When I was in school, we were crammed cursive down our throats and forced to learn it and use it.
The problems quickly became apparent as people decided to develop their own versions of certain letters, mostly our parents or other people(not in the class) and the whole lack of consistency really put me off. It never felt natural for me and when I got out of elementary school, I pretty much turned my back on cursive entirely and went back to printing, which I could do faster and more legibly anyways.
Granted, “in my day”, penmanship counted for a lot, so “neatness counts”. You would be marked down for not writing neatly. Taking the point of view of the instructor, do you want to struggled through 26 papers of slop? No, write neatly, it’s good practice for life.
Right now, 2 of my kids are in elementary school, and their writing is unacceptable to me. One just writes fast to bang it out, get it done and move on to what she wants to do. The other is actually working hard to be neater, he just simply needs more practice, which we are providing to him via either pre-made things to work on or I’ll just make him write on a topic.
What turns me off about cursive is the lack of consistency. It seems everyone wants to give it their own twist. I don’t have time for that. Plus, the standard keeps evolving, so even consistency isn’t consistent. This has made cursive a “moving target”. With bad penmanship on the rise and mixed in with the lack of consistency and evolution, honestly I have a hard time even reading cursive anymore.
There are still “rules” to follow in cursive, but everybody’s will look different. That’s actually one of the things I like about it. If everyone’s looked exactly like the textbook I think I would like it less.
Unless someone is scrawling at high speed (the famous “doctor prescription scratch”) I can’t say I have any problems reading pretty much anybody’s particular style of cursive.
That sets up a straw man… knocking down the position that individually styled cursive has merits over printing because printing is homogenous. But I never made that claim! Studio42 proposed that it’s the discrepancies in style that make it a pain in the butt. I simply gave a contrary position that not only are the discrepancies not a pain for me (except for complete chicken-scratch) but they add a nice flavour.
No comparison to printing at all. I agree that everyone’s printing has a unique style, and “being different from person to person” isn’t in and of itself a reason to prefer cursive over printing.
Forgot about this thread. The new core standards do not require cursive but also leave it open to the schools to decide. Most leave it out.
“The national standards don’t require children to learn how to read and write in cursive. They do, however, require that by the end of fourth grade, students demonstrate sufficient command of keyboarding skills to complete a one-page writing assignment.” 45 states have adopted the national standard it said, 5 have not.
The US military doesn’t allow cursive for good reason. Mistakes and errors. Capital print only.
If you want to teach yourself to write various forms of cursive or a different style like the Spencerian Script this is a good and free resource: http://www.iampeth.com/lessons.php
One of the American Masters in Penmanship has a workbook on cursive and Spencerian Script + others if anyone was interested. By: Michael Sull.
It really depends. Prefer fountain pens for the easy glide and dirt cheap ink (one 3oz, $15 bottle looks like its gonna last me six years!), but they slmost require cursive. Not a problem till you’re on the road and you run dry.
If everyone’s looked exactly like the textbook I think I would like it less.