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I used a similar point as an argument in primary school. They dinged me for sloppy cursive writing so I ended it right there. All upper case, caps were just b

I used a similar point as an argument in primary school. They dinged me for sloppy cursive writing so I ended it right there. All upper case, caps were just bigger than the others. Stayed with that until I left High School. Was making some point or other, or was just a PITA.

megameter 6y ago
I think a lot of students who grew up with ballpoints reached a similar conclusion. I knew a few and from time to time have used the strategy when legibility is required. Cursive was developed to work with traditional pens, and it really does not flow well on a ballpoint. But the school systems, of course, never made such a distinction.
- ddingus 6y ago
  Totally. I remember just quitting. 26 alphas + numbers and punctuation, and that's gonna be IT. One counter argument was legal signature requirements. Had a parent from city hall clear the law up for me. Was loaded for bear, and my little school really opposed not writing cursive. I remember a few of us, almost all boys going down the road. Interestingly quite a few girls ended up with a sort of print-script we see in cutsie fonts today. Went totally without comment!
- stan_rogers 6y ago
  "Cursive" means slanted. "Current" means joined-up (from the french "courant", literally "running"). Not all cursives are current - Chancery cursive, for instance - and most recent schoolroom current writing isn't cursive.
  - danaris 6y ago
    That may be what it means in a technical sense, but what most of us Americans were taught in elementary school was joined-up writing that was presented to us as "cursive," the only (and obviously much more sophisticated) alternative to "print".
    - ddingus 6y ago
      That was my experience exactly.
jasomill 6y ago
At the time handwriting was being taught in school, elbow problems (complications from hemophilia) made handwriting quite painful, so I was using a (silent, electronic) typewriter for in-class assignments. Needless to say, typing handwriting assignments does nothing to improve handwriting! Nearly forty years later, I still haven't learned to write in cursive, and my lower-case printing is either illegible or painstakingly slow. So, with the exception of single-character mathematical variable names, upper-and-small-caps it is.

megameter 6y ago

I think a lot of students who grew up with ballpoints reached a similar conclusion. I knew a few and from time to time have used the strategy when legibility is required. Cursive was developed to work with traditional pens, and it really does not flow well on a ballpoint. But the school systems, of course, never made such a distinction.

ddingus 6y ago
Totally. I remember just quitting. 26 alphas + numbers and punctuation, and that's gonna be IT. One counter argument was legal signature requirements. Had a parent from city hall clear the law up for me. Was loaded for bear, and my little school really opposed not writing cursive. I remember a few of us, almost all boys going down the road. Interestingly quite a few girls ended up with a sort of print-script we see in cutsie fonts today. Went totally without comment!
stan_rogers 6y ago
"Cursive" means slanted. "Current" means joined-up (from the french "courant", literally "running"). Not all cursives are current - Chancery cursive, for instance - and most recent schoolroom current writing isn't cursive.
- danaris 6y ago
  That may be what it means in a technical sense, but what most of us Americans were taught in elementary school was joined-up writing that was presented to us as "cursive," the only (and obviously much more sophisticated) alternative to "print".
  - ddingus 6y ago
    That was my experience exactly.

jasomill 6y ago

At the time handwriting was being taught in school, elbow problems (complications from hemophilia) made handwriting quite painful, so I was using a (silent, electronic) typewriter for in-class assignments. Needless to say, typing handwriting assignments does nothing to improve handwriting! Nearly forty years later, I still haven't learned to write in cursive, and my lower-case printing is either illegible or painstakingly slow. So, with the exception of single-character mathematical variable names, upper-and-small-caps it is.