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From what I've seen, at least from 2000 forward in the US it was mostly expected that assignments would be typed and printed in high school/college. A lot of th

by pfranz 4y ago

From what I've seen, at least from 2000 forward in the US it was mostly expected that assignments would be typed and printed in high school/college. A lot of the length requirements specified it (times new roman, size 12, single space, one page). I imagine it was because of access (the colleges I know of had a computer lab), formality, and avoiding back-and-forth over legibility. After leaving college and not needing to write much after a decade or two, its jarring enough to get used to writing in block script.

tsimionescu 4y ago
I've expressed this in other places in this thread as well, but I just don't understand how you can turn in assignments in anything mathy (math, physics, chemistry) or diagram/table-heavy (biology, logic) in typed form. Even with tools like LaTeX or modern Word it takes so much longer than writing by hand... I can at least understand the idea of writing printed characters by hand - the difference between that and cursive isn't that large, and is non-existent for the above. But to forego handwriting entirely doesn't seem plausible to me, in these subjects at least.
- pfranz 4y ago
  My school years are pretty far behind me. Sure, math classes would be handwritten, but in college that's not a large number of people or a large number of classes. It's also mostly numbers. So I'm not sure how it applies to cursive. The little bit of cursive needed for formulas could really be picked up on the fly. I don't think I've heard anyone advocate for getting rid of handwriting. All I'm saying is I got very out of practice after leaving school. In school handwriting was almost exclusively for personal use. I toyed with digital note-taking at the time and realized it was terrible. > the difference between that and cursive isn't that large :shrug: Like I said above, the three or so generations I've seen in the US got a couple years of cursive, never saw the value in maintaining it on their own and got very out of practice. The distinction is strong enough that decades old references stick around in my head [1]. A lot of people live with terrible block handwriting. I took an online class and started handwriting notices and realized how out of practice I was with block writing because of how illegible it was and how soon my hand started cramping. I never got comfortable enough with cursive to be faster and/or more legible than block handwriting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wguuKpRJRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wguuKpRJRE

by pfranz 4y ago

tsimionescu 4y ago

I've expressed this in other places in this thread as well, but I just don't understand how you can turn in assignments in anything mathy (math, physics, chemistry) or diagram/table-heavy (biology, logic) in typed form. Even with tools like LaTeX or modern Word it takes so much longer than writing by hand... I can at least understand the idea of writing printed characters by hand - the difference between that and cursive isn't that large, and is non-existent for the above. But to forego handwriting entirely doesn't seem plausible to me, in these subjects at least.

pfranz 4y ago
My school years are pretty far behind me. Sure, math classes would be handwritten, but in college that's not a large number of people or a large number of classes. It's also mostly numbers. So I'm not sure how it applies to cursive. The little bit of cursive needed for formulas could really be picked up on the fly. I don't think I've heard anyone advocate for getting rid of handwriting. All I'm saying is I got very out of practice after leaving school. In school handwriting was almost exclusively for personal use. I toyed with digital note-taking at the time and realized it was terrible. > the difference between that and cursive isn't that large :shrug: Like I said above, the three or so generations I've seen in the US got a couple years of cursive, never saw the value in maintaining it on their own and got very out of practice. The distinction is strong enough that decades old references stick around in my head [1]. A lot of people live with terrible block handwriting. I took an online class and started handwriting notices and realized how out of practice I was with block writing because of how illegible it was and how soon my hand started cramping. I never got comfortable enough with cursive to be faster and/or more legible than block handwriting. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wguuKpRJRE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wguuKpRJRE