Comment by electricant
13 hours ago
Today I learned that in the us children are not taught cursive handwriting. This is rather absurd to me. How are they supposed to write?
13 hours ago
Today I learned that in the us children are not taught cursive handwriting. This is rather absurd to me. How are they supposed to write?
In print? In general its faster to write and a lot easier to read, also you save time by not having to learn two different systems.
It's definitely not faster to write. That's kind of the whole point. Also it's barely a "different" system. You just join the letters together. In the UK it's called "joined-up writing" and everyone learns it in primary school where there is plenty of time for learning.
It is definitely easier to read print though - for a lot of people's handwriting anyway. It's much easier to be lazy and just do an illegible scrawl with joined-up writing than print.
It varies a lot though; I had a PhD supervisor whose handwriting was illegible to everyone - even himself! My wife's handwriting on the other hand is practically a font.
Print is just so slow to write...
Let me disagree. IMHO cursive is faster than print once you get the hang of it.
However my point is valid for print too I guess.
Regarding time saved and the fact that they are two different systems, I don't get it. Time saved for what? They are not so different, cursive is built on top of print, just optimized for not lifting the pen from the paper too often (hence it is supposedly faster to write).
> However my point is valid for print too I guess.
What do you mean? You asked how kids can write without learning cursive, and print is the answer how. What is your point about print?
Cursive might be faster for an experienced writer (though Google tells me that claim is debatable), but it takes a long time to get there. I learned cursive as a child, used it for years, and it was never faster than printing, it was much slower. When I say ‘print’, I use an in-between style of half-cursive fast print that isn’t cursive but a lot of people use in practice, and it’s much faster for me that trying to write legible cursive.
However cursive is neither faster nor more legible to read, as evidenced by this article and the pages that need translating. If we’re going to compare cursive and print, the metric should be overall speed and accuracy of communication, not how many milliseconds the pen-holder can save while writing something nobody can read.
Today, it no longer matters. People type & text mostly, and typing is way faster than either cursive or print. The number of situations that require handwriting continues to decline. We don’t use handwriting enough anymore to develop cursive fluency and efficiency.
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They could be forgiven for writing in print, but I wonder how they will "sign" their signature, e.g. for legal documents. Sure, they could print that, too, but it would be a departure from the many generations before them that learned how to "properly" sign their name. Are they embarrassed that they don't know how to write their name as a traditional signature? Do they care at all?
I realize many legal documents are "signed" via keyboard, meaning you just need to type your name, but some things are still done via pen and paper.
I've heard in Europe the kids are taught script using fountain pens, which are actually faster when you don't pick up a pen.
In the US, 25+ years ago when cursive was taught, we were largely using pencils and crappy bic pens. At which point, you don't really get the benefit of staying in contact with the paper for longer.
This might be part of the disconnect.
It's pretty country specific & not just US.
German school: You have to write cursive with fountain pen
South African uni: You're not allowed to write cursive, we can't read it
...sigh...just decide ffs
You do realize that you are posting on a thread whose OP thesis is that cursive is unreadable for most people.