6 ms·

This sounds good in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down. Think of how most people's sig

This sounds good in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down. Think of how most people's signatures aren't readable at all, that is because they evolved to be written fast. Whereas you can learn to do fast printing. My writing speed improved later in life once I convinced myself to switch back over to print characters -- I can speed up the process without losing legibility. Also some people do a mixture of the two, which really is writing out ligatures for common character pairings. I don't really do that, and it seams everyone sort of figures out their own stile, but it would be nice if written ligatures were taught as an in-between style. Edit: To see examples, do a search for "fast printing", I know there were several good posts on one of the fountain pen forums. The style I liked referenced "bookhand", and to get good/legible at it you start by practicing writing small circles (both clockwise and counter-clockwise) and small straight lines (horizontal, vertical, diagonal with various starting positions). This also helps with general technical drawing, things like writing circles and making them larger and smaller. And learning to draw a straight line across a page freehand will help with character alignment.

loloquwowndueo 4y ago
Also If you want to write fast and don’t care about legibility, learn shorthand writing :)
- supersrdjan 4y ago
  Word. I learned Orthic recently. It's easy to pick up, unlike the other system (at least that's my impression after a day of investigating)
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  I considered doing that in college--decided against it because overall I decided it wouldn't be worthwhile. Yes, I could have taken notes faster but it's not a skill I expected to have much use for later in life. I could already see that the computer was going to pretty much kill handwriting.
AnonymousPlanet 4y ago
My experience is exactly the opposite. I used to do printed characters. My writing speed and legibility (especially for quick notes) improved significantly after switching to cursive. Once you realise that cursive is basically just a way to write printed characters in one flowing motion, it's weird to go back to printed. But maybe we're talking differnt cursive systems, and that might explain our difference in experience.
- jakzurr 4y ago
  My guess is the biggest difference is how much you use cursive. However, just like most skills, some people may be naturally better, so I suppose I could be wrong.
jakzurr 4y ago
Yes, I think that's pretty much all true, now. 100 years ago, when accounting and bookkeeping were all done by hand, writing cursive was probably quite a bit faster, and with all the practice you got, just as legible. In high school, I wrote almost everything in cursive, but over the next 10 years, computers replaced so much writing that I fell out of practice. I'm not sorry it's gone.
- bee_rider 4y ago
  Still waiting for a really good stylus driven computer ecosystem. :(
- koheripbal 4y ago
  Even 35 years ago when I wrote exclusively in cursive, it was significantly faster than printing. Everyone wrote in cursive. It's odd to even see people make the argument that cursive isn't faster. Literally no one wrote in print except young children.
Yizahi 4y ago
Cursive is definitely faster while maintaining legibility. It's just that no schools in my country has taught us how to actually write it efficiently. For example when I'm writing cursive I'm holding pen incorrectly (yes, there are more efficient and less efficient ways to hold it), I'm moving my fingers incorrectly, I'm moving my hand incorrectly, and in the end certain muscles required for the efficient writing weren't properly developed. I've learned all this well after graduating from the university, so there is zero reason to train that skill today. But I do know that my shitty cursive is 100% caused by my own lack of proper training to write. I've switched to the writing print characters nowadays, but only out of necessity, not due to efficiency.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  I don't know what your country is but in a few US public schools we had fairly strict teachers trying to get us to correctly hold our pencils. They'd wander around class correcting people holding their pencil wrong, give out special grips that were supposed to force correct holding, and we were penalized on tests for holding our pencil wrong. Not saying it worked that well, as it was only a handful of teachers who cared so maybe you'd have one year where it mattered. However they did try.
  - Yizahi 4y ago
    Ukraine. We were taught extensively how to write cursive, for whole elementary school, we were writing in special workbooks which reinforced the correct shape of the cursive letters, teachers were looking at us and helping us write correctly. Only it appears they didn't teach us the writing movement itself. Quick question - do you hold your pen in the hand parallel to the middle and outer phalanxes or your pen lies between thumb and index finger? Apparently the former position is optimal, while I hold it between fingers. Also my palm is always touching the table with a wrist so I move the pen mostly with my fingers (which a) strains them when writing a lot and b) produces wavy cursive, less legible that it should be), and the correct way is to move pen mostly with whole arm movement, don't touch wrist on a table and don't move fingers too much, only correct movements with fingers, not do all the work with them.
bee_rider 4y ago
Signatures have almost nothing to do with normal written script, they are a special mark that 1) is ideally hard to replicate and unique 2) may be performed by somebody who doesn't write much Fast printing doesn't return anything useful to me (google searches are personalized so I guess we're just seeing different things). I get printshops nearby. I think cursive it taught very formally in elementary school, possibly to the detriment of adoption, just for the same reason everything is -- grammar is given hard-and-fast rules, math is route memorization or totally algorithmic -- because it is easier to grade that way, and also because people will find their shortcuts as they age. Switching between cursive and print seems fine to me (it can also be used for emphasis). Cursive (interspersed with print as convenient) is sort of nice because it is a fairly "normal" way of writing that still goes quickly enough. I can write cursive anywhere on the spectrum of nice and formal to quick and sloppy, in one system. Quick and sloppy basically keeps up with by brain, maybe if I was taking lots of meeting notes I'd want to switch, but it is good enough for my current applications.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
In practice it works out great, this is yet another example of the whole "contrarian-means-im-smart" thing that's entirely too prevalent here on HN. Cursive is there for exactly what the other person said, it's much faster to write than print. There are generations of people who have successfully written and read large swathes of cursive, yet somehow this person thinks they know better, and their explanation for it is akin to a new way of writing (which is what cursive is) and recommendations on practicing it. queue xkcd reference about standards.
- usrusr 4y ago
  It might be much faster to write when you spend many hours per week writing on paper. I don't even spend spend many hours writing on paper per year! Abandoning cursive should habe been put up for debate already back when phones displaced letters in personal communication.
  - layer8 4y ago
    It doesn’t need to be on paper, taking notes with a tablet and stylus is a use-case as well.
  - P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
    Cursive is dying, at least in the US it's not taught in school anymore. I was responding to the idea that it's slower to write put forth by the other poster.
ekianjo 4y ago
> Think of how most people's signatures aren't readable at al Signatures are not cursive.
stakkur 4y ago
* In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down* And right there is one of the crucial cognitive and proprioceptive benefits of handwriting over ‘keyboarding’.
autocorr 4y ago
I don't think cursive is necessarily faster. But I do recall studies that showing what you're talking about: that a person's developed hybrid printing (printing with personal ligatures) are just as fast if not faster than full cursive. What cursive does appear to be useful for historically is writing for long periods without tiring. Cursive written in the older Spencerian script fashion is written with big movements of the wrist and arm along the main diagonal path with little finger movement. The wrist and arms tire less quickly than fingers. Some professions in the 1800s like had to write all day, so it was quite useful and worth the significant training costs of learning such penmanship skills. They also had to write with pens that didn't write equally well in all directions. And of course other fancy scripts likely just signalled class status similar to being able to recite Homer (in Greek) on command.
- halpagg 4y ago
  I grew up on cursive, and it always tired my arm so badly. When I learned it took far, far, far less effort for people back in fountain pen days, I felt somewhat cheated. Although they were all forced to use their right hands, never mind their brain lateralization, and that’s unfortunate.
croes 4y ago
>This sounds good in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down. I know many people who can write cursive both fast and beautiful, most of them women. The problem seems to be rather a lack of training due to a lack of interest. Writing on the keyboard with ten fingers slows me down, but not because the ten-finger system is slow, but because I haven't trained it.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
No, you can write cursive faster than printing--that's why it was invented. It's just that it takes enough practice doing it that it becomes muscle memory--it's not something that can be done well as a conscious act because the reaction cycle is too short. It's like driving stick, you can't consciously operate the clutch and gearshift smoothly. When you're trying to start the system is very sensitive to the amount of pressure, balancing it for maximum power transfer without slowing the engine too much requires a feedback loop shorter than you can consciously do. Shifting gears is a lot more forgiving but if you're going to simply take your foot off the clutch you must have a reasonable match between the RPM of each side--and even if you have both a speedometer and tachometer you can't actively be looking at them while you're trying to drive.

loloquwowndueo 4y ago

Also If you want to write fast and don’t care about legibility, learn shorthand writing :)

supersrdjan 4y ago
Word. I learned Orthic recently. It's easy to pick up, unlike the other system (at least that's my impression after a day of investigating)
LorenPechtel 4y ago
I considered doing that in college--decided against it because overall I decided it wouldn't be worthwhile. Yes, I could have taken notes faster but it's not a skill I expected to have much use for later in life. I could already see that the computer was going to pretty much kill handwriting.

AnonymousPlanet 4y ago

My experience is exactly the opposite. I used to do printed characters. My writing speed and legibility (especially for quick notes) improved significantly after switching to cursive. Once you realise that cursive is basically just a way to write printed characters in one flowing motion, it's weird to go back to printed. But maybe we're talking differnt cursive systems, and that might explain our difference in experience.

jakzurr 4y ago
My guess is the biggest difference is how much you use cursive. However, just like most skills, some people may be naturally better, so I suppose I could be wrong.

jakzurr 4y ago

Yes, I think that's pretty much all true, now. 100 years ago, when accounting and bookkeeping were all done by hand, writing cursive was probably quite a bit faster, and with all the practice you got, just as legible. In high school, I wrote almost everything in cursive, but over the next 10 years, computers replaced so much writing that I fell out of practice. I'm not sorry it's gone.

bee_rider 4y ago
Still waiting for a really good stylus driven computer ecosystem. :(
koheripbal 4y ago
Even 35 years ago when I wrote exclusively in cursive, it was significantly faster than printing. Everyone wrote in cursive. It's odd to even see people make the argument that cursive isn't faster. Literally no one wrote in print except young children.

Yizahi 4y ago

Cursive is definitely faster while maintaining legibility. It's just that no schools in my country has taught us how to actually write it efficiently. For example when I'm writing cursive I'm holding pen incorrectly (yes, there are more efficient and less efficient ways to hold it), I'm moving my fingers incorrectly, I'm moving my hand incorrectly, and in the end certain muscles required for the efficient writing weren't properly developed. I've learned all this well after graduating from the university, so there is zero reason to train that skill today. But I do know that my shitty cursive is 100% caused by my own lack of proper training to write. I've switched to the writing print characters nowadays, but only out of necessity, not due to efficiency.

boomboomsubban 4y ago
I don't know what your country is but in a few US public schools we had fairly strict teachers trying to get us to correctly hold our pencils. They'd wander around class correcting people holding their pencil wrong, give out special grips that were supposed to force correct holding, and we were penalized on tests for holding our pencil wrong. Not saying it worked that well, as it was only a handful of teachers who cared so maybe you'd have one year where it mattered. However they did try.
- Yizahi 4y ago
  Ukraine. We were taught extensively how to write cursive, for whole elementary school, we were writing in special workbooks which reinforced the correct shape of the cursive letters, teachers were looking at us and helping us write correctly. Only it appears they didn't teach us the writing movement itself. Quick question - do you hold your pen in the hand parallel to the middle and outer phalanxes or your pen lies between thumb and index finger? Apparently the former position is optimal, while I hold it between fingers. Also my palm is always touching the table with a wrist so I move the pen mostly with my fingers (which a) strains them when writing a lot and b) produces wavy cursive, less legible that it should be), and the correct way is to move pen mostly with whole arm movement, don't touch wrist on a table and don't move fingers too much, only correct movements with fingers, not do all the work with them.

bee_rider 4y ago

Signatures have almost nothing to do with normal written script, they are a special mark that 1) is ideally hard to replicate and unique 2) may be performed by somebody who doesn't write much Fast printing doesn't return anything useful to me (google searches are personalized so I guess we're just seeing different things). I get printshops nearby. I think cursive it taught very formally in elementary school, possibly to the detriment of adoption, just for the same reason everything is -- grammar is given hard-and-fast rules, math is route memorization or totally algorithmic -- because it is easier to grade that way, and also because people will find their shortcuts as they age. Switching between cursive and print seems fine to me (it can also be used for emphasis). Cursive (interspersed with print as convenient) is sort of nice because it is a fairly "normal" way of writing that still goes quickly enough. I can write cursive anywhere on the spectrum of nice and formal to quick and sloppy, in one system. Quick and sloppy basically keeps up with by brain, maybe if I was taking lots of meeting notes I'd want to switch, but it is good enough for my current applications.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

In practice it works out great, this is yet another example of the whole "contrarian-means-im-smart" thing that's entirely too prevalent here on HN. Cursive is there for exactly what the other person said, it's much faster to write than print. There are generations of people who have successfully written and read large swathes of cursive, yet somehow this person thinks they know better, and their explanation for it is akin to a new way of writing (which is what cursive is) and recommendations on practicing it. queue xkcd reference about standards.

usrusr 4y ago
It might be much faster to write when you spend many hours per week writing on paper. I don't even spend spend many hours writing on paper per year! Abandoning cursive should habe been put up for debate already back when phones displaced letters in personal communication.
- layer8 4y ago
  It doesn’t need to be on paper, taking notes with a tablet and stylus is a use-case as well.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
  Cursive is dying, at least in the US it's not taught in school anymore. I was responding to the idea that it's slower to write put forth by the other poster.

ekianjo 4y ago

> Think of how most people's signatures aren't readable at al Signatures are not cursive.

stakkur 4y ago

* In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down* And right there is one of the crucial cognitive and proprioceptive benefits of handwriting over ‘keyboarding’.

autocorr 4y ago

I don't think cursive is necessarily faster. But I do recall studies that showing what you're talking about: that a person's developed hybrid printing (printing with personal ligatures) are just as fast if not faster than full cursive. What cursive does appear to be useful for historically is writing for long periods without tiring. Cursive written in the older Spencerian script fashion is written with big movements of the wrist and arm along the main diagonal path with little finger movement. The wrist and arms tire less quickly than fingers. Some professions in the 1800s like had to write all day, so it was quite useful and worth the significant training costs of learning such penmanship skills. They also had to write with pens that didn't write equally well in all directions. And of course other fancy scripts likely just signalled class status similar to being able to recite Homer (in Greek) on command.

halpagg 4y ago
I grew up on cursive, and it always tired my arm so badly. When I learned it took far, far, far less effort for people back in fountain pen days, I felt somewhat cheated. Although they were all forced to use their right hands, never mind their brain lateralization, and that’s unfortunate.

croes 4y ago

>This sounds good in theory, but in practice doesn't work out so well. In order to write cursive legibly, you need to slow down. I know many people who can write cursive both fast and beautiful, most of them women. The problem seems to be rather a lack of training due to a lack of interest. Writing on the keyboard with ten fingers slows me down, but not because the ten-finger system is slow, but because I haven't trained it.

LorenPechtel 4y ago

No, you can write cursive faster than printing--that's why it was invented. It's just that it takes enough practice doing it that it becomes muscle memory--it's not something that can be done well as a conscious act because the reaction cycle is too short. It's like driving stick, you can't consciously operate the clutch and gearshift smoothly. When you're trying to start the system is very sensitive to the amount of pressure, balancing it for maximum power transfer without slowing the engine too much requires a feedback loop shorter than you can consciously do. Shifting gears is a lot more forgiving but if you're going to simply take your foot off the clutch you must have a reasonable match between the RPM of each side--and even if you have both a speedometer and tachometer you can't actively be looking at them while you're trying to drive.