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
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.
I always wanted to learn, but the farthest I ever got was professional level typing. My mother in law is a paralegal and says she rarely ever uses it anymore.
Court reporters learn it. They can transcribe conversations by hand. It’s pretty wild. From what I understand of it, each symbol is a word, or combination of words.
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.
Going by the feedback from Americans in this thread, cursive is “fancy-pants writing” so yeah, if your teachers were of the same mind they probably prioritized teaching whatever they thought would pair well with a powdered wig (basically calligraphy) rather than whatever would be quick to write and easy to read.
As someone who lives in a country where cursive still dominates handwriting styles, I find all these discussions… curious. As a country you managed to lose the ability to handwrite efficiently, and as far as I can tell it’s because of conservatism missing the point of cursive.
We don’t hand-write more than Americans, yet we use cursive. And today’s young adults still spent their entire childhood/teenage years hand-writing at school (and even though kids today have more computers in classrooms, they don’t use a keyboard for everything, nor do I think they necessarily should).
So at least for that phase of life, writing quickly and efficiently is still a worthy goal. You can write however you want of course, but so many people choosing to let go of cursive tells me that it wasn’t taught properly.
But yeah once you’re out of the school system you might as well write everything in capital letters (that’s definitely my go-to on paper forms to spare others the chicken scratches I use on personal notes).
From 7th grade onward I believe we were able to ensure that the school had to legally accept typed assignments. It was the only way I could complete them on time.
I was fine with handwriting math since no sadist had yet invented cursive numerals.
Good for you that your school was willing to adapt to your needs, but surely that was not the norm for millennials when they were in school. I never went to school in the US but I don’t believe that classroom activities (tests, note taking, exercises, etc) were normally done on computers in the 90s/00s/early '10s…
So why did those kids stop using cursive, at a time when hand-writing was frequently needed? My point is that it can only have been taught wrong if it was not legible or fast enough for most kids to see a point in using it.
I have a Procyon Platinum, but I stopped carrying it because it would run dry if not left flat. I have not yet found a fountain pen that will work for me if carried vertically in a pocket or backpack.
As far as my preferred daily users, it’s the TWSBI Eco–they hold a whole lot of ink and flow very well. I have rolls full of pen after pen I have acquired over the years. It’s always the Eco that I go back to. I should probably focus my collection there!
Decent choice, and very collectible, I recommend the twsbi VAC mini and the diamond 580 series as they both have decent capacity and are wet writers, a bit more $ mind you but not astronomical
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
Let’s all go back to learning shorthand!
This is what my arthritic handwriting looks like anyway…
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.
I always wanted to learn, but the farthest I ever got was professional level typing. My mother in law is a paralegal and says she rarely ever uses it anymore.
Weird they call it shorthand. That looks like a lot of writing just to say “Gregg.”
wait, that’s an actual script? I thought it was just slang!
Court reporters learn it. They can transcribe conversations by hand. It’s pretty wild. From what I understand of it, each symbol is a word, or combination of words.
Its more just writing the sounds with othet short cuts.
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.
Whichever cursive my (US) schools taught all those ages ago was cumbersome and nonsensical. Nothing about it was easy.
Going by the feedback from Americans in this thread, cursive is “fancy-pants writing” so yeah, if your teachers were of the same mind they probably prioritized teaching whatever they thought would pair well with a powdered wig (basically calligraphy) rather than whatever would be quick to write and easy to read.
As someone who lives in a country where cursive still dominates handwriting styles, I find all these discussions… curious. As a country you managed to lose the ability to handwrite efficiently, and as far as I can tell it’s because of conservatism missing the point of cursive.
Well, it’s also not like we have to hand-write anything these days.
We don’t hand-write more than Americans, yet we use cursive. And today’s young adults still spent their entire childhood/teenage years hand-writing at school (and even though kids today have more computers in classrooms, they don’t use a keyboard for everything, nor do I think they necessarily should).
So at least for that phase of life, writing quickly and efficiently is still a worthy goal. You can write however you want of course, but so many people choosing to let go of cursive tells me that it wasn’t taught properly.
But yeah once you’re out of the school system you might as well write everything in capital letters (that’s definitely my go-to on paper forms to spare others the chicken scratches I use on personal notes).
From 7th grade onward I believe we were able to ensure that the school had to legally accept typed assignments. It was the only way I could complete them on time.
I was fine with handwriting math since no sadist had yet invented cursive numerals.
Good for you that your school was willing to adapt to your needs, but surely that was not the norm for millennials when they were in school. I never went to school in the US but I don’t believe that classroom activities (tests, note taking, exercises, etc) were normally done on computers in the 90s/00s/early '10s…
So why did those kids stop using cursive, at a time when hand-writing was frequently needed? My point is that it can only have been taught wrong if it was not legible or fast enough for most kids to see a point in using it.
Or perhaps it’s not actually needed.
I think it’s the same reason that not everybody learns horse riding or basket weaving.
That was my experience too
Harder to write? It’s easier and faster. I take it you don’t know how to write cursive?
It certainly wasn’t in the 3rd grade and it isn’t now
It takes significantly more effort and has poor results.
It’s way faster and super easy…
It was painful, tedious, and slow.
It sounds like your school sucked.
Seems like we all had the same experience
Harder to read, but easier to write.
And not that it matters but there are still fountain pen users, makers, influencers and all that, it’s a niche hobby now.
I have 20-30 fountain pens. Negative on the cursive.
Unrelated, what’s your EDC?
What’s an EDC?
Also enjoy how that commend apparently made people sad lol.
Every day carry?
Im cursive myself but to each their own.
I have a Procyon Platinum, but I stopped carrying it because it would run dry if not left flat. I have not yet found a fountain pen that will work for me if carried vertically in a pocket or backpack.
As far as my preferred daily users, it’s the TWSBI Eco–they hold a whole lot of ink and flow very well. I have rolls full of pen after pen I have acquired over the years. It’s always the Eco that I go back to. I should probably focus my collection there!
Decent choice, and very collectible, I recommend the twsbi VAC mini and the diamond 580 series as they both have decent capacity and are wet writers, a bit more $ mind you but not astronomical
Will check it out, cheers!
So, so much harder to write. Painful, tedious, and unnatural.
I mean I don’t see how? it’s the equivalent of swiping vs typing on the phone
Maybe I’m weird, but I still prefer to type vs swipe too. Swipe is super inaccurate and I spend more time fixing errors than typing
And you make more errors with swiping than if you had a physical keyboard.
I use fountain pens on the daily and would never dream of trying to do cursive.