Stop teaching cursive writing in schools ?

[ConstipatedVigilante]

I learned cursive in 4th grade. My teachers complemented me on my "beautiful" cursive lettering. Since then, I've only had to use cursive when re-writing that agreement not to cheat on the SAT (everyone took 5 minutes to do that; no one remembers how to write cursive) and to sign my name. We use cursive to sign our names BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGIBLE. That makes it harder to copy - it's much harder to copy someone's manner of writing than what they're writing.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: Perknose

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha

Originally posted by: nixium

Originally posted by: Perknose
This thread makes me irrationally sad.

me too, and i'm under 30.

Thirded. This is yet another sign that I'm getting old - something I was taught in grade 3 that is about to disappear (I'm only 26 BTW).

Everyone here decrying the uselessness of cursive writing apparently hasn't written romantic cards and letters to their girlfriend. Trust me, the extra effort is much appreciated.

I write them all the time. Beautiful content is much more appreciated.

:thumbsup:

I ended up thousands of miles from home at a time before cell phones, texting, or home computers of any kind. Even land-line long distance was a horribly expensive propostion.

So, I wrote long 6-7 page letters to my closest friends and my parents, and received the same in return, all in cursive.

And, because no one had 24/7 instant means to burp out their most casually inane half-thought, we all put our heart and soul and mind into those missives. It's amazing how people of all stripes stepped up to the plate and wrote really, really well.

When you wrote a letter, you did it with feeling and craft and forethought, and you did it in cursive, which flowed like the organized ideas that flowed from your adult brain. And what resulted was a beauty and depth you rarely see on this forum.

It is undoubtedly true that cursive will be more and more marginalized and fall by the wayside as the yip-yap mongoloids and their ty;dr three-word attention span take over.

And . . . it's not the loss of cursive itself that I will mourn. It is the more considered and disciplined culture of general literacy and deferred gratification and depth and structure of thought that goes part and parcel with it that I will miss.

Mark my words: You ARE what you do. Don't bullshit yourself, you are what you do. Accross all cultures and ages and disciplines and peoples, this eternal verity pertains.

When ALL you do is blurt out sentence fragments as your main means of communication, that seeps into your pattern of consciousness and soon becomes ALL you are freaking capable of doing.

Face it, ty;dr writers, you type this because it would actually hurt your little head to even try to read, say, three medium length paragraphs on one subject. Oh, sure, you may claim to yourself that this is not true, but try it next time, and notice how hard it has become for you, and wake the fusk up to who you now are.

Three word sentence fragment boy, you are like the oaf who never exercises but still thinks he can crank off 100 push-ups or run reasonably fast. Congratulations, you are the sedentary fat-ass of the world of adult communication, stuffing yourself on the fast food of tweets and texts, grown obese with your inability to concentrate.

And just like fat people disgust you for their basic lack of adult discipline, you disgust me.

tl;dr

EDIT: Curses and drat, beaten!

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Originally posted by: Perknose

Originally posted by: TruePaige

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha

Originally posted by: nixium

Originally posted by: Perknose
This thread makes me irrationally sad.

me too, and i'm under 30.

Thirded. This is yet another sign that I'm getting old - something I was taught in grade 3 that is about to disappear (I'm only 26 BTW).

Everyone here decrying the uselessness of cursive writing apparently hasn't written romantic cards and letters to their girlfriend. Trust me, the extra effort is much appreciated.

I write them all the time. Beautiful content is much more appreciated.

:thumbsup:

I ended up thousands of miles from home at a time before cell phones, texting, or home computers of any kind. Even land-line long distance was a horribly expensive propostion.

So, I wrote long 6-7 page letters to my closest friends and my parents, and received the same in return, all in cursive.

And, because no one had 24/7 instant means to burp out their most casually inane half-thought, we all put our heart and soul and mind into those missives. It's amazing how people of all stripes stepped up to the plate and wrote really, really well.

When you wrote a letter, you did it with feeling and craft and forethought, and you did it in cursive, which flowed like the organized ideas that flowed from your adult brain. And what resulted was a beauty and depth you rarely see on this forum.

It is undoubtedly true that cursive will be more and more marginalized and fall by the wayside as the yip-yap mongoloids and their ty;dr three-word attention span take over.

And . . . it's not the loss of cursive itself that I will mourn. It is the more considered and disciplined culture of general literacy and deferred gratification and depth and structure of thought that goes part and parcel with it that I will miss.

Mark my words: You ARE what you do. Don't bullshit yourself, you are what you do. Accross all cultures and ages and disciplines and peoples, this eternal verity pertains.

When ALL you do is blurt out sentence fragments as your main means of communication, that seeps into your pattern of consciousness and soon becomes ALL you are freaking capable of doing.

Face it, ty;dr writers, you type this because it would actually hurt your little head to even try to read, say, three medium length paragraphs on one subject. Oh, sure, you may claim to yourself that this is not true, but try it next time, and notice how hard it has become for you, and wake the fusk up to who you now are.

Three word sentence fragment boy, you are like the oaf who never exercises but still thinks he can crank off 100 push-ups or run reasonably fast. Congratulations, you are the sedentary fat-ass of the world of adult communication, stuffing yourself on the fast food of tweets and texts, grown obese with your inability to concentrate.

And just like fat people disgust you for their basic lack of adult discipline, you disgust me.

Well-stated, Perknose. It's sad that so many people today are so lazy and impulsive that they cannot be bothered to spend a bit of time crafting cohesive, original thoughts. Writing in cursive forces you to plan your letter, and it engages your emotions as you transform them into written thoughts.

No matter how convenient and instantaneous technology is, it cannot replace art and feeling. We ignore this to our detriment.

 

[Babbles]

Originally posted by: Perknose

Originally posted by: SagaLore
The whole point in teaching cursive at a young age is to develop hand-eye coordination while combining letters into words to associate written language with thoughts.

It doesn't matter if we stop using cursive later in the education system. Its a matter of developing foundations in the brain that assist learning.

Well said. :thumbsup:

Exactly.

I think people here do not understand fundamental skills that learning "old" techniques like this may assist in developing. So many people in the world, and evidently most people here on this forum, are very shortsighted and only want the skill-sets that they deem "practical" regardless of the significant impact that the elimination of other skill-sets may have.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
Well-stated, Perknose. It's sad that so many people today are so lazy and impulsive that they cannot be bothered to spend a bit of time crafting cohesive, original thoughts. Writing in cursive forces you to plan your letter, and it engages your emotions as you transform them into written thoughts.

No matter how convenient and instantaneous technology is, it cannot replace art and feeling. We ignore this to our detriment.

I don't see how learning cursive has anything to do with this.

EDIT: Unfortunately, by saying this, I'm afraid I've opened myself up to attacks of the "you simply don't understand!" variety from you, Perknose, and others. Perknose's rant has some good ideas in it, but it has two main flaws: first, it insults those who disagree with it right off the bat, discouraging reasoned criticisms of it, and second, it gets pretty far away from the topic at hand, which is just about whether cursive is still relevant or not.

I was going to say that more time could be spent on teaching kids to write better if they didn't have to think about also writing in cursive. However, I realized the same argument could then also be applied to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and I know how disastrous it is when schools try to teach kids writing without expecting them to use proper English.

Still, I'm having a hard time seeing the connection between the ideas Perknose touched on and the decline of cursive writing. I can see wanting to teach kids to write by hand first before putting a keyboard in front of them, but why should it matter whether they use cursive or not? Perhaps with a more consistent approach of teaching only manuscript and focusing on making their printing highly legible and well-formed, we'd see better handwriting than the current approach of teaching printing for 1-2 years, then cursive for 1-2 years, and then back to printing.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: ric1287

Originally posted by: TallBill

Originally posted by: ViviTheMage
cursive was only a few weeks! easy.

Bullshit, I spent a long time on "handwriting" and cursive is fucking pointless.

yep, far too much time is spent on worthless shit like cursive, dinosaurs, clouds, etc. Focus the majority of time on math/science and throw in some english/grammar.

How many little kids can rattle off 10 different kinds of dinosaurs but can't multiply 3x12

hey ain't nothin wrong with dinosaurs.
it triggers the kids imaginations and would only inspire them to learn more about science. there's lots of things that could be learned from dinosaurs. biology, paleontology, geology, etc..

 

[Chaotic42]

I'll take it one more step: Not only should we keep cursive, but we need to get computers out of elementary and middle schools. People need to be able to read, write, comprehend, and digest material on their own.

I worry that an over-reliance on technology is going to make the next generation brain dead and incapable of critical thinking. I could be wrong though.

 

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: Babbles

Originally posted by: Perknose

Originally posted by: SagaLore
The whole point in teaching cursive at a young age is to develop hand-eye coordination while combining letters into words to associate written language with thoughts.

It doesn't matter if we stop using cursive later in the education system. Its a matter of developing foundations in the brain that assist learning.

Well said. :thumbsup:

Exactly.

I think people here do not understand fundamental skills that learning "old" techniques like this may assist in developing. So many people in the world, and evidently most people here on this forum, are very shortsighted and only want the skill-sets that they deem "practical" regardless of the significant impact that the elimination of other skill-sets may have.

Very true.
I replied to someone else about a daughter that was having trouble with math in school. The school was using computers to teach math so we thought that using similar programs at home was a good idea too, all the sites said how good these programs were. It was not working.

It was suggested we do away with the software approach and tried writing everything down on paper and working the math that way, and now she is doing 100% better. Something about writing stuff down vs pushing a key or mouse made the difference.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
The whole point in teaching cursive at a young age is to develop hand-eye coordination while combining letters into words to associate written language with thoughts.

It doesn't matter if we stop using cursive later in the education system. Its a matter of developing foundations in the brain that assist learning.

And writing in print doesn't do the same? hell even typing would cover what you said, albeit, probably not at the same level.
Either way, while what you say has some merit, does it warrant doing cursive just for that?

Anyways, I personally think they should gloss over it just so they'd know how to read it if needed. They could probably get it done in a week.

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
Well-stated, Perknose. It's sad that so many people today are so lazy and impulsive that they cannot be bothered to spend a bit of time crafting cohesive, original thoughts. Writing in cursive forces you to plan your letter, and it engages your emotions as you transform them into written thoughts.

No matter how convenient and instantaneous technology is, it cannot replace art and feeling. We ignore this to our detriment.

I don't see how learning cursive has anything to do with this.

It takes longer to write properly formed cursive than simply printing quickly across the page. You also have cleaner pen lines than printing, which often leaves faint ink trails between certain letters and words. Cursive is a cleaner presentation (it is art).

Because cursive is more time-consuming than even printing, you must have a clearer direction for your thoughts before you actually begin writing. Letting your thoughts and feelings flow through the pen and onto the page is a natural process which taps your emotions; typing on a keyboard does not engage you in the same way.

 

[Jeff7]

I don't get the obsession with cursive anyway.

"A" is a way of representing a letter.
"||\\|" - that shall now represent the same thing.
Is it any different? No, not really. When you write it, it's all just lines on paper. A cursive letter is not inherently better or worse than a printed one. Kind of like Roman numerals - I can write "7" or "VII." Both mean the same thing. We use Arabic numerals for nearly everything. Roman numerals seem to be used only for the dates in movies, for whatever reason. Did it severely impair humanity when Roman numerals fell out of style?

You can argue for the use of Wingdings vs printed text, and it'd make as much sense as arguing cursive vs printing. It's the Latin of writing; it's of limited use, and it's dying out. There's no need to romanticize the past so much, some things need to be laid to rest for the sake of progress.

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
It takes longer to write properly formed cursive than simply printing quickly across the page. You also have cleaner pen lines than printing, which often leaves faint ink trails between certain letters and words. Cursive is a cleaner presentation (it is art).

Because cursive is more time-consuming than even printing, you must have a clearer direction for your thoughts before you actually begin writing. Letting your thoughts and feelings flow through the pen and onto the page is a natural process which taps your emotions; typing on a keyboard does not engage you in the same way.

I guess it depends on your thought process. I can form a great many thoughts, but then they have to be translated to English from the realm of thought, and then considerably condensed down so that they can be conveyed with an acceptable level of brevity. If I'm writing, printing or cursive, it is painful in how slowly the process goes. I don't need time to sort out thoughts or "tap into emotions." The only emotion felt in writing is impatience, trying to dictate out War and Peace in binary, sent in Morse Code. Typing is slow enough; I may max out at around 60WPM before my hands start getting out of sync - the left will start typing the next word in the sequence before the right has finished with its queue of letters.

If a person talked at their writing speed, they'd likely qualify as clinically retarded. If I've got my thoughts quite together, I can easily speak 180-200WPM. If I need to slow down for clarity, or perhaps for public speaking, I'll have to drop down to 100WPM, which is still considered fairly rapid for such things.

That said, I don't have much of an artistic sense. Writing isn't about art for me, it's just another way of conveying information. Printing is a reasonably efficient means of doing that, when other options (typing or verbal communication) are unavailable. It is easily understood by many people, and is easily written. Seeing as how the goal of writing is to communicate, it would seem to me that ease of transcription from thought to paper, and the reading of the finished product, is something of some importance.
Like I mentioned before, I can start writing in Wingdings if I wanted to. I could simply say it's more artistic that way, and since it would take a much longer time to do this than even cursive, it therefore must be an even better option. Each symbol still represents a letter of the English language, so there should be no problem with it, right?

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
Well-stated, Perknose. It's sad that so many people today are so lazy and impulsive that they cannot be bothered to spend a bit of time crafting cohesive, original thoughts. Writing in cursive forces you to plan your letter, and it engages your emotions as you transform them into written thoughts.

No matter how convenient and instantaneous technology is, it cannot replace art and feeling. We ignore this to our detriment.

I don't see how learning cursive has anything to do with this.

It takes longer to write properly formed cursive than simply printing quickly across the page. You also have cleaner pen lines than printing, which often leaves faint ink trails between certain letters and words. Cursive is a cleaner presentation (it is art).

Because cursive is more time-consuming than even printing, you must have a clearer direction for your thoughts before you actually begin writing. Letting your thoughts and feelings flow through the pen and onto the page is a natural process which taps your emotions; typing on a keyboard does not engage you in the same way.

I do agree that writing longhand (as opposed to typing) can be useful for forming ideas (see my edited post above). However, I'm not so sure why cursive should make that easier. I'd be too concerned with writing things legibly (which is much more difficult than with printing) to be able to focus much on the writing itself. Longhand vs. typing is one thing, but manuscript vs. cursive is entirely another. There's little difference other than the level of frustration when using cursive instead of manuscript.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
I don't get the obsession with cursive anyway.

"A" is a way of representing a letter.
"||\\|" - that shall now represent the same thing.
Is it any different? No, not really. When you write it, it's all just lines on paper. A cursive letter is not inherently better or worse than a printed one. Kind of like Roman numerals - I can write "7" or "VII." Both mean the same thing. We use Arabic numerals for nearly everything. Roman numerals seem to be used only for the dates in movies, for whatever reason. Did it severely impair humanity when Roman numerals fell out of style?

You can argue for the use of Wingdings vs printed text, and it'd make as much sense as arguing cursive vs printing. It's the Latin of writing; it's of limited use, and it's dying out. There's no need to romanticize the past so much, some things need to be laid to rest for the sake of progress.

I remember in elementary school, the rationale for using cursive is that it's supposedly a quicker way to write. never worked for me though, but my writing is messy enough without cursive looking like ugly scribbles. only few have the font writing adequate to make cursive adequate. i can't count how many teacher's graded notes that I couldn't read because it was in absolutely illegible cursive.

 

[FelixDeCat]

I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselves without electricity or in simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
[
I don't see how learning cursive has anything to do with this.

EDIT: Unfortunately, by saying this, I'm afraid I've opened myself up to attacks of the "you simply don't understand!" variety from you, Perknose, and others. Perknose's rant has some good ideas in it, but it has two main flaws: first, it insults those who disagree with it right off the bat, discouraging reasoned criticisms of it, and second, it gets pretty far away from the topic at hand, which is just about whether cursive is still relevant or not.

I was going to say that more time could be spent on teaching kids to write better if they didn't have to think about also writing in cursive. However, I realized the same argument could then also be applied to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and I know how disastrous it is when schools try to teach kids writing without expecting them to use proper English.

Still, I'm having a hard time seeing the connection between the ideas Perknose touched on and the decline of cursive writing. I can see wanting to teach kids to write by hand first before putting a keyboard in front of them, but why should it matter whether they use cursive or not? Perhaps with a more consistent approach of teaching only manuscript and focusing on making their printing highly legible and well-formed, we'd see better handwriting than the current approach of teaching printing for 1-2 years, then cursive for 1-2 years, and then back to printing.

Edit: I just saw your edit. I'm not attacking you, I'm just trying to explain my viewpoint.

I learned cursive writing separately from learning grammar and English. I'm not suggesting it's reasonable to expect children to learn both simultaneously, at least not at first. I learned how to form cursive letters in grade 2, and expanded this to complete words and sentences in grade 3. All of my essays in elementary school up to grade 7 were hand-written, in cursive.

I suppose cursive teaches discipline and patience. I personally didn't mind learning it, and I can actually still write perfectly well in cursive almost 20 years later, despite using it very rarely.

I'm sure many other children didn't pick it up well, or learned it and then forgot it. My theory is that it has a visual-spatial-linguistic link in the developing brain, but I haven't seen any studies about it.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselfs without electricity or simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

I can't read the third word from the right on the second line or the last word on the first line of the last paragraph. Had to re-read the second and second-to-last words on the seventh line to tell what they were.

This is a problem for virtually all cursive handwriting for me. Unless you use "italic cursive" or cursive-style letters with more of a block-style arrangement, chances are I'll have difficulty reading at least a few words. This is enough for me to think of cursive as absolutely useless, since it leads to poor communication when it could be easily avoided by simply using manuscript instead.

 

[summit]

spell-check and instant messenger are the downfall of society. kids these days think its perfectly acceptable to right in AIM-speak and without spell-check many cannot spell even the simplest words.

 

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
I don't get the obsession with cursive anyway.

"A" is a way of representing a letter.
"||\\|" - that shall now represent the same thing.
Is it any different? No, not really. When you write it, it's all just lines on paper. A cursive letter is not inherently better or worse than a printed one. Kind of like Roman numerals - I can write "7" or "VII." Both mean the same thing. We use Arabic numerals for nearly everything. Roman numerals seem to be used only for the dates in movies, for whatever reason. Did it severely impair humanity when Roman numerals fell out of style?

You can argue for the use of Wingdings vs printed text, and it'd make as much sense as arguing cursive vs printing. It's the Latin of writing; it's of limited use, and it's dying out. There's no need to romanticize the past so much, some things need to be laid to rest for the sake of progress.

Maybe I have some horrible mental disability, but writing in cursive is faster for me than writing in print.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselves without electricity or in simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

let's get a few hands of people who had difficulty reading a lot of that.

/raises hand

btw.. what's up with the snail mail letter in cursive to ask for the unbannage?

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
It takes longer to write properly formed cursive than simply printing quickly across the page.

This is absolutely wrong. Cursive is about flowing sentences quickly, rather than stopping at angles and spacing out the next letter. The only reason nobody can read sloppy cursive is because they don't write cursive to begin with. Comparing sloppy cursive to sloppy print, I don't really see how any one is better than the other.


About brain development, read this example:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...bde24e628eed8540b42c68

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: SagaLore

Originally posted by: InflatableBuddha
It takes longer to write properly formed cursive than simply printing quickly across the page.

This is absolutely wrong. Cursive is about flowing sentences quickly, rather than stopping at angles and spacing out the next letter. The only reason nobody can read sloppy cursive is because they don't write cursive to begin with. Comparing sloppy cursive to sloppy print, I don't really see how any one is better than the other.

Cursive is not faster at all when you first learn it. It takes years of practice for you to get better. But that's normal (take QWERTY vs. Dvorak, for instance). Problem is, we can't afford to spend tons of time indoctrinating kids to write in cursive, so they never get fast at it by the time they can break free and start printing again. Most do switch back to printing (85% of SAT essays are written in printing).

The problem is that lifelong cursive writers may be fast, but their handwriting is not perfect, and it means that at least a few words per page are going to be unreadable. I find all but the most immaculate, perfect cursive to be straining to read. Like I said, in FelixDeKat's letter, I had difficulty with several words until I read more and got context, and there were a couple words that I was completely unable to read at all.

By the way, I learned how to write cursive just like almost everyone else. Although I don't write it anymore, I at least know how the letters are shaped. Yet I still have major trouble reading cursive. This is because cursive is harder to read, period. Cursive that is even slightly bad is illegible, whereas it takes really bad printing for it to be unreadable to me.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: astroidea

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselves without electricity or in simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

let's get a few hands of people who had difficulty reading a lot of that.

/raises hand

btw.. what's up with the snail mail letter in cursive to ask for the unbannage?

Also raises hand. Trouble started at the second word.

Originally posted by: Chaotic42
Maybe I have some horrible mental disability, but writing in cursive is faster for me than writing in print.

I come out about even on either one. I have a point where I max out and either one becomes entirely illegible, and my writing is pretty lousy to begin with. Though maybe that stems from my inherent distaste for the slow speed of translation from thought to paper. Until I am able to write at 300WPM+, it's still likely to be far too slow.

 

[InflatableBuddha]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselfs without electricity or simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

I can't read the third word from the right on the second line or the last word on the first line of the last paragraph. Had to re-read the second and second-to-last words on the seventh line to tell what they were.

This is a problem for virtually all cursive handwriting for me. Unless you use "italic cursive" or cursive-style letters with more of a block-style arrangement, chances are I'll have difficulty reading at least a few words. This is enough for me to think of cursive as absolutely useless, since it leads to poor communication when it could be easily avoided by simply using manuscript instead.

"been" and "reuploaded" are the words in question. Though I'll grant you that I had to look at the latter twice, as I'm not sure it's an actual English word.

 

[frostedflakes]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselves without electricity or in simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

You're not really helping your argument with that chicken scratch.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
I love cursive handwriting. Heres a sample of mine. Every little skull full of mush out there in 3rd grade needs to learn it so we can preserve our ability to express ourselfs without electricity or simple rudimentary block text.

Long live cursive handwriting! :beer:

I can't read the third word from the right on the second line or the last word on the first line of the last paragraph. Had to re-read the second and second-to-last words on the seventh line to tell what they were.

This is a problem for virtually all cursive handwriting for me. Unless you use "italic cursive" or cursive-style letters with more of a block-style arrangement, chances are I'll have difficulty reading at least a few words. This is enough for me to think of cursive as absolutely useless, since it leads to poor communication when it could be easily avoided by simply using manuscript instead.

I dont claim to have the most legible handwriting, but the message I was trying to convey is relevent. That is that cursive must not be allowed to fall by the wayside in the face of technology. It would be an irreversbile mistake that will plague future generations, especially after the fall of western civilization in 2012.

Originally posted by: astroidea

let's get a few hands of people who had difficulty reading a lot of that.

/raises hand

btw.. what's up with the snail mail letter in cursive to ask for the unbannage?

It was relevent last year, but Im back, and thats what matters.