this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 88 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (29 children)

I don't remember people ever writing cursive like what I was taught growing up. People just self-servingly turbo-scribble some chicken-scratch and call it a day. The kid who can't read our B-movie elvish script isn't the one with literacy issues.

We either write within the ballpark of standardization, or we don't. I think kids should be required to put in as much effort into learning cursive, as people put into actually writing cursive. Which is to say, absolutely none at all.

(Sorry to people who actually write legible, clean cursive. I wish I got to read your output in the wild.)

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The thing is, it's easy to read good cursive. It's just another script. It took me 5 episodes of Last Exile to memorize the Greek equivalents to English letters so I could read all the text without looking up the translation guide. But when their writing looks like Jack Lew's signature, there's not a whole lot I can do to decipher it

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 11 months ago (4 children)

It's not that I never learned how to read cursive; it's that nobody actually writes it legibly.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (19 children)

Conservatives are trying to prevent kids from learning history and sex ed, and we're still hearing this bullshit lamentation about CURSIVE?

Schools are underfunded, teachers are underpaid and overworked, students are graduating barely able to read and with no critical thinking skills.

Who in their right mind is actually concerned about kids learning cursive?

Things I'd rather schools focus on:

Typing, Personal finance, Current events, Technology literacy, Graphic design, Human Computer Interaction

Or maybe practical skills related to trades or how to fix things: CAD, Cooking, Electrical, Plumbing

Literally ANYTHING but this cursive crap. It's useless, it's dead, move on.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago (3 children)

To be fair, it's trivially easy to learn cursive and it's basically always been an extension of penmanship.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (6 children)

I've never been in a situation where penmanship mattered. Typing skills on the other hand are abysmal across the board and hamper my coworkers constantly.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (6 children)

Not being able to write cursive I understand.

Not being able to read cursive is an issue that will out your lesser education and put you at a disadvantage in social situations.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 11 months ago (7 children)

How many social situations do you get into where cursive is relevant? Wedding table cards? Pretty sure even people not taught cursive can get the gist since most letters are pretty close to print.

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 11 months ago (6 children)

This is so puzzling to me, here in Brazil everyone writes in cursive, we all learned fine as children, it exists because it's easier and faster to write with it and you are going to write a lot during all your school life.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I mean the problem isn't whether they taught cursive or not, it's whether you actually use it or not. Cause I was taught cursive in school but barely know how to write it now cause I never have to use it.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I'm nearing 40 and haven't been required to write in cursive since grade school. Don't every use it unless more than a word or two a year probably. I have no problem writing in it on occasion. It's just curvier versions of letters that you link by not picking your pen up. Sure, there are some weird capital letters, but generally, knowing the concept is enough to get it mostly right. I don't really understand how some people struggle.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (12 children)

Can someone explain why one cannot read cursive? It is just a tilted (sometimes fancy) font, what's so hard about it?

Edit: After being made aware by a fellow lemmy'er and googling it, it seems I confused cursive with italics, English is not my first language. Though I learned cursive at school when I was 6 without realizing it is called cursive in English. It was part of the basic curriculum at that time, didn't know this wasn't a thing in other countries.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

There are some wonky letters, like capital G, S where if you never learned you wouldn't know what you're looking at.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago

It isn't just cursive. I've seen a lot of younger people have issues reading bad copies of older print letters. Part of it isn't being used to seeing information presented in a certain way or not being found via OCR.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Fuck cursive. Being forced to write in that was absolute torture. The forced use of specific esoteric hand-cramping illegible scribbles is asinine.

There surely was a use for penmanship before the proliferation of ballpoint pens and typewriters, but the way it was taught while I was in school was completely backwards. The intent of writing in script is to quickly flow from one letter to another without needing to lift the nib of a quill; rote learning of individual hieroglyphs with full disregard for the writer's natural hand movements is at best asinine, and at worst cruel.

The fact that we were tormented decades in the past doesn't justify more torment now. Be better.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (22 children)

I find cursive is very useful when writing notes that only I will ever need to read. Reading and writing another persons cursive has never been easy for me and it has never impacted my life with one exception. I cannot read post cards from my aunt. Oh, and that time a decade ago when I had to fill out the "I will not cheat" pledge on the back of the SAT.

Turns out if you need to write something with speed we have these things that are like typewriters, but they don't even jam!

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 11 months ago (22 children)

Cursive is dumb anyways. Let's have a second way to write that's harder To do, less legible, and designed for old school fountain pens no one uses that have difficulty with upstrokes

[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

Let's all go back to learning shorthand!

This is what my arthritic handwriting looks like anyway...

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Shorthand is pretty badass. My mother knows how to read and write it, and I envy the speed at which she can take notes. A bonus for her was that she could write stuff down when we were kids and nobody could read it.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 11 months ago (8 children)

Harder to do? The whole point of cursive is for easier writing. Writing print by hand is what makes no sense. It's more legible, but print is called print for a reason.

On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a standard for cursive in the US. When I learned to write in 1st grade in my country, there was an official cursive alphabet and everybody learned the same one. But my daughter started learning cursive now in the US (3rd grade) and because the letters she's learning are very different from the ones I learned, I looked up what American cursive looks like. Every single source I found on the subject had a different alphabet.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I thought cursive was the American word for joined up handwriting, but reading this thread I don't really get what it means.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)

The only times I used cursive was to sign my name on important documents. Now I don't even do that anymore. I just write my name with normal letters without lifting the pen.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My signature is anything from a sine to cosine wave. Doesn't matter as long as it's sined.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

It's just a phase you're going through.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (18 children)

In this thread:

Americans: Why do I need to learn it when I can just type?

The World: It's literally just writing. You don't want to learn how to write??

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (48 children)

My kids are learning cursive and I'm glad they are doing so.

But one of the main point of cursive was to be able to write more quickly, and typing has absolutely replaced that need, many times over. And also you learn print first, so not learning how to write cursive doesnt mean you don't learn to write.

Ironically, your post is supposed to be insulting Americans for not being smart, but God damn is the point fucking stupid and ignorant.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

I write exclusively in cursive. It's natural for me and everyone around me was taught it as well.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

For me I was taught cursive in elementary school, but it felt like I couldn't keep up writing assignments so i just stuck with printing which evolved to chicken scratch notes.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 11 months ago

The only time I ever use cursive is when I write my signature, and it's mostly just loops and squiggles.

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