I'm in the US and learned it in school. I just never really needed to use it consistently. Assignments and papers that were still handwritten could be done either way. Cursive never felt noticeably faster for me to write. I'm sure it would have had I been forced to do it. By the time I was in high school (1999), i remember typing most long form assignments. Now the only time I ever read cursive is on letters from my mom and her cursive is not particularly neat or clean.
I grew up in Portugal, so a different education system, and used cursive until I was 11 or 12. But I had terrible hand writing and one day during class I decided to write text like it was printed on books, computers, etc, and that's what I've been doing since then. Still looks bad, but at least it's readable :P
I guess that using block letters, also known as print writing. From Wikipedia: Elementary education in English-speaking countries typically introduces children to the literacy of handwriting using a method of block letters, which may later advance to cursive. The policy of teaching cursive in American elementary schools has varied over time, from strict endorsement, to removal, to being reinstated.
I learnt it here in Australia in my early school years, and hated it because it was both slower to write and more difficult to read. I switched back to standard writing as soon as I was allowed.
Those around me just write a lot more slowly, writing in print (they don’t connect the letters like in cursive, they can’t easily read my very-clean cursive either, which gives a feeling that my cursive is a sort of superpower)
I learned cursive in 2nd grade and was very strictly REQUIRED to use it up until high school, where they stopped requiring cursive.
1) My cursive was always slower than print. I was happy to go back to print so I could write fast. I went to school in the "analog" era, so 100% of all assignments were hand written and not typed.
2) I noticed that literally only 1 person in my school stayed with cursive when printing was an option. It was so unusual it stuck out.
3) I only know one person who writes cursive now in every day life even though 100% of us learned it in school.
4) That person is my dad and he writes in the style of these documents. If you gave me one of these documents and told me my dad wrote it, id believe you.
Which makes me think we all somehow were taught cursive wrong or practiced it wrong. My cursive was never fast and never looked like these documents.
Anyway, I found this, which summed up my feelings learning cursive perfectly
>Reading and literacy expert Randall Wallace, of Missouri State University, says “it seems odd and perhaps distracting that early readers, just getting used to decoding manuscript, would be asked to learn another writing style.”
I found it so frustrating that I just learned how to write one way and then they tell me that's not the "proper" way to write and we need to learn this other way to write.
Very interesting.. Frankly did not know most of what's said in replies.. That it's not compulsorily taught and more surprisingly it's slower to write!
I thought having to lift pen repeatedly would be slower? Anyway I need to try to really know I guess! Versus the time taken to add those extra links.
Like most others I've not written much in years perhaps decades, that has screwed up my handwriting as even minor notes are these days illegible even to me after a few days
Thanks for the replies.. Cleared a few misconceptions... One of them being writing in blocks is somewhat 'childish' and cursive is more literate.
Added later: read parts of the long article it's very interesting.. Need to read it fully.
I'm in the US and learned it in school. I just never really needed to use it consistently. Assignments and papers that were still handwritten could be done either way. Cursive never felt noticeably faster for me to write. I'm sure it would have had I been forced to do it. By the time I was in high school (1999), i remember typing most long form assignments. Now the only time I ever read cursive is on letters from my mom and her cursive is not particularly neat or clean.
>Cursive never felt noticeably faster for me to write. I'm sure it would have had I been forced to do it.
I was forced to use cursive and it was still slower than print.
I’m not sure why cursive would be faster given the letterforms require a lot more travel.
Maybe it would be when writing with a quill where splatter and breakage were a concern, but surely not with a ballpoint pen.
Print/block letters. Random picture from the web: https://i.imgur.com/4X1Mz11.jpeg
I grew up in Portugal, so a different education system, and used cursive until I was 11 or 12. But I had terrible hand writing and one day during class I decided to write text like it was printed on books, computers, etc, and that's what I've been doing since then. Still looks bad, but at least it's readable :P
I guess that using block letters, also known as print writing. From Wikipedia: Elementary education in English-speaking countries typically introduces children to the literacy of handwriting using a method of block letters, which may later advance to cursive. The policy of teaching cursive in American elementary schools has varied over time, from strict endorsement, to removal, to being reinstated.
I learnt it here in Australia in my early school years, and hated it because it was both slower to write and more difficult to read. I switched back to standard writing as soon as I was allowed.
Unless it's really badly written, like mine is these days, I can read cursive quite comfortably. Guess it's a matter of habit.
I learned cursive in elementary school in the US. But I went to a private Islamic school
Those around me just write a lot more slowly, writing in print (they don’t connect the letters like in cursive, they can’t easily read my very-clean cursive either, which gives a feeling that my cursive is a sort of superpower)
I learned cursive in 2nd grade and was very strictly REQUIRED to use it up until high school, where they stopped requiring cursive.
1) My cursive was always slower than print. I was happy to go back to print so I could write fast. I went to school in the "analog" era, so 100% of all assignments were hand written and not typed.
2) I noticed that literally only 1 person in my school stayed with cursive when printing was an option. It was so unusual it stuck out.
3) I only know one person who writes cursive now in every day life even though 100% of us learned it in school.
4) That person is my dad and he writes in the style of these documents. If you gave me one of these documents and told me my dad wrote it, id believe you.
Which makes me think we all somehow were taught cursive wrong or practiced it wrong. My cursive was never fast and never looked like these documents.
Anyway, I found this, which summed up my feelings learning cursive perfectly
https://nautil.us/cursive-handwriting-and-other-education-my...
>Reading and literacy expert Randall Wallace, of Missouri State University, says “it seems odd and perhaps distracting that early readers, just getting used to decoding manuscript, would be asked to learn another writing style.”
I found it so frustrating that I just learned how to write one way and then they tell me that's not the "proper" way to write and we need to learn this other way to write.
Very interesting.. Frankly did not know most of what's said in replies.. That it's not compulsorily taught and more surprisingly it's slower to write!
I thought having to lift pen repeatedly would be slower? Anyway I need to try to really know I guess! Versus the time taken to add those extra links.
Like most others I've not written much in years perhaps decades, that has screwed up my handwriting as even minor notes are these days illegible even to me after a few days
Thanks for the replies.. Cleared a few misconceptions... One of them being writing in blocks is somewhat 'childish' and cursive is more literate.
Added later: read parts of the long article it's very interesting.. Need to read it fully.
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