way easier when you don’t read. The ‘Well do you want your starbucks person to do a good job’ doesn’t apply when you only select train your 3rd cousin to be your personal chef.
So why fund education for the peons in the mines? They can choose their choices with fear, as is tradition.Outside of being embarrassed at a restaurant and apparently books, there is very little disadvantage.
Me thinks the billionaires are probably focusing in on different items.
Are there actually restaurants that have menus in cursive? I’ve never seen one in person.
I write exclusively in cursive. It’s natural for me and everyone around me was taught it as well.
Can someone explain why one cannot read cursive? It is just a tilted (sometimes fancy) font, what’s so hard about it?
I was similarly confused when I first learned about this. We were never taught to write in “print”, so handwriting - cursive - was the norm.
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Maybe she’s making a plea to the cover designers.
In this thread:
Americans: Why do I need to learn it when I can just type?
The World: It’s literally just writing. You don’t want to learn how to write??
My kids are learning cursive and I’m glad they are doing so.
But one of the main point of cursive was to be able to write more quickly, and typing has absolutely replaced that need, many times over. And also you learn print first, so not learning how to write cursive doesnt mean you don’t learn to write.
Ironically, your post is supposed to be insulting Americans for not being smart, but God damn is the point fucking stupid and ignorant.
It wasn’t meant to be insulting to Americans, the hate for learning to join up letters and write quickly just doesn’t really make sense to the rest of us.
You know what’s stupid and fucking ignorant? Assuming everyone has a laptop on them all the time. Do people really not write notes anymore? Handwriting notes is much more conducive to learning than typing and is a basic skill that aids education at all levels.
I’ve got a phone on me far more than I have a writing instrument, let alone paper: and I suspect that is true for the overwhelming majority of people.
I’ll even just give you that cursive improves retention and learning and fine motor skills (there are studies that go either way, and my personal experience is that it did nothing at all, but fig leaf): is the benefit worth the time versus just having more time in class for the subjects in question?
It wasn’t meant to be insulting to Americans, the hate for learning to join up letters and write quickly just doesn’t really make sense to the rest of us.
Lol this is like the best example of pissing on my foot and telling me it’s raining.
You know what’s stupid and fucking ignorant? Assuming everyone has a laptop on them all the time.
And if I had argued that we shouldn’t need to learn cursive because everyone has a laptop all the time, this wouldn’t be a completely fucking stupid argument. Alas, I did not.
I also almost never write in cursive and know how. I can count on one hand how many times in my life I was like “oh crap! I should switch over to cursive to save some time!” and I lost all the fingers on that hand in a freak grenade accident (joking).
This is especially stupid because I actually support kids learning cursive. It’s just a skill that is much less important than it was 50 years ago and so I don’t particularly care either way if kids learn it.
You can just admit you were wrong, its much easier than trying to pile on more nonsense to justify the ignorant insult.
I was wrong about what exactly? My facetious point about American and World views on the matter? I still think it was on point despite not being 100% serious.
It’s absolutely commonplace in the UK to learn this at an extremely young age and not something that “takes up valuable learning time”. It seems weird not to learn it. How about we don’t learn how to paint either because most people don’t have use for watercolours in their daily life?
I think the fact I’m being down voted by the Americans who don’t want to learn cursive is kind of a hilarious confirmation.
There’s no need to learn cursive, it serves no functional purpose that typing cannot match. Other than your signature, which… you have to learn how to do separate to cursive anyway to protect yourself from fraud by making it as unique and as difficult to replicate as possible.
Good luck typing something when you have no electronic device nearby or no power. I know we live in a connected, techno-cebtric world now, but it’s wild to think that this simple skill is no longer valued at all by some.
Also, your signature being the thing protecting you from fraud is quite hilarious from a European perspective too!
Conservatives are trying to prevent kids from learning history and sex ed, and we’re still hearing this bullshit lamentation about CURSIVE?
Schools are underfunded, teachers are underpaid and overworked, students are graduating barely able to read and with no critical thinking skills.
Who in their right mind is actually concerned about kids learning cursive?
Things I’d rather schools focus on:
Typing, Personal finance, Current events, Technology literacy, Graphic design, Human Computer Interaction
Or maybe practical skills related to trades or how to fix things: CAD, Cooking, Electrical, Plumbing
Literally ANYTHING but this cursive crap. It’s useless, it’s dead, move on.
To be fair, it’s trivially easy to learn cursive and it’s basically always been an extension of penmanship.
I’ve never been in a situation where penmanship mattered. Typing skills on the other hand are abysmal across the board and hamper my coworkers constantly.
It’s an easy way to teach fine motor control.
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Or disassembling electornics, which ice used way more than fucking cursive.
I’m really confused by all of these not being on the curriculum. I went to secondary school in the 90s in the UK. I had learned joined up writing in early primary school (which was what you used to write essays and coursework) and I had both an electronics class where we soldered circuits and IT class where typing improvement games were available.
I hate how way more school districts (at least in North America) insist on teaching kids cursive than the ones that teach kids how to touch type.
Which skill do you reckon they’ll find more valuable in their adulthood?
