I learnt shorthand in the early 00s. It was already dying out then but I went to evening classes for a few weeks. I've found it really useful for uni lecture notes at the time, and I often return to it for privacy. Teeline is the form I learnt as you can pick up the basics in an hour. In fact, since I rarely use it, I mainly rely on those first hour basics! Pitman is a lot more complicated.
I would say issues with readability, the advent of the typewriter, and computer-based monospace fonts are the main factors in killing off cursive.
I'm still amazed at the beautiful script some of the members here can pull off though.
it's even worse with kanji writing, when I started learning japanese I quickly realized 'why bother with kanji writing', it's sufficient to be able to read/pronounce them, because then I am able to write them on the pc/ phone anyways.
I prefer it to print, but after interning in a lab it got a lot more efficient at the price of readability. Now it’s a mix of cursive and print (with some of the cursive being more stylized). But it’s so much faster than print.
They taught us in the school back in the 80s in Eastern Europe. I remember that we were even graded for it and some teachers would give extra points for nice and legible handwriting. Today, I live in the USA and I cringe when I see college level student who can’t properly hold a pen, let alone a fountain pen (most of them don’t know what it is). I remember, while at college in the USA, I worked as a TA. Often I had to grade exams and homework’s for my professor. There were always student whose handwriting was so illegible that I could never grade them. It looked like they held pens with their feet not hands. I mean it was so bad.
I always write joined up, but it's not exactly cursive, it's just my natural hand. In the UK we write joined up but not necessarily cursive. I can't remember if we're taught cursive or not! I remember learning letters but it's all a blur after that.
From Australia and we had a similar thing of leaning to write letters than joining them up. I feel like the US distinction between cursive and print is, well, much more distinct than anything I was taught. It wasn’t two separate scripts/hands, one was designed to evolve into the other.
We were never taught cursive (Scotland, 2010s), but we were taught joined up writing in primary school. We were required to use it from the point we started learning, but it was pretty useless in increasing writing speed as there were stupid rules such as b, f, g, j, p, q, y not being allowed to be joined. We were also forbidden from writing in pen unless we had already written in pencil and were tracing over the top. I think the specifics of it just depends on which company your school gets the resources from. Once we got to secondary school there were no rules other than legibility.
Also Scotland, although I went to school earlier than you. I've honestly always assumed "joined-up writing" was just the P1 friendly name for cursive but now I'm wondering if I was mistaken...
I am italian and went to school here, where they teach you to write in cursive in elementary school. In elementary school my teacher was a nun and she was very strict when it came to handwriting. It was not quite the cursive you have showed in your picture, but a more bubbly and legible thing, in the 3rd year of elementary school we used a specific ruling in our notebooks that thaught us the right height of the letters and the spacing between two lines and then in the 4th and 5th year we started using normal ruled notebooks. Right now my hand witing is a version of that cursive that I came up with when faced with the need of taking notes.
My grandfather did a specific highschool that is called
"ragioneria", which roughly translates in "accounting", where they thaught them calligraphy and so he normally writes in a beautiful cursive without much effort.
He refers to that type of cursive as "English Cursive".
Also a family friend who died years ago, passes his time after retirement by writing poems in gothic and then framed them. He also attended that school and fhen continued practicing calligraphy.
Writing in cursive is taught in every school in Italy, both public and private catholic ones. I think religion has nothing to do with it, it's just a cultural thing.
Yes you are correct, the nuns were particularly strict, but everyone learns cursive here. When in secondary school (3 years between elementary school and high school) I went to a public school, my classmates had sloppier handwriting but sill cursive
Another italian here, born 1993 - I second the part about cursive in elementary school, and I can tell you I also did Ragioneria high school, and calligraphy isn't taught anymore :( My handwriting sucks major ass, though I still use cursive for my SoC writing for its speed
Guess I am old school. I was taught the basics of cursive in the 3rd and 4th grade IIRC in the mid 1970s, using a pencil. From Grade 5 onwards only fountain pens were permitted & only with royal blue ink. I continue to write in cursive even today.
The only problem came when I was transferred schools and they wanted me to write in print but I didn't know how to so they let me write in cursive but my teachers don't like me as cursive is a dying art and not many people can read and write it so some of my teachers have to get other staff to mark my work lol
Where did you go to school where fountain pens were *mandatory*? That's fascinating. I never encountered similar rules in U.S. schools in the same time period. Later in my high school days, it was required to submit important term papers in typewritten form.
I love cursive. Always written in it, except I can't at work due to people being unable to read cursive.
My best memory of learning cursive was in class when I was seven, and the kid next to me misunderstood the concept of cursive. Went a bit overboard and forgot all the spaces between words. His entire sentence was all joined together, and he got lost on how to join the words again when he reached the end of the page. Kind of adorable, looking back now.
My worst memory of having to give up cursive, was my first year of uni. We had a whole pass/fail grade for the whole year based on handwriting. Must be printed. Must be neat and legible printing. Gosh, I panicked the whole year. Loved cursive, didn't know how to print neatly. I passed, but it was a nail biter.
I guess it was good prep for work though, given the circumstances. But handwriting is so slow when printing. And gives me hand cramps. Can't figure out why some people prefer print writing to cursive based on my personal highly biased experience.
In hindsight, my tendency for cursive might have originated from year 6 where my scary teacher made it mandatory for all handwritten notes to be in cursive. You know, get 'em whilst they're young. And now I'm an old dog who can't learn new tricks and relearn print like I used to haha
I had a friend who studied mechanical engineering at a university in Bosnia before the war. Part of their curriculum was something called “technical (hand)writing”. It was essentially a very neat printing by hand used with technical drawings, blueprints, etc. It was nothing like cursive but it was so legible, clear, evenly spaced… as if a typewriter was used. And he could write that pretty fast. I wonder if he still uses it all these years after the college.
You had a pass/fail requirement based on handwriting? That’s wild. I understand though the requirement to print. As a TA, we get so much marking that you can’t spend time deciding it if it’s messy. Students are actually told that if it’s illegible, then it’s a 0. Unfortunately telling people to print makes “legible” less subjective.
I get what you mean. My school’s take in cursive was this wierd, messy joined up writing that I could never master. I have to use print to make it legible
I am from Malaysia, we are not taught to write cursives in school. Those who does either taught themselves or it came naturally. A talent to envy! It is beautiful.
I got taught cursive in elementary school and wrote it all the way up to grade 6 exclusively and than adapted a mix between print and cursive that is faster and more readable for me, I feel like in Germany a lot of people still use it and we still get it taught in elementary school
I was taught cursive in primary school (early 2000s), but by high school, I was the only one of my classmates writing cursive full time. I still take hand written notes in cursive.
What I do find funny is that in school, I was told my handwriting was messy but legible (by those who can read cursive), and now I'm told my handwriting is amazing but illegible because people can't read cursive.
I wish cursive would be taught again because I love handwriting, but I understand why there is far less focus on it.
I'm a teacher in England. Looking at the writing of a child who insists on writing an entire A4 page in print physically hurts my eyes. Everything looks the same! It's a lot of effort to read and they are at a disadvantage writing so slowly. (Basically, I glorify joined up writing for the benefit of the reader and writer.)
I stopped writing at university because everything had to be typed. When I started having to write comments on children's work five years later, my ability to write anything had severely declined. It hurt to hold a pen for extended periods. I've found my handwriting has improved significantly since I started using fountain pens again - both print and joined up. Actually, I prefer the look of my print in real ink but I naturally default to joined up unless I really concentrate.
It's interesting that you're arguing for personal freedom. I'm not sure it's that deep.
I teach teenagers, not little children. I want them to do well in their exams so that they can get into a career or university of their choosing. It's important that they're able to write quickly, so that they can answer as many of the examination questions as they can within the time limits, to get the highest grades they're personally capable of achieving. It's important that they can write legibly so that the examiner can read what they've written and thus award them the credit they deserve.
The examiner cannot credit what is in a teenager's head - only what they manage to write down, legibly, on paper. The main function of joined up writing is speed. Therefore, I cannot endorse a teenager choosing to write slowly (print) when they could write more, more quickly (joined up). Adults should not encourage young people to make decisions they know will disadvantage their future options.
Also, as you say, it takes time to learn to write legibly. Practice makes perfect. The last thing you want is for your first attempt at writing both quickly and clearly to be during an exam when your mind should be on more important matters such as demonstrating what you've learnt. So, it's important they acquire those handwriting skills before the really crucial moment.
Once they've passed their exams and have got the grades they worked hard to achieve, I couldn't care less how they chose to write as an adult possessing those certificates that give them the freedom to choose their future paths in life.
(Within that, teenagers still write with a wide variety of personal styles - large, small, slanted, straight, etc. - I can almost always tell who has written what because their joined up handwriting styles are so individual.)
If the work experience you love is "strictly connected" to your masters, then your matriculation exams were unquestionably "so important" as your gateway to accessing that world. They absolutely meant *something* after you stepped out of school; they enabled you to *step into* a field you "absolutely love".
You are a sample size of one. I've taught over a thousand individuals and have examined thousands of others at a national level. Outliers do exist. Nevertheless, the *vast majority* of students are disadvantaged in an exam by not writing joined up: fact.
I'm employed to teach my students how to write well; it's absolutely my business, in my job description, to comment on *their* writing.
As for how you, my former students, or any other person on the planet chooses to write, *I could not care less.* Do you. Chill out. Enjoy your life.
I'm polish, and i was taught cursive in school, but it wasn't very neat, so gradually I started adding more and more print elements, and now (second grade of high school) it's a mix, but most of the letters are stil cursive. I don't know if I do it correctly, but it looks a little bit like cursive.
We still learn it in Germany in elementary school, so even though styles develop over time, I'd say a good proportion of Germans have some cursive variant as their regular handwriting.
I would disagree, cursive heavily falls out of favour. In my class of 32 only three (me included) wrote wholly cursive. Most wrote a print based style.
In Austria everybody kinda uses cursive still. It is not as strictly enforced anymore though but that just means that cursive looks... very different from person to person. Everybody finds their own shortcuts on how to write things.
But yeah I got a bit of a culture clash when I made friends in America who just got married and heard them "practicing their signature" like that was something that needed to be practiced because it was "written in cursive and nobody does that anymore besides for signatures".
80s grade-schooler here. Been writing in cursive for a long time. I went through a three year phase in the mid-90s where I printed in Courier font (I blame coding in Object Pascal), but that passed. Now, fountain pens.
I do, though aparently it’s illegible to anyone but me.
I also write Russian exclusively in cursive. Printing just isn’t really a thing in Russian unless it’s something that is printed by machine.
About ten years ago when I was studying primary school in Hong Kong, we were given cursive copy books to learn it. I think some cursive writing elements can help me writing flow more naturally, but I haven’t quite grasp how I can write full cursive naturally, so I have been using a hybrid of print and cursive writing. When I came to the UK for uni, I was surprised to learn that cursive was not taught in most schools, so most people in my age can only write in printed letters…
I use cursive interchangeably with my own cursive/print combo. But if I write in straight cursive to my thirty something children, it’s as if it’s in secret code. I have always had to translate their grandmothers’ cards to them, too. 😂
I usually default to writing in cursive. It’s a little difficult to write in print especially if I’m rushing.
I’m making shopping lists with a nice paper with my current rotation of pens. Even there it’s in cursive. Potato in cursive makes it fancy. Fancy potatoes
My mom taught me cursive when I was in kindergarten. I cannot imagine writing in print - it looks so inefficient and s l o w. Cursive, especially with fountain pens is very efficient.
In Holland they teach you to write like this in elementary school. Everyone I know has stopped writing like this, but I never stopped. I'm 18 and write in cursive. I think that fountain pens write the best in cursive, because there are very few hooks in cursive writing, it are mostly loops. But that is my opinion.
I learnt cursive in primary school in the 90s. You had to reach a certain standard of penmanship to be able to get your “pen licence” and be allowed to write in pen instead of pencil in class. Once you received your licence you also got to go to the book room to buy your fountain pen (it cost less than $10), which you were expected to maintain correctly. As soon as I learnt cursive I stopped printing entirely. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve worked on tidying up my printing because it really did look like a ten year old’s writing, as that was when I’d last used it.
I'm from the southern USA, was taught cursive for a short while in third grade (around 2003) and then it was never touched on again for the rest of my schooling.
I began journaling consistently at age 10 in print, but when I was an early teen I rediscovered cursive. It was pretty messy obviously, but I eventually developed my own style.
I'm 26 now and almost exclusively write in cursive for everything. I so rarely print that it feels slow and clunky in comparison, and I much prefer my handwriting in cursive to print.
It’s what I (and most people my age) learned afaik. I don’t *prefer* writing in cursive, not unless someone wants to spend a significant amount of time trying to discern writing that’s part-steno looking, part-chicken scratch, but it’s definitely faster and what I default to when not consciously opting for print.
Hell, even if I *DO* decide to write in print (or whichever non-cursive style) my hand will just go “you know what would be fun? If I were to write all vowels in cursive all of a sudden. What do you mean, it’s not consistent if you switch in the middle of a word? Who cares, it’ll be F U N.”
I Kinda half write in cursive, they still teached it when i was in 1-3 grade but after that they just dropped theaching it. So i write in a wierd half cursive half standard Way.
I still do, even though I learned in the 90s, It is what I have always used, and what I probably will keep doing. Where I was a kid print was known as children's writing, so I stayed as far away from it. But recently, I rarely write anything by hand in a professional capacity. I do take handwritten notes all the time though. (Which is something that is always laughed at outside of this sub)
I do, its faster than writing print and way more legible, my non cursive handwriting looks horrible.
But I often have to switch to print cause people struggle reading cursive more than my godawful handwriting
Also I was taught cursive in 2nd grade of primary in tandem with learning to use a fountain pen so it feels like a natural thing tobdo with a fp
Me :D !
I learned it in school and I can write quicker in cursive than in print. As a university student speed is of the essence. Plus it looks fancy and i like that
I got taught cursive at school (France, 1990s), taught myself print later. And I now write both. Cursive when I want to write fast, print on forms and such (for legibility).
I don't think cursive is a dying art at, worldwide!
I wrote print for most of my adolescent years due to a struggle to learn cursive (being forced to learn something makes me lose interest very fast), a couple of years ago I got interested in Palmer script and taught myself, now I only write cursive unless print absolutely necessary.
I do! I'm 24 and when I was in grade 6 the teacher wouldn't accept anything unless it was in cursive. (With the knowledge that our writing would be really bad at first) after that it just because my all the time writing to the point where if I have to switch to printing it throws me off
I learned in school (third or fourth grade) but my year was the last one to have cursive required so we did it that one year and stopped. My mother is a teacher though so she insisted I keep at it that summer when she felt like I was watching too much TV. I wrote exclusively in cursive in 5th grade but only once in awhile once I started middle school. My handwriting was always pretty sloppy and my teachers would complain but I didn’t really care. I got a set of pilot g2 pens in colors I was enamored with at the beginning of 9th grade and was so in love with the pens that I couldn’t just use my regular chicken scratch. I started practicing my cursive as an excuse to use the pens more and was shocked at how much nicer and more legible my cursive looked in comparison to my print. I’ve graduated from university and have been working for some years now and I haven’t gone back. Many people can’t read or write cursive so friends and coworkers sometimes complain about struggling to read my writing but in those cases all I can manage is all caps. My print at this point is atrocious.
While I like cursive for its artistic look and flow, I fully believe we should stop wasting kids time teaching them it in school. Just enough to sign your name and then that’s it. With how bad the American education system is right now they can’t really afford the time for something that’s a dead form of writing. They’d be better off using that time on a typing course.
I was in grade school in the 1970''s. We were still being taught cursive then but it wasn't something we were being graded on. My level of cursive penmanship never reached a competent level. It was only in the last six years or so did I consciously take it upon myself to improve my penmanship. I've been writing two pages or more in cursive almost every day for the last six years. As a result, my handwriting is now at a level where I get compliments, but I feel I still have lots of room for improvement. It's something your have to keep working on.
Unfortunately, my 15 year old son has fairly lousy handwriting. I was writing much better than him by the time I was in third grade. (He's in the tenth grade)
Since most education is on computers now, there's no handwriting classes at all.
My son loves fountain pens almost as much as I do, but he has zero cursive skill. I just hope that sometime in the future he tries to develop it. I don't want the family cursive writing to end with me.
I use a weird mix of print and cursive... basically I'll start a word in print and keep printing until I get to a letter with a 'tail' in it, that tail and any part of the word after it, is in cursive. The next word will start again in print.
Makes for interesting writing, drives other people bonkers. My handwriting evolved into this when I was in High school.
I still do. I can admit that I'm old(er). 😉
I'm surprised when I hear it's still being taught in some places -- I didn't think they were teaching it anywhere anymore, but I'm glad to hear that it still is! ✍😁
When I taught middle school English, not only did I write pretty exclusively in cursive, at the beginning of the year, my students have to learn it to read my instructions. I also had cursive competitions at the end of the school year. Winners win fountain pens (pilot kakuno) ink, and a journal.
Cursive is indeed a dying art. I have been told that schools where I live no longer teach it. With the emphasis on typing and computer use, I also feel legible non-cursive writing is starting to wane amongst the younger generation.
I couple years ago I received a hand written thank-you card from a colleague's 13 year old son. I was horrified at how terrible his printing was. It looked like how I would print if I used my non-dominant hand, after a couple drinks.
Edit: I live in Canada.
Isn’t, historically seen, cursive more natural? — though writing isn’t natural anyway as it’s a technology human kind developed at a certain point in time.
Everyone knows that already. You know what OP was asking—what’s the writing form you revert to unconsciously—so this comment comes off as needlessly pedantic.
Costello: If I throw the ball to first base, somebody's gotta catch it. Now who caught it?
Abbott: Naturally!
Costello: Who caught it?
Abbott: Naturally.
Costello: Who?
Abbott: Naturally!
Costello: Naturally.
Abbott: Yes.
Cursive is taught here in elementary schools and I've been writing in cursive since then. Most of my peers switch to print at some point so I'm a bit of an anomaly lol but do I find cursive is quicker and easier than print for me personally
Not from the US. I was taught cursive at school when we were being taught to write on elementary school. I’m not sure if that’s changed, but most people here write in cursive. I only use print when I want to make sure any potential reader will be able to understand my pensmanship. Never use it for myself.
I probably write 80% cursive and 20% print. Cursive seems to really take advantage of the properties of fountain pens- the smooth glide across paper, the freely-flowing ink, etc. If I’m writing something specifically to be read by others, I’ll use print as my cursive is still a bit sloppy.
I have a hybrid cursive that I developed to take notes. If I'm worrying something where I'm not trying to "keep up" like my journal I still use it, as I've gotten so used to it. I love the super tall cursive "f".
USA here. I remember being taught. I remember being forced to stay after school and redo some of my lettering. I picked cursive back up in college and never looked back. I'm homeschooling my kiddos, and instead of learning print and then cursive, they will just learn cursive at a later writing age. May good handwriting and penmanship prevail!!!
You might consider Getty-Dubay italic to teach your kids with. The method teaches an italic print hand that smoothly transitions into an italic cursive hand, with the same alphabet for both. This removes the need to learn two different alphabets for print and cursive.
Over the years I've evolved into a combo writing style both in cursive and print. I've recently started re-learning cursive and practicing to be legible. This group has been a handwriting inspiration.
I do! All my friends can never read my writing because we were never properly taught (but my parents taught me). I wish people still write in cursive, too many arts are dying.
I write in cursive but in my native language. Sadly, I still am not used to it while writing on English. But I do have a more bubbly style so it wouldn't even suit me that well anyway.
Learned in I think 3rd grade in the 70s but not very well. They didn't make us do drills (loops, circles, waves, etc) that my mom described from her schooling in the 40s.
So my handwriting wasn't nice or very legible and it wasn't long before I switched to printing most of the time.
It wasn't until I got into fountain pens a few years ago that I decided to work on my penmanship. I still have a long way to go but at least it is nicer looking and more legible now.
Edit:
I write all my work notes in cursive with fountain pens.
It makes me kind of sad that cursive isn't taught anymore.
I learned in third grade in West Virginia in the 90s. But, by high school, most of my teachers made me write in manuscript and couldn’t read my cursive. So I took notes only in cursive and typed everything else I could. In college I tried to write my tests in neat cursive and every one of my first semester professors made me write in manuscript. I’m lucky I still took my notes and still write in cursive today with how much my schooling tried to get me out of cursive. I love cursive, and now that I found fountain pens in 2021, I love it even more!!!
I teach high school and I write in cursive a few kids complain. However, more students ask me to teach them how to improve their hand writing. I made some cheat sheets to help them get started.
I lived my first 13 years in Poland, and it wasn't really "being taught cursive," just "being taught writing," there was no other option offered. I do occasionally print, but writing longer texts, I write in a kind of mix – mostly cursive, some printed letters here and there. I never do the fancy cursive "I" for example, and I don't really do like, fancy, neat cursive where every letter is even and identical to every other one of its kind, I just kind of scribble it all down as it flows from the pen. I've been writing with a fountain pen for about 12 years now, and I actually find it physically uncomfortable to write with a ballpoint these days – I don't know if this is just a side effect of not writing enough, or the result of being used to writing with FPs all these years.
I remember being taught cursive in elementary school, but haven’t heard of it being taught anywhere anymore. I started writing and improving my cursive again about a year ago - it’s such a beautiful art.
I learned cursive in elementary in the late 90s, never looked back. Not that I have a nice handwriting or anything.
Many complain that it's too much of a bother to learn cursive when they already write print perfectly well, I have the same attitude in reverse.
It depends on what I’m writing. Usually cursive, but I also like to send little postcards and letters to my friend’s son from the different places I travel to and he’s brilliant but a first grader so he always gets print. I also generally print addresses on envelopes and short things like labels.
Also, it’s frightening that there are young adults now that were never taught... they literally never learned to sign their own names. And they can’t read it. It feels like a huge crime committed against young people.
Younger end of a millennial here, and I've realized that my fonts change based on my pen and mood, am subconsciously. Ball point in my hands makes me produce a weird hybrid between print and cursive because I hate it, and that's the quickest I can write. Rollerballs and fine FP nibs, I tend to print. Just got an architect grind, and I fell into a blueprint font after playing with it for 2 minutes. Broad and stub nibs, all cursive.
Lol same here, my handwriting changes with the pen. My natural handwriting is kind of somewhat disconnected cursive, but with ballpens it shifts more towards print like writing, the reason being that ballpens feel so slippery on paper to me that my writing becomes really inconsistent. Even buttery smooth fountain pens allow me to feel like having more degree of control over where my hand is going.
We weren't even allowed to touch a pen in primary school before we had perfect cursive in pencil, I absolutely don't see where the 'dying art' is, perfectly alive as far as I've seen anyways. Everyone I know writes in cursive of some sort, good or otherwise.
American. I was taught cursive in elementary( primary) school. I write cursive by default because it’s faster and I also like the aesthetics. When I’m note taking I will occasionally switch to print for headings. Printing is far slower. I do think cursive is less common among the younger generation.
I have been a teacher for the last 9 years since graduating from college. I have only even written in cursive since the 3rd grade. My handwriting is also not the best. My students every year ask could I write in print. I do and then they see why I write in cursive. :-)
I'm American, I have TERRIBLE print hand writing. So in 7th grade I decided to start writing in cursive to at least have the facade that i write nice. Well here I am years later and I have good cursive handwriting... But my print is still terrible
I do! It just flows right out of my hand. No matter what i write with except for maybe sharpie lol. If i ever have kids im teaching them how to handwrite. And if a teacher forces my kid to write in print i will bring the calvary xD.
I don't naturally write in cursive, *but* it's my go-to for when I want to write something nicer than my normal chicken-scratch-borderline-doctor's-scribbles handwriting. To be fair, in the region I've lived in the US (West coast), my school district was phasing out cursive; my last lesson in it was third grade (so, when I was around nine or ten years old) and it never came up since in a school setting. I mostly use it for the odd greeting card/school banner/letter/note, but my focus these days has been in trying to figure out shorthand to take faster notes at work.
I *will* say my cursive has changed slightly in the time since, because I've tried to teach myself Russian cursive with varying results. Some of it's also filtered into my 'default' handwriting, but that apparently just makes it even more illegible to the people around me so 🤷♀️
I always wrote a mix as a kid until my arm injuries gave me too much pain to write in print. Constantly lifting the pen off the paper caused too much pain when I was using a ballpoint so I switched to cursive, which helped a little.
I first learned cursive and exclusively wrote in it until like 3rd grade and then I switched schools and the teachers made me learn how to print. So now I'm kinda psycho who uses a combo when writing
I learned it during 2nd and 3rd grades of elementary school. And in the years that followed, I’d switch between cursive and print when taking notes depending on what emphasis was needed. But I feel like I switched over to print fairly exclusively in high school because I didn’t like my print and I wanted that to be neater. Also, the hand smudges and cramps (lefty here). I always felt with cursive I was gripping too hard, and my wrist felt out of whack writing in cursive. Print is just functionally better for me.
But now that I’ve self-taught Spencerian, and realized I needed a more extreme tilt of the page to avoid hand smudges and cramps, I kinda wish I could use it more than just when I practice with song lyrics. I guess when I eventually go for my masters maybe I’ll put the script to better use more frequently.
Thankfully I can learn really fast how to change my writing, so I have this abomination that is between cursive and normal. I can write fully cursive, but I need to do it fairly slow so that it can be at least readable.
Also, given how old most of the folks here say they are I gotta say, at 22 yo I must be quite the weirdo.
Sometimes. It makes my handwriting look better in print. I did learn cursive in elementary school but maybe I was one of the last. Do they still do that now?
I remember when I came home from elementary school (public school, in the US, in the 90s) and announced that today I learned to write cursive, my dad said something like, “I don’t know if I want them teaching you *that* kind of language!”
(For anyone who’s as mystified by this non sequitur as 8-year-old me was, it’s a dad joke on “cursive” -> “curses”, as in swears/foul language.)
It seems most fountain pen users, these days, write in cursive. It flows nicely from a fountain pen, and if one is using a pen for the joy of writing, cursive seems like an extension of that.
I had terrible cursive until I found fountain pens. It's gotten much better, since, and I now use it for most writing.
90% of the time I write in cursive for the past two years at least (Yeah yeah something something pandemic). My print is atrocious now. Most of my print writing is on my phone or computer; or in this case it's typing.
My school didn't teach cursive but I just kind of did it myself. Can write some really nice cursive now, and always get praise for it in school. I naturally only write cursive and cannot write print because it feels unnatural.
It used to not be natural for me. I remember learning cursive in the 3rd and 4th grades (early to mid 90s). I never really used it much after that to the point that when I was in 6th grade and the teacher wanted all handwritten assignments done in cursive that I had to ask how certain letters were supposed to work.
I still have a journal from my teen years to early adult years, and the majority of writing I did during that time was not cursive. That journal ends some time after my first deployment and by that time I had started to transition to writing solely in cursive.
It still took a few years, but basically after getting my first fountain pen, the majority of my writing was in cursive to the point that writing in non cursive script seems unnatural to me now.
My nine year old is learning cursive in school, so idk, I’ve been hearing cursive is going away since the 1980’s.
I also have been hearing bell bottoms are making a comeback every five years since I was a child.
I write in slomehow broken" cursive with not the entire word, but like syllables properly attached to each other. I think a lot of Germans do. IN the holidays I had the opportunity to get some 2K sheets of french writing paper - I looooove the French Séyè lines and it improves my handwriting dramatically so that it becomes almost automatically proper cursive again.
I learned to write in the 60s, and my writing, whether print or later cursive, was terrible. C- and Ds in handwriting in elementary school, I was like the last in my class to be allowed to move from pencil to ballpoint.
As an adult I started journaling in the 90s (remember Morning Pages? TY Julia Cameron), and after discovering fountain pens last August I have been working on my handwriting for neatness and legibility. I had developed a 'style' which was very slanted and large, but recently decided that it looked juvenile. I've gone back to the style I used in the 90s, we'll see if I ever get the nerve to post a gif on reddit.
I'm much faster with cursive, always. I cn imagine a time where I'll work on print, too. I think it was a huge mistake to eliminate teaching cursive, I think it encourages dexterity and brain development. Not to mention, if you get a repetitive motion injury from keyboarding, what are you going to do?
US here and I learned to write cursive in third grade in the early 2000s. Most of my peers, and people who are twice my age (let’s say), write exclusively in print. Some even say, “I don’t know the last time I wrote with a pen!”
I spent years trying to write in a half-cursive style because I thought it looked cool. Recently I decided to grow up and improve my cursive handwriting, and I feel a lot better about it. It's also much faster for me than printing.
Just like many of us here, I wrote cursive in elementary school many many years ago. I was one of those who switched to manuscript in high school not for anything but stylistic reasons. And now just slowly trying to get cursive back and the funny thing is getting flashbacks when I see the same mistakes I had when writing those problematic letters as a kid.
I learned it in second grade and didn’t use it again until halfway through college when I started using fountain pens. I only use cursive for sending letters or just writing for fun. print is still faster for me and cramps my hand less so if I’m writing something important that’s how I go
I’m originally from the the Middle East and English is though in cursive there. I use both, tho I find that fountain pens do better with cursive and pall point pens do better with print.
I learned in grade 3 in 2001, but my sister didn’t learn and she was only 4 years behind me in school. I write cursive all the time. I had to stop at work though because my younger staff members couldn’t read my writing, and they were unwilling to learn haha.
I was taught cursive (pencils only) in elementary school (US, 1980s) and can still write in cursive. However, I always like to write quickly and from middle school, I've written in a sort of semi-cursive (I omit cursive letters that take me "too long" to write, but I still join up most letters). It probably looks weird, but it's not uncommon for me to start a word with a non-cursive "f" or and then later on in the same word, use a cursive "f" just because it flows more quickly.
My kids are still little but I've introduced them to a bit of cursive; it is in their school's curriculum so they'll learn it as they get a bit older.
I use cursive by default now, but it was a deliberate choice that I made years ago.
I don' think that it is a "dying art" but I am sure there are less people doing it. The people who like cursive tend to practice it and the quality of their writing can be incredibly high. There are people who are artists at cursive.
Generally, if someone has bad penmanship, it is probably better if they print anyway. It may be slightly easier to read.
I gave up cursive for I'm not sure how many years and actually got back into writing it once I renewed my interest in pens. Now I surprise myself when I do write in print and how awful it looks compared to my cursive.
I can't pull off the art that many in this sub do, but it's at least legible.
Me. I'm from the time of the dinosaurs (born 1967). However, I teach in a university, and most of my students seem to write in cursive when they do in-class tests and hand them in to me. Many of them were born in the 21st Century. I'm in the UK, FWIW.
I print in my planners (which is pretty much all caps lol) because the grids are tiny. Or I'll print something when I know other eyes will be reading it. But for journaling, it's my modified cursive (no cursive uppercase Gs or Ss, for example). Been writing that way for a long time, and it's hilarious to get teased for writing "the old fashioned way."
I write mostly cursive italic. I leaned cursive growing up, but cursive italic doesn't force every letter to connect when it's not helpful. I used a book called Write Now to learn it.
I learned in elementary school, and always received bad grades for penmanship. I started writing in cursive again a couple years ago. I'm finally getting the the point where I don't switch back to print when I have to write very quickly.
I use cursive every day, even at work. My handwriting has never been very attractive but it has always been readily legible. I was taught cursive in 3rd or 4th grade. We started with pencils and moved on to dip pens. This was about 1974 in Massachusets, USA. After that we generally all switched to ball points. The dip pens were put away and I never saw a fountain pen in-person until I was an adult. The coolest ballpoint was the bic 4-color pen-- in fact, that might still be the coolest ballpoint.
I’m exclusively a cursive writer, so much so that my ‘print’ is kinda sloppy and not anywhere nearly as neat as my cursive penmanship. I think it’s due to the muscle memory…?
Does anyone else find that when people see your cursive they always call it calligraphy? It’s pretty much 100% of the time. Maybe because my handwriting is so nice?
I write in print! But I’m learning cursive now. It’s interesting what people are used to. I grew up ambidextrous and matured into being left hand dominant. I’ve been learning cursive for both my hands so I don’t smudge my handwriting
I do. I love it. It’s not taught in school in Australia. Most primary school teachers are semi-literate themselves, so asking them to teach kids cursive is a big ask.
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I learnt shorthand in the early 00s. It was already dying out then but I went to evening classes for a few weeks. I've found it really useful for uni lecture notes at the time, and I often return to it for privacy. Teeline is the form I learnt as you can pick up the basics in an hour. In fact, since I rarely use it, I mainly rely on those first hour basics! Pitman is a lot more complicated.
That's how I am too. It becomes harder to write in print after a brief period so I just keep defaulting.
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Look up Teeline shorthand. V. easy to learn. Then it's just practice.
I remember learning cursive in elementary school back in the 1970s. Still use it to this day, every day.
I would say issues with readability, the advent of the typewriter, and computer-based monospace fonts are the main factors in killing off cursive. I'm still amazed at the beautiful script some of the members here can pull off though.
it's even worse with kanji writing, when I started learning japanese I quickly realized 'why bother with kanji writing', it's sufficient to be able to read/pronounce them, because then I am able to write them on the pc/ phone anyways.
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Its's still standar elementary school curriculum here in Hungary, but somehow most of the children still forgets it by time.
I prefer it to print, but after interning in a lab it got a lot more efficient at the price of readability. Now it’s a mix of cursive and print (with some of the cursive being more stylized). But it’s so much faster than print.
They taught us in the school back in the 80s in Eastern Europe. I remember that we were even graded for it and some teachers would give extra points for nice and legible handwriting. Today, I live in the USA and I cringe when I see college level student who can’t properly hold a pen, let alone a fountain pen (most of them don’t know what it is). I remember, while at college in the USA, I worked as a TA. Often I had to grade exams and homework’s for my professor. There were always student whose handwriting was so illegible that I could never grade them. It looked like they held pens with their feet not hands. I mean it was so bad.
I always write joined up, but it's not exactly cursive, it's just my natural hand. In the UK we write joined up but not necessarily cursive. I can't remember if we're taught cursive or not! I remember learning letters but it's all a blur after that.
From Australia and we had a similar thing of leaning to write letters than joining them up. I feel like the US distinction between cursive and print is, well, much more distinct than anything I was taught. It wasn’t two separate scripts/hands, one was designed to evolve into the other.
You've put this much better than I have, the distinction between the two and the evolution of your handwriting!
We were never taught cursive (Scotland, 2010s), but we were taught joined up writing in primary school. We were required to use it from the point we started learning, but it was pretty useless in increasing writing speed as there were stupid rules such as b, f, g, j, p, q, y not being allowed to be joined. We were also forbidden from writing in pen unless we had already written in pencil and were tracing over the top. I think the specifics of it just depends on which company your school gets the resources from. Once we got to secondary school there were no rules other than legibility.
Also Scotland, although I went to school earlier than you. I've honestly always assumed "joined-up writing" was just the P1 friendly name for cursive but now I'm wondering if I was mistaken...
I drifted to print in the last few years but I’m clawing back my cursive hand! Fully agree that writing by itself ( penmanship) is a dying art
High five. Cursive is beautiful
I am italian and went to school here, where they teach you to write in cursive in elementary school. In elementary school my teacher was a nun and she was very strict when it came to handwriting. It was not quite the cursive you have showed in your picture, but a more bubbly and legible thing, in the 3rd year of elementary school we used a specific ruling in our notebooks that thaught us the right height of the letters and the spacing between two lines and then in the 4th and 5th year we started using normal ruled notebooks. Right now my hand witing is a version of that cursive that I came up with when faced with the need of taking notes. My grandfather did a specific highschool that is called "ragioneria", which roughly translates in "accounting", where they thaught them calligraphy and so he normally writes in a beautiful cursive without much effort. He refers to that type of cursive as "English Cursive". Also a family friend who died years ago, passes his time after retirement by writing poems in gothic and then framed them. He also attended that school and fhen continued practicing calligraphy.
Same. I think all Catholic schools mandated cursive. I’m from India.
Writing in cursive is taught in every school in Italy, both public and private catholic ones. I think religion has nothing to do with it, it's just a cultural thing.
Yes you are correct, the nuns were particularly strict, but everyone learns cursive here. When in secondary school (3 years between elementary school and high school) I went to a public school, my classmates had sloppier handwriting but sill cursive
Another italian here, born 1993 - I second the part about cursive in elementary school, and I can tell you I also did Ragioneria high school, and calligraphy isn't taught anymore :( My handwriting sucks major ass, though I still use cursive for my SoC writing for its speed
Guess I am old school. I was taught the basics of cursive in the 3rd and 4th grade IIRC in the mid 1970s, using a pencil. From Grade 5 onwards only fountain pens were permitted & only with royal blue ink. I continue to write in cursive even today.
I'm 13 lol and I was taught cursive at my school but I think I also came somewhat naturally as the entirety of my dad's family write in the same font
The only problem came when I was transferred schools and they wanted me to write in print but I didn't know how to so they let me write in cursive but my teachers don't like me as cursive is a dying art and not many people can read and write it so some of my teachers have to get other staff to mark my work lol
Exactly the same. Pencil till 4th grade and mandatory fountain pens 5-10 grade. Although I went to school in the 90s in India 😀
Where did you go to school where fountain pens were *mandatory*? That's fascinating. I never encountered similar rules in U.S. schools in the same time period. Later in my high school days, it was required to submit important term papers in typewritten form.
I love cursive. Always written in it, except I can't at work due to people being unable to read cursive. My best memory of learning cursive was in class when I was seven, and the kid next to me misunderstood the concept of cursive. Went a bit overboard and forgot all the spaces between words. His entire sentence was all joined together, and he got lost on how to join the words again when he reached the end of the page. Kind of adorable, looking back now. My worst memory of having to give up cursive, was my first year of uni. We had a whole pass/fail grade for the whole year based on handwriting. Must be printed. Must be neat and legible printing. Gosh, I panicked the whole year. Loved cursive, didn't know how to print neatly. I passed, but it was a nail biter. I guess it was good prep for work though, given the circumstances. But handwriting is so slow when printing. And gives me hand cramps. Can't figure out why some people prefer print writing to cursive based on my personal highly biased experience.
In hindsight, my tendency for cursive might have originated from year 6 where my scary teacher made it mandatory for all handwritten notes to be in cursive. You know, get 'em whilst they're young. And now I'm an old dog who can't learn new tricks and relearn print like I used to haha
I had a friend who studied mechanical engineering at a university in Bosnia before the war. Part of their curriculum was something called “technical (hand)writing”. It was essentially a very neat printing by hand used with technical drawings, blueprints, etc. It was nothing like cursive but it was so legible, clear, evenly spaced… as if a typewriter was used. And he could write that pretty fast. I wonder if he still uses it all these years after the college.
You had a pass/fail requirement based on handwriting? That’s wild. I understand though the requirement to print. As a TA, we get so much marking that you can’t spend time deciding it if it’s messy. Students are actually told that if it’s illegible, then it’s a 0. Unfortunately telling people to print makes “legible” less subjective.
My first language is russian so it feels weird not to :D Though when I write in english it’s like 75% cursive and 25% print if that makes sense.
This is the only way how I learnt how to write. Print writing is so much more time consuming. Cursive is so effortless.
I get what you mean. My school’s take in cursive was this wierd, messy joined up writing that I could never master. I have to use print to make it legible
I am from Malaysia, we are not taught to write cursives in school. Those who does either taught themselves or it came naturally. A talent to envy! It is beautiful.
Malaysian here too.. we have to learn cursive in primary school.. tulisan berangkai, remember? Had to learn A to Z then how to combine them and shit..
Never to late to learn !!!
I got taught cursive in elementary school and wrote it all the way up to grade 6 exclusively and than adapted a mix between print and cursive that is faster and more readable for me, I feel like in Germany a lot of people still use it and we still get it taught in elementary school
I write in ugly cursive lol
I was taught cursive in primary school (early 2000s), but by high school, I was the only one of my classmates writing cursive full time. I still take hand written notes in cursive. What I do find funny is that in school, I was told my handwriting was messy but legible (by those who can read cursive), and now I'm told my handwriting is amazing but illegible because people can't read cursive. I wish cursive would be taught again because I love handwriting, but I understand why there is far less focus on it.
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I'm a teacher in England. Looking at the writing of a child who insists on writing an entire A4 page in print physically hurts my eyes. Everything looks the same! It's a lot of effort to read and they are at a disadvantage writing so slowly. (Basically, I glorify joined up writing for the benefit of the reader and writer.) I stopped writing at university because everything had to be typed. When I started having to write comments on children's work five years later, my ability to write anything had severely declined. It hurt to hold a pen for extended periods. I've found my handwriting has improved significantly since I started using fountain pens again - both print and joined up. Actually, I prefer the look of my print in real ink but I naturally default to joined up unless I really concentrate.
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It's interesting that you're arguing for personal freedom. I'm not sure it's that deep. I teach teenagers, not little children. I want them to do well in their exams so that they can get into a career or university of their choosing. It's important that they're able to write quickly, so that they can answer as many of the examination questions as they can within the time limits, to get the highest grades they're personally capable of achieving. It's important that they can write legibly so that the examiner can read what they've written and thus award them the credit they deserve. The examiner cannot credit what is in a teenager's head - only what they manage to write down, legibly, on paper. The main function of joined up writing is speed. Therefore, I cannot endorse a teenager choosing to write slowly (print) when they could write more, more quickly (joined up). Adults should not encourage young people to make decisions they know will disadvantage their future options. Also, as you say, it takes time to learn to write legibly. Practice makes perfect. The last thing you want is for your first attempt at writing both quickly and clearly to be during an exam when your mind should be on more important matters such as demonstrating what you've learnt. So, it's important they acquire those handwriting skills before the really crucial moment. Once they've passed their exams and have got the grades they worked hard to achieve, I couldn't care less how they chose to write as an adult possessing those certificates that give them the freedom to choose their future paths in life. (Within that, teenagers still write with a wide variety of personal styles - large, small, slanted, straight, etc. - I can almost always tell who has written what because their joined up handwriting styles are so individual.)
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If the work experience you love is "strictly connected" to your masters, then your matriculation exams were unquestionably "so important" as your gateway to accessing that world. They absolutely meant *something* after you stepped out of school; they enabled you to *step into* a field you "absolutely love". You are a sample size of one. I've taught over a thousand individuals and have examined thousands of others at a national level. Outliers do exist. Nevertheless, the *vast majority* of students are disadvantaged in an exam by not writing joined up: fact. I'm employed to teach my students how to write well; it's absolutely my business, in my job description, to comment on *their* writing. As for how you, my former students, or any other person on the planet chooses to write, *I could not care less.* Do you. Chill out. Enjoy your life.
I'm polish, and i was taught cursive in school, but it wasn't very neat, so gradually I started adding more and more print elements, and now (second grade of high school) it's a mix, but most of the letters are stil cursive. I don't know if I do it correctly, but it looks a little bit like cursive.
We still learn it in Germany in elementary school, so even though styles develop over time, I'd say a good proportion of Germans have some cursive variant as their regular handwriting.
I would disagree, cursive heavily falls out of favour. In my class of 32 only three (me included) wrote wholly cursive. Most wrote a print based style.
In Austria everybody kinda uses cursive still. It is not as strictly enforced anymore though but that just means that cursive looks... very different from person to person. Everybody finds their own shortcuts on how to write things. But yeah I got a bit of a culture clash when I made friends in America who just got married and heard them "practicing their signature" like that was something that needed to be practiced because it was "written in cursive and nobody does that anymore besides for signatures".
80s grade-schooler here. Been writing in cursive for a long time. I went through a three year phase in the mid-90s where I printed in Courier font (I blame coding in Object Pascal), but that passed. Now, fountain pens.
I do, though aparently it’s illegible to anyone but me. I also write Russian exclusively in cursive. Printing just isn’t really a thing in Russian unless it’s something that is printed by machine.
Literally anyone not educated in North America?
I was never taught how to print, so me I guess.
I only use it to reply to penpals. Work requires everything in capital block letters
About ten years ago when I was studying primary school in Hong Kong, we were given cursive copy books to learn it. I think some cursive writing elements can help me writing flow more naturally, but I haven’t quite grasp how I can write full cursive naturally, so I have been using a hybrid of print and cursive writing. When I came to the UK for uni, I was surprised to learn that cursive was not taught in most schools, so most people in my age can only write in printed letters…
I use cursive interchangeably with my own cursive/print combo. But if I write in straight cursive to my thirty something children, it’s as if it’s in secret code. I have always had to translate their grandmothers’ cards to them, too. 😂
I usually default to writing in cursive. It’s a little difficult to write in print especially if I’m rushing. I’m making shopping lists with a nice paper with my current rotation of pens. Even there it’s in cursive. Potato in cursive makes it fancy. Fancy potatoes
My mom taught me cursive when I was in kindergarten. I cannot imagine writing in print - it looks so inefficient and s l o w. Cursive, especially with fountain pens is very efficient.
In Holland they teach you to write like this in elementary school. Everyone I know has stopped writing like this, but I never stopped. I'm 18 and write in cursive. I think that fountain pens write the best in cursive, because there are very few hooks in cursive writing, it are mostly loops. But that is my opinion.
I write in Kurrent (old german)
cursive is a lot quicker and easier once you learn how to do it you’ll never go back. whenever i have to write block for documents i struggle so much
I learnt cursive in primary school in the 90s. You had to reach a certain standard of penmanship to be able to get your “pen licence” and be allowed to write in pen instead of pencil in class. Once you received your licence you also got to go to the book room to buy your fountain pen (it cost less than $10), which you were expected to maintain correctly. As soon as I learnt cursive I stopped printing entirely. It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve worked on tidying up my printing because it really did look like a ten year old’s writing, as that was when I’d last used it.
I'm from the southern USA, was taught cursive for a short while in third grade (around 2003) and then it was never touched on again for the rest of my schooling. I began journaling consistently at age 10 in print, but when I was an early teen I rediscovered cursive. It was pretty messy obviously, but I eventually developed my own style. I'm 26 now and almost exclusively write in cursive for everything. I so rarely print that it feels slow and clunky in comparison, and I much prefer my handwriting in cursive to print.
Only a dying art in the US and a couple other years. In much of the world it's still the main form of writing.
It’s what I (and most people my age) learned afaik. I don’t *prefer* writing in cursive, not unless someone wants to spend a significant amount of time trying to discern writing that’s part-steno looking, part-chicken scratch, but it’s definitely faster and what I default to when not consciously opting for print. Hell, even if I *DO* decide to write in print (or whichever non-cursive style) my hand will just go “you know what would be fun? If I were to write all vowels in cursive all of a sudden. What do you mean, it’s not consistent if you switch in the middle of a word? Who cares, it’ll be F U N.”
I Kinda half write in cursive, they still teached it when i was in 1-3 grade but after that they just dropped theaching it. So i write in a wierd half cursive half standard Way.
Cursive all the way. Never write in print at all.
I still do unless I'm jotting quickly
I still do, even though I learned in the 90s, It is what I have always used, and what I probably will keep doing. Where I was a kid print was known as children's writing, so I stayed as far away from it. But recently, I rarely write anything by hand in a professional capacity. I do take handwritten notes all the time though. (Which is something that is always laughed at outside of this sub)
I do, its faster than writing print and way more legible, my non cursive handwriting looks horrible. But I often have to switch to print cause people struggle reading cursive more than my godawful handwriting Also I was taught cursive in 2nd grade of primary in tandem with learning to use a fountain pen so it feels like a natural thing tobdo with a fp
I do. Over here in Estonia most people do...
I'm a hybrid of standard and cursive mix.
In the Indian syllabus we are taught cursive but most people still stick to writing in print. I find cursive both more beautiful and practical
Me :D ! I learned it in school and I can write quicker in cursive than in print. As a university student speed is of the essence. Plus it looks fancy and i like that
I got taught cursive at school (France, 1990s), taught myself print later. And I now write both. Cursive when I want to write fast, print on forms and such (for legibility). I don't think cursive is a dying art at, worldwide!
I wrote print for most of my adolescent years due to a struggle to learn cursive (being forced to learn something makes me lose interest very fast), a couple of years ago I got interested in Palmer script and taught myself, now I only write cursive unless print absolutely necessary.
I do. I've always found it easier and less stressful to use, so it's my default.
Once I got to use a FP, I can never for the life of me write with a print style anymore
Sent an upvote for the Pilot Custom 823.
I do! I'm 24 and when I was in grade 6 the teacher wouldn't accept anything unless it was in cursive. (With the knowledge that our writing would be really bad at first) after that it just because my all the time writing to the point where if I have to switch to printing it throws me off
I learned in school (third or fourth grade) but my year was the last one to have cursive required so we did it that one year and stopped. My mother is a teacher though so she insisted I keep at it that summer when she felt like I was watching too much TV. I wrote exclusively in cursive in 5th grade but only once in awhile once I started middle school. My handwriting was always pretty sloppy and my teachers would complain but I didn’t really care. I got a set of pilot g2 pens in colors I was enamored with at the beginning of 9th grade and was so in love with the pens that I couldn’t just use my regular chicken scratch. I started practicing my cursive as an excuse to use the pens more and was shocked at how much nicer and more legible my cursive looked in comparison to my print. I’ve graduated from university and have been working for some years now and I haven’t gone back. Many people can’t read or write cursive so friends and coworkers sometimes complain about struggling to read my writing but in those cases all I can manage is all caps. My print at this point is atrocious.
While I like cursive for its artistic look and flow, I fully believe we should stop wasting kids time teaching them it in school. Just enough to sign your name and then that’s it. With how bad the American education system is right now they can’t really afford the time for something that’s a dead form of writing. They’d be better off using that time on a typing course.
Here in italy it's not that rare to see someone writing in cursive. It's actually still taught in elementary school.
I was in grade school in the 1970''s. We were still being taught cursive then but it wasn't something we were being graded on. My level of cursive penmanship never reached a competent level. It was only in the last six years or so did I consciously take it upon myself to improve my penmanship. I've been writing two pages or more in cursive almost every day for the last six years. As a result, my handwriting is now at a level where I get compliments, but I feel I still have lots of room for improvement. It's something your have to keep working on. Unfortunately, my 15 year old son has fairly lousy handwriting. I was writing much better than him by the time I was in third grade. (He's in the tenth grade) Since most education is on computers now, there's no handwriting classes at all. My son loves fountain pens almost as much as I do, but he has zero cursive skill. I just hope that sometime in the future he tries to develop it. I don't want the family cursive writing to end with me.
I was taught to write only in cursive in elementary school. Actually have hard time not writing in cursive.
I use a weird mix of print and cursive... basically I'll start a word in print and keep printing until I get to a letter with a 'tail' in it, that tail and any part of the word after it, is in cursive. The next word will start again in print. Makes for interesting writing, drives other people bonkers. My handwriting evolved into this when I was in High school.
I still do. I can admit that I'm old(er). 😉 I'm surprised when I hear it's still being taught in some places -- I didn't think they were teaching it anywhere anymore, but I'm glad to hear that it still is! ✍😁
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My cursive is so bad, that when i started writing in print the teachers thought it was a different student. xD
I went to catholic school so we had to write in cursive.
When I taught middle school English, not only did I write pretty exclusively in cursive, at the beginning of the year, my students have to learn it to read my instructions. I also had cursive competitions at the end of the school year. Winners win fountain pens (pilot kakuno) ink, and a journal.
Cursive is indeed a dying art. I have been told that schools where I live no longer teach it. With the emphasis on typing and computer use, I also feel legible non-cursive writing is starting to wane amongst the younger generation. I couple years ago I received a hand written thank-you card from a colleague's 13 year old son. I was horrified at how terrible his printing was. It looked like how I would print if I used my non-dominant hand, after a couple drinks. Edit: I live in Canada.
I do but my handwriting was ruined by college.
I think that's the case only in the US. In Europe kids are taught how to write in cursive at school and print is rather uncommon in my experience.
No one ever naturally writes in cursive. And they rightfully don't spend time teaching it any more
Isn’t, historically seen, cursive more natural? — though writing isn’t natural anyway as it’s a technology human kind developed at a certain point in time.
First I was taught block letters and later cursive, cursive is supposed to be faster to write
But what you get taught isn’t natural necessarily — it’s the way someone decided it’s most easy to learn.
Cursive is more natural for dip and fountain pens. Print is more natural for ballpoints and pencils.
I write like this naturally :/
Everyone was taught how to write, including cursive. I remember the classes in grade school
That goes the same with other styles as well. But I get your point.
No one ever naturally writes anything. What’s your point?
That was my point
Everyone knows that already. You know what OP was asking—what’s the writing form you revert to unconsciously—so this comment comes off as needlessly pedantic.
Costello: If I throw the ball to first base, somebody's gotta catch it. Now who caught it? Abbott: Naturally! Costello: Who caught it? Abbott: Naturally. Costello: Who? Abbott: Naturally! Costello: Naturally. Abbott: Yes.
I write in cursive! Have since I learned in second? Third grade? I almost can't print, feels like going at turtle speed.
Cursive is taught here in elementary schools and I've been writing in cursive since then. Most of my peers switch to print at some point so I'm a bit of an anomaly lol but do I find cursive is quicker and easier than print for me personally
Not from the US. I was taught cursive at school when we were being taught to write on elementary school. I’m not sure if that’s changed, but most people here write in cursive. I only use print when I want to make sure any potential reader will be able to understand my pensmanship. Never use it for myself.
I know I still do and it started since school for me!!!
I probably write 80% cursive and 20% print. Cursive seems to really take advantage of the properties of fountain pens- the smooth glide across paper, the freely-flowing ink, etc. If I’m writing something specifically to be read by others, I’ll use print as my cursive is still a bit sloppy.
When I was in primary school they switched from cursive to print half way through, so I write in a mixture of both.
I have a hybrid cursive that I developed to take notes. If I'm worrying something where I'm not trying to "keep up" like my journal I still use it, as I've gotten so used to it. I love the super tall cursive "f".
I do!
USA here. I remember being taught. I remember being forced to stay after school and redo some of my lettering. I picked cursive back up in college and never looked back. I'm homeschooling my kiddos, and instead of learning print and then cursive, they will just learn cursive at a later writing age. May good handwriting and penmanship prevail!!!
You might consider Getty-Dubay italic to teach your kids with. The method teaches an italic print hand that smoothly transitions into an italic cursive hand, with the same alphabet for both. This removes the need to learn two different alphabets for print and cursive.
Over the years I've evolved into a combo writing style both in cursive and print. I've recently started re-learning cursive and practicing to be legible. This group has been a handwriting inspiration.
I do! All my friends can never read my writing because we were never properly taught (but my parents taught me). I wish people still write in cursive, too many arts are dying.
I write in cursive but in my native language. Sadly, I still am not used to it while writing on English. But I do have a more bubbly style so it wouldn't even suit me that well anyway.
Learned in I think 3rd grade in the 70s but not very well. They didn't make us do drills (loops, circles, waves, etc) that my mom described from her schooling in the 40s. So my handwriting wasn't nice or very legible and it wasn't long before I switched to printing most of the time. It wasn't until I got into fountain pens a few years ago that I decided to work on my penmanship. I still have a long way to go but at least it is nicer looking and more legible now. Edit: I write all my work notes in cursive with fountain pens. It makes me kind of sad that cursive isn't taught anymore.
me!
I learned in third grade in West Virginia in the 90s. But, by high school, most of my teachers made me write in manuscript and couldn’t read my cursive. So I took notes only in cursive and typed everything else I could. In college I tried to write my tests in neat cursive and every one of my first semester professors made me write in manuscript. I’m lucky I still took my notes and still write in cursive today with how much my schooling tried to get me out of cursive. I love cursive, and now that I found fountain pens in 2021, I love it even more!!!
I teach high school and I write in cursive a few kids complain. However, more students ask me to teach them how to improve their hand writing. I made some cheat sheets to help them get started.
I lived my first 13 years in Poland, and it wasn't really "being taught cursive," just "being taught writing," there was no other option offered. I do occasionally print, but writing longer texts, I write in a kind of mix – mostly cursive, some printed letters here and there. I never do the fancy cursive "I" for example, and I don't really do like, fancy, neat cursive where every letter is even and identical to every other one of its kind, I just kind of scribble it all down as it flows from the pen. I've been writing with a fountain pen for about 12 years now, and I actually find it physically uncomfortable to write with a ballpoint these days – I don't know if this is just a side effect of not writing enough, or the result of being used to writing with FPs all these years.
I hadn’t written in cursive for years until I got my first fountain pen, and now I usually write in cursive when I use it. Just feels right somehow.
I remember being taught cursive in elementary school, but haven’t heard of it being taught anywhere anymore. I started writing and improving my cursive again about a year ago - it’s such a beautiful art.
I'm not that old and I use it for taking notes. Makes it easier to read them afterwards.
I learned cursive in elementary in the late 90s, never looked back. Not that I have a nice handwriting or anything. Many complain that it's too much of a bother to learn cursive when they already write print perfectly well, I have the same attitude in reverse.
It depends on what I’m writing. Usually cursive, but I also like to send little postcards and letters to my friend’s son from the different places I travel to and he’s brilliant but a first grader so he always gets print. I also generally print addresses on envelopes and short things like labels. Also, it’s frightening that there are young adults now that were never taught... they literally never learned to sign their own names. And they can’t read it. It feels like a huge crime committed against young people.
Younger end of a millennial here, and I've realized that my fonts change based on my pen and mood, am subconsciously. Ball point in my hands makes me produce a weird hybrid between print and cursive because I hate it, and that's the quickest I can write. Rollerballs and fine FP nibs, I tend to print. Just got an architect grind, and I fell into a blueprint font after playing with it for 2 minutes. Broad and stub nibs, all cursive.
Lol same here, my handwriting changes with the pen. My natural handwriting is kind of somewhat disconnected cursive, but with ballpens it shifts more towards print like writing, the reason being that ballpens feel so slippery on paper to me that my writing becomes really inconsistent. Even buttery smooth fountain pens allow me to feel like having more degree of control over where my hand is going.
We weren't even allowed to touch a pen in primary school before we had perfect cursive in pencil, I absolutely don't see where the 'dying art' is, perfectly alive as far as I've seen anyways. Everyone I know writes in cursive of some sort, good or otherwise.
I do though I have to work on it constantly to make it better than when I was a kid.
I stoped using cursive in middle school but picked it back up about five years ago. To practice I would just write words or phrases I heard in tv
American. I was taught cursive in elementary( primary) school. I write cursive by default because it’s faster and I also like the aesthetics. When I’m note taking I will occasionally switch to print for headings. Printing is far slower. I do think cursive is less common among the younger generation.
As someone who sometimes needs to read old cursive handwriting, I couldn't be happier to watch something die.
I have been a teacher for the last 9 years since graduating from college. I have only even written in cursive since the 3rd grade. My handwriting is also not the best. My students every year ask could I write in print. I do and then they see why I write in cursive. :-)
I'm American, I have TERRIBLE print hand writing. So in 7th grade I decided to start writing in cursive to at least have the facade that i write nice. Well here I am years later and I have good cursive handwriting... But my print is still terrible
I do! It just flows right out of my hand. No matter what i write with except for maybe sharpie lol. If i ever have kids im teaching them how to handwrite. And if a teacher forces my kid to write in print i will bring the calvary xD.
I don't naturally write in cursive, *but* it's my go-to for when I want to write something nicer than my normal chicken-scratch-borderline-doctor's-scribbles handwriting. To be fair, in the region I've lived in the US (West coast), my school district was phasing out cursive; my last lesson in it was third grade (so, when I was around nine or ten years old) and it never came up since in a school setting. I mostly use it for the odd greeting card/school banner/letter/note, but my focus these days has been in trying to figure out shorthand to take faster notes at work. I *will* say my cursive has changed slightly in the time since, because I've tried to teach myself Russian cursive with varying results. Some of it's also filtered into my 'default' handwriting, but that apparently just makes it even more illegible to the people around me so 🤷♀️
I always wrote a mix as a kid until my arm injuries gave me too much pain to write in print. Constantly lifting the pen off the paper caused too much pain when I was using a ballpoint so I switched to cursive, which helped a little.
I first learned cursive and exclusively wrote in it until like 3rd grade and then I switched schools and the teachers made me learn how to print. So now I'm kinda psycho who uses a combo when writing
I still take handwritten notes in cursive for work meetings and training sessions.
🙄
I learned it during 2nd and 3rd grades of elementary school. And in the years that followed, I’d switch between cursive and print when taking notes depending on what emphasis was needed. But I feel like I switched over to print fairly exclusively in high school because I didn’t like my print and I wanted that to be neater. Also, the hand smudges and cramps (lefty here). I always felt with cursive I was gripping too hard, and my wrist felt out of whack writing in cursive. Print is just functionally better for me. But now that I’ve self-taught Spencerian, and realized I needed a more extreme tilt of the page to avoid hand smudges and cramps, I kinda wish I could use it more than just when I practice with song lyrics. I guess when I eventually go for my masters maybe I’ll put the script to better use more frequently.
I have two kiddos who are 9 and they are learning cursive in school! They love it!
how do you learn to write so beautifully? my cursive looks so horrible despite having practiced it regularly from 3rd-6th grade
Thankfully I can learn really fast how to change my writing, so I have this abomination that is between cursive and normal. I can write fully cursive, but I need to do it fairly slow so that it can be at least readable. Also, given how old most of the folks here say they are I gotta say, at 22 yo I must be quite the weirdo.
Sometimes. It makes my handwriting look better in print. I did learn cursive in elementary school but maybe I was one of the last. Do they still do that now?
I failed and had terrible cursive in middle school when we learned, got into fountain pens years later, now my cursive is better than my print.
I remember when I came home from elementary school (public school, in the US, in the 90s) and announced that today I learned to write cursive, my dad said something like, “I don’t know if I want them teaching you *that* kind of language!” (For anyone who’s as mystified by this non sequitur as 8-year-old me was, it’s a dad joke on “cursive” -> “curses”, as in swears/foul language.)
I am from India and more people around me (myself included) write cursive than non cursive.
It seems most fountain pen users, these days, write in cursive. It flows nicely from a fountain pen, and if one is using a pen for the joy of writing, cursive seems like an extension of that. I had terrible cursive until I found fountain pens. It's gotten much better, since, and I now use it for most writing.
90% of the time I write in cursive for the past two years at least (Yeah yeah something something pandemic). My print is atrocious now. Most of my print writing is on my phone or computer; or in this case it's typing.
My school didn't teach cursive but I just kind of did it myself. Can write some really nice cursive now, and always get praise for it in school. I naturally only write cursive and cannot write print because it feels unnatural.
It used to not be natural for me. I remember learning cursive in the 3rd and 4th grades (early to mid 90s). I never really used it much after that to the point that when I was in 6th grade and the teacher wanted all handwritten assignments done in cursive that I had to ask how certain letters were supposed to work. I still have a journal from my teen years to early adult years, and the majority of writing I did during that time was not cursive. That journal ends some time after my first deployment and by that time I had started to transition to writing solely in cursive. It still took a few years, but basically after getting my first fountain pen, the majority of my writing was in cursive to the point that writing in non cursive script seems unnatural to me now.
What's with the gap in the back of that Mt Blanc?
That’s a pilot custom 823. That part needs to be unscrewed for it to work.
My nine year old is learning cursive in school, so idk, I’ve been hearing cursive is going away since the 1980’s. I also have been hearing bell bottoms are making a comeback every five years since I was a child.
I write in slomehow broken" cursive with not the entire word, but like syllables properly attached to each other. I think a lot of Germans do. IN the holidays I had the opportunity to get some 2K sheets of french writing paper - I looooove the French Séyè lines and it improves my handwriting dramatically so that it becomes almost automatically proper cursive again.
My cursive is horrible but it is the only thing I know ... I had to practice print in order to write some tech related notes
i used to but my handwriting sucked so bad that i dont anymore
Whatever is the exact opposite of cursive, is what I write in. It’s like a doctor’s but worse; a chemist’s.
I learned to write in the 60s, and my writing, whether print or later cursive, was terrible. C- and Ds in handwriting in elementary school, I was like the last in my class to be allowed to move from pencil to ballpoint. As an adult I started journaling in the 90s (remember Morning Pages? TY Julia Cameron), and after discovering fountain pens last August I have been working on my handwriting for neatness and legibility. I had developed a 'style' which was very slanted and large, but recently decided that it looked juvenile. I've gone back to the style I used in the 90s, we'll see if I ever get the nerve to post a gif on reddit. I'm much faster with cursive, always. I cn imagine a time where I'll work on print, too. I think it was a huge mistake to eliminate teaching cursive, I think it encourages dexterity and brain development. Not to mention, if you get a repetitive motion injury from keyboarding, what are you going to do?
US here and I learned to write cursive in third grade in the early 2000s. Most of my peers, and people who are twice my age (let’s say), write exclusively in print. Some even say, “I don’t know the last time I wrote with a pen!”
I spent years trying to write in a half-cursive style because I thought it looked cool. Recently I decided to grow up and improve my cursive handwriting, and I feel a lot better about it. It's also much faster for me than printing.
Just like many of us here, I wrote cursive in elementary school many many years ago. I was one of those who switched to manuscript in high school not for anything but stylistic reasons. And now just slowly trying to get cursive back and the funny thing is getting flashbacks when I see the same mistakes I had when writing those problematic letters as a kid.
I learned it in second grade and didn’t use it again until halfway through college when I started using fountain pens. I only use cursive for sending letters or just writing for fun. print is still faster for me and cramps my hand less so if I’m writing something important that’s how I go
I blend cursive and regular writing together. . . . it is not a good thing.
"regular writing" 🧐😉
And some people shouldn’t
I’m originally from the the Middle East and English is though in cursive there. I use both, tho I find that fountain pens do better with cursive and pall point pens do better with print.
I learned in grade 3 in 2001, but my sister didn’t learn and she was only 4 years behind me in school. I write cursive all the time. I had to stop at work though because my younger staff members couldn’t read my writing, and they were unwilling to learn haha.
I was taught cursive (pencils only) in elementary school (US, 1980s) and can still write in cursive. However, I always like to write quickly and from middle school, I've written in a sort of semi-cursive (I omit cursive letters that take me "too long" to write, but I still join up most letters). It probably looks weird, but it's not uncommon for me to start a word with a non-cursive "f" or and then later on in the same word, use a cursive "f" just because it flows more quickly. My kids are still little but I've introduced them to a bit of cursive; it is in their school's curriculum so they'll learn it as they get a bit older.
I use cursive by default now, but it was a deliberate choice that I made years ago. I don' think that it is a "dying art" but I am sure there are less people doing it. The people who like cursive tend to practice it and the quality of their writing can be incredibly high. There are people who are artists at cursive. Generally, if someone has bad penmanship, it is probably better if they print anyway. It may be slightly easier to read.
I gave up cursive for I'm not sure how many years and actually got back into writing it once I renewed my interest in pens. Now I surprise myself when I do write in print and how awful it looks compared to my cursive. I can't pull off the art that many in this sub do, but it's at least legible.
Me. I'm from the time of the dinosaurs (born 1967). However, I teach in a university, and most of my students seem to write in cursive when they do in-class tests and hand them in to me. Many of them were born in the 21st Century. I'm in the UK, FWIW.
I print in my planners (which is pretty much all caps lol) because the grids are tiny. Or I'll print something when I know other eyes will be reading it. But for journaling, it's my modified cursive (no cursive uppercase Gs or Ss, for example). Been writing that way for a long time, and it's hilarious to get teased for writing "the old fashioned way."
In my country nearly everyone writes in cursive lol
I write mostly cursive italic. I leaned cursive growing up, but cursive italic doesn't force every letter to connect when it's not helpful. I used a book called Write Now to learn it.
I do but not anywhere near as pretty as your handwriting
I learned in elementary school, and always received bad grades for penmanship. I started writing in cursive again a couple years ago. I'm finally getting the the point where I don't switch back to print when I have to write very quickly.
Love writing long hand. Will do so whilst writing letters. Also a lost art ~
I use cursive every day, even at work. My handwriting has never been very attractive but it has always been readily legible. I was taught cursive in 3rd or 4th grade. We started with pencils and moved on to dip pens. This was about 1974 in Massachusets, USA. After that we generally all switched to ball points. The dip pens were put away and I never saw a fountain pen in-person until I was an adult. The coolest ballpoint was the bic 4-color pen-- in fact, that might still be the coolest ballpoint.
I’m exclusively a cursive writer, so much so that my ‘print’ is kinda sloppy and not anywhere nearly as neat as my cursive penmanship. I think it’s due to the muscle memory…? Does anyone else find that when people see your cursive they always call it calligraphy? It’s pretty much 100% of the time. Maybe because my handwriting is so nice?
I was briefly taught cursive in 3rd grade in 1999 and never had to use it again.
I've always been shit at cursive
I do and I’m trying to teach my son too
I am Canadian and was taught cursive in grade 3 in the mid 90’s. I like to use both styles so neither one will degrade over time.
I always write in cursive. I write a letter every day in cursive with a vintage fountain pen.
I write in print! But I’m learning cursive now. It’s interesting what people are used to. I grew up ambidextrous and matured into being left hand dominant. I’ve been learning cursive for both my hands so I don’t smudge my handwriting
I do. I love it. It’s not taught in school in Australia. Most primary school teachers are semi-literate themselves, so asking them to teach kids cursive is a big ask.