Elder Generations Lament Decline of Handwriting

[Alja-Markir]

Article at the New York Times.

Personally, as a computer-savvy young man of the digital age, I find it curious that people still care about cursive and handwriting skills in an age of ubiquitous keystroke text.

That said, I try to put it into perspective by comparing it to Japanese kanji. In modern Japan, kanji isn't practiced as it once was. The complex system of writing fell to the wayside in favor of the simplified forms of hiragana and katakana.

Before, pictographic kanji symbols (each with a specific set of conceptual meanings) would be grouped together in discrete sets which would then represent other words or concepts, often in an idiomatic structue. For example, the kanji for "sea otter" is a combination of the characters "river" and "pig". Somewhat confusingly, the pronunciation of the final end word itself has nothing to do with the kanji that represent it - the kanji merely stand in for the concept, and the meaning and pronunctiation of each word must be memorized. So when you see "river pig", you have to think and say "sea otter".

The simpler systems, hiragana and katakana, do away with this - they operate phonetically, with each symbol representing a syllable in the word. Take my current avatar for example. The three small symbols at the top left read as Mu-Di-Ta (with "mudita" being a traditional Buddhist concept similar in meaning to the modern notion of compersion.)

Anywho! How does this tie into cursive?

Well, cursive is likewise becoming obsolete. The purpose of cursive, originally, was to increase writing speed. Other, similar systems existed - like shorthand - but the benefit of cursive was that one could write out entire words (unlike shorthand) but still do so quickly. By never lifting the pen or pencil from the page, it made it easy to take notes quickly, record events as they occured, and also had the side effect of forming a specific aesthetic style.

That said, the typewriter became cursive's first main competitor. Suddenly someone trained in its usage could create a neat, clean, type-written document even more quickly than writing cursive by hand. Yet cursive persisted, because typewriters were specialized devices - they were expensive, bulky, and required maintenance (not to mention they were noisy and distracting).

But now, with the ubiquity of personal computation paired with modern miniaturization, the typewriter's old role is now filled by electronic keyboards. They're fast, light, cheap, and largely maintenance free. The cursive system is now, finally and completely, obsolete. (So long as electronic keyboards remain available.)

So, why all the hub-bub? Are the folks at the New York Times just scraping the barrel for controversy and news stories?

Well, my studies in the realm of history say "not quite". If we go back to the topic of kanji, there are those among the Japanese who lament something very specific about the decline of kanji - the cultural aspects tied to it. Kanji has a long and noble history of usage in calligraphy - writing it is literally an artistic endeavor, a personal sort of self-expression. More than that, in Japan it is a sort of mark of pride and sophistication to be able to properly read kanji - one somewhat common sort of social "test" in certain circles is seeing if someone is able to properly read the kanji on one's business card. A proper reading is impressive, and denotes culture and learnedness.

Although cursive is, again, not on quite the same level as kanji, there is still something to be said for the cultural familiarity of cursive. The article above does touch upon this, among other concerns. It is seen at some level as an art - a thing of beauty, something which ties people together as a common creative endeavor.

For my own example, my father writes in a flowing cursive script - it's almost stereotypical, considering he is a medical doctor. And I do remember him chastizing me in my youth for my sloppy penmanship, alongside numerous of my teachers over the years.

Yet, for as much as he thinks my handwriting is ugly and squat, I imagine he would admit my vocabulary and writing skills are staggering compared to many people's. Clearly my master of the language and my ability to use the written (or in my case typed) word has not suffered from a lack of penmanship.

But what do you folks think? Do you ever write in cursive? Why or why not? Do you think that maybe we ought to preserve it, at least on some level? Or should we perhaps let it go quietly into the night, lost to the march of time?

~Alja~

[An Evil Herbivore]

I actually had a fairly detailed conversation about this with my mother the other day. (She teaches small children, and they were learning cursive)

I say let it rot. I use it all the time, but more than anything it's made my handwriting harder to read. Considering my atrocious handwriting to begin with, that's saying something.

I usually have to force myself to use print writing, just so it can be easily read by someone else. I find it to be a largely superfluous skill in the modern computer age.

[Lyinginbedmon]

It amazes me constantly that my university still expects a class of people explicitly attending a computer-based course to have pens and paper.

I've never had good handwriting, it's always been just borderline legible, and it's only gotten worse after I started using computers to compensate the issue (due to lack of practise, presumably). I can't really handwrite for very long anyway, my hands just cramp up excruciatingly, which in turn makes my writing look like Guy Fawkes' confession.

It isn't really the manner in which you say something (though I admit that has nuances of impact in social circumstances) but what you say, content rather than presentation, that is important.

[iamafish]

i find it amusing how people are taught handwriting in school, but not necessarily how to type quickly and efficiently.

sure cursive looks pretty and it has some merit for exams and so on (speed, mostly) but by the time primary school kids get to the end of their school and university, i doubt we'll be using pen and paper for exams any longer.

I was taught cursive as a child, but not very well. My hand writing is terrible, whether i print or write cursive, it still looks terrible. I wish i could type exams and so on, because it would make life so much easier.

as alja said, my linguistic skills are better than most anyway, so why does it matter? Why bother teaching our kids an outdated form of communication when we could be spending time teaching them how to cope with the modern world?

[gcninja]

I guess I came in the middle of all this (being born 1990) as I was taught cursive in 3/4/5 grade, yet used print. Then in 9/10th grade had to practice how to type efficiently.
I don't say do away with it, but rather teach it once so the people know the basics, because our fonts have cursive and if one day they come across it not knowing it then how do they read it?

[Master Gunner]

I was taught curse in grade 3, and haven't seriously used it since. My printing is hard enough to read, I'm not going to subject people to my handwriting. I can do shorthand, most of my work is typed, and printed characters are the standard outside of notes and signatures. I can read it well enough when I have to, but I see no reason for me to write it.

[the_lone_bard]

I've never had good handwriting, it's always been just borderline legible, and it's only gotten worse after I started using computers to compensate the issue (due to lack of practise, presumably). I can't really handwrite for very long anyway, my hands just cramp up excruciatingly, which in turn makes my writing look like Guy Fawkes' confession.

This, exactly the same here, only my handwriting was never good since i broke my wrist when i was first learning to write and missed a great deal.

Now fun fact folk, i can't read or write cursive. Yet whenever i try to write something, due to the speed at which i'm used to typing, i instinctivly try and write in it because it's faster, even though i never even learnt most of it in school, and can't remember what i did learn, and in the end it's some sort of mutation of illegible printed/cursed writing...
Though to be fair, it takes me over a minute to write my first name legibly as my handwriting is just that bad. and my first name is fairly easy to write: "Keagan" <- Over a minute to write that, 2 seconds on a pc. Yes i understand that i am a bad case, and i should be able to write quicker than that, but i can't. And the stupid thing is, people who know this, IE: Schools, Still make me write my full name on work that i bring in, even though it is typed half a dozen times. This is pointless, annoying, and above all, painful for me to do. So good riddance, let the god damned cursive rot, i can't read it and have gotten into a fair bit of trouble due to idiots writing things (Again, school, or centerlink.) in it and sending them to me, and my complete inabillity to translate it into english.

[CancerBottle]

All my friends agreed the hardest part of the SAT was remembering how to write in cursive.

But yeah, handwriting is in decline all over the world: http://www.physorg.com/news202021739.html

Handwriting is just another way to express ideas. The significance that culture has imbued it with will be lost, but we gain the ability to spread ideas with ludicrous speed over absurd distances.

Besides, lamenting over the lost art of handwriting is nothing new. This piece by H.L. Mencken was written in in the 1920s:

Go back, now, to the old days. Penmanship was then taught, not mechanically and ineffectively, by unsound and shifting formulæ, but by passionate penmen with curly patent-leather hair and far-away eyes— in brief, by the unforgettable professors of our youth, with their flourishes, their heavy down-strokes and their lovely birds-with-Ietters-in-their-bills. You remember them, of course. Asses all! Preposterous popinjays and numskulls! Pathetic idiots! But they loved penmanship, they believed in the glory and beauty of penmanship, they were fanatics, devotees, almost martyrs of penmanship— and so they got some touch of that passion into their pupils. Not enough, perhaps, to make more flourishers and bird-blazoners, but enough to make sound penmen. Look at your old writing book; observe the excellent legibility, the clear strokes of your “Time is money.” Then look at your child’s.

Such idiots, despite the rise of “scientific” pedagogy, have not died out in the world. I believe that our schools are full of them, both in pantaloons and in skirts. There are fanatics who love and venerate spelling as a tom-cat loves and venerates catnip. There are grammatomaniacs; schoolmarms who would rather parse than eat; specialists in an objective case that doesn’t exist in English; strange beings, otherwise sane and even intelligent and comely, who suffer under a split infinitive as you or I would suffer under gastroenteritis.

i find it amusing how people are taught handwriting in school, but not necessarily how to type quickly and efficiently.

No kidding, no one in my household owned a computer with internet access and a printer until I was in 8th grade. When my new English teacher announced the paper due that Friday had to be typed, I was terrified. Thanks to that wench, Mavis Beacon, (who isn't even a real person!), I learned how to type in two days.

[CancerBottle]

It amazes me constantly that my university still expects a class of people explicitly attending a computer-based course to have pens and paper.

My school used to allow students to bring laptops in class for note-taking, but during history class they all had Age of Empire LAN parties and torrented movies to watch during lunch instead.

[xdeathknightx]

my fine motor skills suck, so my writing is crap.
Thanks autism

[The Jester]

I would question the claim that just because one can't do a thing means that that thing is useless and should be forgotten. This isn't necessarily a defence of handwriting, but it's a dangerous opinion to start holding and blithely touting. At least, to someone like me who delights in knowledge and learning it is. "Oh, it's useless" doesn't mean it should be lost. Is archery or fencing still useful? Is hand-weaving cloth? Leather working? Smithing? Does the advent of photoshop and graphics tablets render paints and other traditional methods of creating art useless?

It's taken me years and years of working with computers nearly every day to get to the point of mediocre touch-typing. I've never been very good at handwriting, either, but I prefer it as a means of recording ideas or communication. If someone sends you a hand written letter, you can tell that they've spent more time over it; it has more significance, to me at least. And if it's beautifully written and a joy just to see? Even better.

For all that, I'm not sure that handwriting is worthy of such praise. But I think that calligraphy is. Calligraphy is real art with language, and can make cursive look crude by comparison. Can't read it? Well that's too bad, but it doesn't mean it should cease existing.

[Lisra]

I was terrible at cursive as a kid and when i got into middle school I just gave up, figuring that it is better that people can read what I write without it looking nice.

I value handwriting and I enjoy writing letters. But it is not necessary anymore.

[Yaxley]

On the one hand, I can't remember the last time I used cursive. Aside from my signature, I'm not sure I even remember how to make some of the letters.

On the other hand, I once took this writing course where some of the assignments were to hand copy lines of poetry as slowly and nearly as possibly. Ostensibly, this was to make us appreciate the words more. I don't think it worked for me, but it did alter my handwriting. All that time writing as deliberately as possible made my writing much clearer and neater than it had ever been before, to the point that I actually get compliments on my writing on occasion. Or I get "You write like a girl!" which I take as a compliment because they mean that they can easily read it. I almost never write anything by hand these days, but I still think good handwriting is a useful skill to have.

[I X]

I love to handwrite things. Sure, I type most everything now, but writing with a pen just has that special something. I used to draw and/or invent typefaces (never practical ones, just for logo design or similar). My greatest work is my own personal typeface, which has been in development for some fourteen years. There was a three- or four-year period in which this typeface was cursive, but in my last year of primary school I decided it had become too ugly and illegible (thereby defeating its purpose) and trained myself to write in a pseudo-printing style, replacing all the cursive letters that had made my writing difficult to read with much neater printed ones, and keeping things I liked about it. I still join most letters for speed, but no longer are they the frilly, messy cursive ones of my youth. I have never since had anyone be unable to read a word I write, and that is the main goal of my handwriting: clarity at any size. I've added little touches here and there, a straight-down y, a half-moon capital e, a classic serifed capital I, etc. I know my handwriting is not beautiful or strictly efficient, but dammit, it is perfectly legible and that's the way I like it. If cursive had been forced on me, not only would I have hated writing, my writing would've been horrific after a few more years, and I would probably never have taken the interest I did in calligraphy in secondary school. So I say, cursive is nice for those who can do it nicely, but for everyone else, let them write how they like.

[Dutch guy]

I think writing by hand is still an important skill for kids to learn. So is sketching and drawing things. You never know when you have to take notes without a computer in sight. And it might happen those notes need to be read by others. So it's important that kids learn to write legibly. Is it imporant this handwriting is in smooth flowing cursive? Not really. I myself use a mix of print and cursive writing as it makes my writing both faster and more legible than plain cursive.

The advantage of keeping the pen on paper, with modern ballpoint pens atleast is almost negligable nowadays. In the olden days, lifting the quill or pen from the paper left smudges and puddles of ink. Not really advantageous to the readability of the writing. The speed advantage is zilch. (I dot my i's and cross my t's on the go, meaning I don't have to go back over a word to do so. So I think it's actually faster that way)

[theDreamer]

Cursive is dumb.

All through grade school "They'll expect you to use cursive in high school and beyond, you know!"

All through high school "fuck cursive, type it bitches!"

University is just "whatever. So long as I can read it, it's handed in, and you didn't cheat, the fuck do I care?"

Also, I need a pad and paper (by which I mean pen and paper, but I say pad inexplicably) for my uni classes. Because fuck writing 5 pages of math formulae in LaTeX.

Though I am, slowly, learning LaTeX, like I'm learning to use a shit ton of other things I should already know.

Sorry what?

[elvor]

LaTeX can go die in a fire. I realise that as a Comp Sci student I should use it all the time but seriously, fuck LaTeX.

As for cursive, I didn't realise it was that big of a deal. Most people I know write some vaguely cursive thing in various levels of legibility. My handwriting is (so I'm told) terrible though. Possibly because I write stupidly fast to take lecture notes and stuff, and as long as I can read it, it's not a problem. Izzi also teases me whenever I attempt to write neatly.

[Metcarfre]

Not cursive so much, but dear LORD I wish people could simply write legibly. Everyone can bitch and moan about how much more useful computers are and will be [personally, I've never been able to use them for taking notes or things of that nature - I can't entirely touch-type, but I'm close.], writing-implement-and-paper is going to be here for a loooooong time.

[Sieg Reyu]

I sucked at cursive from the start. I had teachers suggest I go back to printing, and so I did. Later on, in high school, I had a teacher try to get me to write in cursive, By that time I had forgotten almost all the capitals, along with a few lower case, but I gave her a sample nonetheless. She changed her mind real quick-like.

I have terrible handwriting period, and I also cannot draw. The best way I know how to put it is, my fingers lack any sort of basic form of agility or grace. They are quick as all get-out which is way I'm good at video games, but moving them around is not my strong suit. That's why I am prone to typos.

[JustAName]

...I like cursive. It's a fast way of writing, and also looks pretty, so I can make nice-looking letters like the two I just mailed off yesterday.

That said, my standard print handwriting is illegible. Going back through notebooks for various classes, I CANNOT read what I wrote in-between the graphs and formulae.

I can also type quickly and well; we were taught in 8th grade, with a typing program and a sheet of paper over our hands.

[Lord Chrusher]

I was never taught to type. My limited ability to touch type comes from typing a lot and my fingers learning where the keys are. I am dyslexic so my typing speed is usually limited by how fast I can figure out to spell words rather than how fast I can type.

Like many I have not used cursive since elementary school. I am not going to say it was the hardest part (the 100 questions in under three hours was) but doing the cursive on my GRE subject exam was a challenge. Like Dutch Guy said, cursive is a relic from when pens were primitive and lifting them was a bad idea. My handwriting has always been messy. Supposedly I have a strange way of holding a pen; despite well meaning attempts to change my grip I stuck with my way of writing.

LaTeX has a steep learning curve and can some times be quite annoying but once to learn it you wonder how you did things before. However writing out math by hand is still much faster for me. When I need to work something out I reach for my notebook and pen. Some how handwriting is deeply connected to how I solve mathematical problems.

[elvor]

Every mathematician I know only ever uses paper and pen for maths related things. You just need to be able to write things down properly.

[Dutch guy]

As one of my uni teachers made very clear in one of his first lectures, there's some formulas that are just impossible to get into LaTeX fast enough. Pen and paper all the way for all of my lectures.

I started using a refillable "mechanical" pencil about 2 years ago, I have no intention of ever switching back. Very sharp writing, easy drawing yet durable but erasable "ink". I now usually have both a .5 mm mechanical pencil and a 2 mm clutch pencil in my bag. The combo of that allows me to write and draw just about anything. (Not to mention a clutch pencil comes in handy when one needs to mark things for cutting and such)

[theDreamer]

...I like how I spawned a LaTeX discussion.

I know some pure mathies who love it with a burning fire.

...Also whenever I see this thread I think "Elder Gods lament decline of handwriting" and imagine Cthulhu being pissed because his cultists have started typing their ancient eldritch runes, instead of taking the effort to write them.

[elvor]

Snap on the Elder Gods thing. 'Elder' has unavoidable Lovecraft connotations to me.

Although technically Cthulhu isn't an Elder God, but a Great Old One.[/lovecraftnerd]