> It always seemed to me that cursive was optimized for quill or fountain pens and was kind of counterproductive if you had a pencil or a ballpoint pen. That's

> It always seemed to me that cursive was optimized for quill or fountain pens and was kind of counterproductive if you had a pencil or a ballpoint pen. That's true of the Palmer method and related cursives most American students learn. The letterforms which are so odd with a ballpoint pen actually derive from sensible hand-, wrist- and arm-movements when using a fountain pen. I use a variant of Getty-Dubay Italic (http://www.handwritingsuccess.com/ http://www.handwritingsuccess.com/), which is eminently readable and quite quick to write.