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The Lost Virtue of Cursive

posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday November 02 2016, @08:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the heading-for-a-new-dark-age dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

The New Yorker wonders:

My children know how to print their letters. And they type frighteningly well. Still, I can't escape the conviction that cursive—writing it and knowing how to read it—represents some universal value. I'm not the only one who thinks so. Every year, there are worried articles about the decline of cursive and its omission from school curricula. And there's a backlash, one that I secretly cheer for. When I read that Washington state is now considering Senate Bill 6469, "an act related to requiring that cursive writing be taught in common schools," I gave a little fist pump in the air.

Cursive and handwriting are dead. Communication of the future will be done with pure emoticons.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 02 2016, @02:42PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday November 02 2016, @02:42PM (#421683) Journal
    Actually, there's still a lot of people out there who use cursive for signatures. I have a seasonal position in accounting at Yellowstone National Park and spend some time eyeballing various sorts of guest-signed paper documents. The majority sign in something resembling cursive (first letter and scribble is very common, but there are a substantial minority who sign cursive legibly) then there is a significant fraction who actually are using wavy lines or circling squiggles on the paper. A large minority from Far East Asia sign with Han-style characters. And another large minority sign with some variation of an "X" or a line (particularly with a couple of short vertical slashes seems surprisingly common).

    But by age as was mentioned elsewhere? I don't know. I (and probably everyone else here) wouldn't be surprised if cursive was an affectation of older people. But it's near impossible for me to see anything that correlates with age.

  • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday November 02 2016, @06:14PM

    by urza9814 (3954) on Wednesday November 02 2016, @06:14PM (#421777) Journal

    But by age as was mentioned elsewhere? I don't know. I (and probably everyone else here) wouldn't be surprised if cursive was an affectation of older people. But it's near impossible for me to see anything that correlates with age.

    Interestingly, I'm 27 and I don't really know anyone my age who doesn't sign cursive. My parents do the first letter and a squiggle thing. I always thought that was really strange, since both their signatures ended up nearly identical -- interesting to hear that it's so common though. I've got some older friends who just write their name in block letters too. My brother does this weird symbol thing that's just his initials in cursive mashed together, and I and the few friends my age whose signatures I've seen (girlfriends mostly) just write our full name in cursive. But I think it could be an education/class divide more than (or as much as) age. Some kids get told to come up with an "official signature" that they're going to be stuck with for the rest of their life. Other kids just get told to write their name on the line.

    Can't wait until we can replace that garbage with PGP signatures though... :)