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> Many children no longer learn to write cursive in school. [...] People may recognize the signature, but they weren’t necessarily reading it. Does this sound

> Many children no longer learn to write cursive in school. [...] People may recognize the signature, but they weren’t necessarily reading it. Does this sound alarming to anyone besides me?

amanj41 3y ago
I don't have a problem with children not learning cursive, but the idea that one couldn't interpret the J&J logo is pretty absurd. It's a very intelligible script.
- retrac 3y ago
  That's probably because you can read English in cursive. It's hard to imagine what it might might look like without that knowledge. But try reading something written in cursive in a language you don't speak. Even with the clearest penmanship, it's very difficult. All the letter-forms are similar and context is really important for decoding it. Here's an example of something in Norwegian [1], written in a style of cursive quite similar to how I write English cursive. I can make out some letters and a few words with confidence, but it's mostly scribbles to me. Even this Swedish text, with such perfect penmanship [2], is a bit challenging in spots. (I don't speak either language.) Going back to Johnson & Johnson, that "ohn" sequence in the cursive "Johnson" could easily be confused with sequences like "iunr" or "lins" or "fins". The only way you can learn to read that is probably by learning to write it. It relies on knowing that e.g. there's a sharp flick of the pen, and a very light line drawn, between the tail end of the "h" and the start of the "n". That's how we know it's the end of an "h" and the beginning of an "n", and not the middle of an "u" which would be drawn with a slightly darker, more curved line. Along with context hints, from the language and content. [1] https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/unnamed-1.png https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/unnamed-1.png [2] https://i.imgur.com/S8QTFDp.jpg https://i.imgur.com/S8QTFDp.jpg
  - iteria 3y ago
    Exactly this. The last time I used cursive was 3rd grade when I learned it. When I was in college, the admin were appalled that I couldn't read their handwriting. I'd have to take these cursive notes to other older adults to narrate for me. It turns out no one my age could read cursive, despite all of us being perfectly literate.
    - bmitc 3y ago
      That's hard to believe. Only five out of the twenty-six letters have different lowercase representations than their print versions.
    - timeon 3y ago
      > perfectly literate Does this not include handwriting as well?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
_ea1k 3y ago
Not at all. I bet most commonly seen brand logos are recognized rather than read. I'm not even sure why that'd be a bad thing. Cursive serves very little purpose today. I'm not surprised to see it steadily disappearing.
WillAdams 3y ago
Soon it'll be like in Turkey --- there will be a specialty of folks who can read cursive scripts and transcribe them (though in Turkey it's reading Turkish which was written using Arabic script and transliterating it into Roman)
Brendinooo 3y ago
A ton of kids did not understand that Disney's "D" was a "D" and the brand seems to have done okay in spite of that.
- patrickthebold 3y ago
  Funny you mention Disney as I feel the 'y' is clearly the hardest letter to make out.
- dkdbejwi383 3y ago
  Waly Gisnep
  - jihadjihad 3y ago
    I thought it was Disnep as a kid. Even as an adult now the 'y' looks much more like a handwritten lowercase Greek 'phi' than an English 'y'.
- gwbas1c 3y ago
  As a kid in the 1980s, I always thought the logo was spelt "Disnep," even though we all said "Disney." I think plenty of people can read cursive without spending 2-4 years writing it.
nickthegreek 3y ago
No. I would have been much better off learning proper typing than cursive.
- notsurenymore 3y ago
  They tried to teach us both in school, but neither really stuck.
crazygringo 3y ago
Nope. Cursive today is archaic. And that's fine. It's no different from not knowing how to use a slide rule.
- deepspace 3y ago
  I am old enough to still know how to use a slide rule, but I have not used one in decades. I can also scribble in cursive, but I have not done that in years either. At some point, I noticed that I rarely wrote down something, and when I did, it became instantly unsearchable and therefore as good as lost. For a while, I scanned my written notes, but as soon as swipe keyboards on smartphones became a thing, I just switched over to 100% digital notes. So, yes, it is hard to imagine a use for cursive anymore. Good riddance.
jjice 3y ago
I grew up at a time when cursive was obviously fading away. In third grade we had to write cursive for all our work after half the year because we were going to use it all the time. Haven't written cursive since (signatures aren't cursive, they're more of a logo than anything) maybe fourth grade. I type all day. I can read cursive but I swear cursive has so much variation in legibility that it's a nightmare sometimes. Typing as a skill has replaced cursive and, while I think knowing to read cursive is good, I don't find it important.
- maxwell 3y ago
  "Cursive handwriting engages sensorimotor brain regions that are not activated by typewriting" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202107/why-does-writing-hand-promote-better-and-faster-learning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202... "For young adults, we found that when writing by hand using a digital pen on a touchscreen, brain areas in the parietal and central regions showed event-related synchronized activity in the theta range. Existing literature suggests that such oscillatory neuronal activity in these particular brain areas is important for memory and for the encoding of new information and, therefore, provides the brain with optimal conditions for learning. When drawing, we found similar activation patterns in the parietal areas, in addition to event-related desynchronization in the alpha/beta range, suggesting both similarities but also slight differences in activation patterns when drawing and writing by hand. When typewriting on a keyboard, we found event-related desynchronized activity in the theta range and, to a lesser extent, in the alpha range in parietal and central brain regions. However, as this activity was desynchronized and differed from when writing by hand and drawing, its relation to learning remains unclear." https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01810/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181...
  - true_religion 3y ago
    Neither of those references are about writing in cursive. They are about writing with hand vs typing. Any benefit found will still be there if people use print letters; or scribble fast shorthand.
yeouch 3y ago
Cursive really shines with fountain pens. Your modern gel/rollerball/ballpoint pin barely benefits from cursive. It’s like lamenting that the kids these days don’t know how to use an abacus. If you only had enough time to teach a kid how to use excel or an abacus I’d choose excel. If you only had enough time to teach a kid how to type or how to use cursive I’d choose how to type.
- aidenn0 3y ago
  As far as ballpoints go you're right, but I struggle to write in print with my Stabilo roller-ball pen; it really wants to write cursive.
0xcde4c3db 3y ago
You're definitely not alone, but I don't really get it. As far as I'm concerned, it's like worrying that people don't learn how to rebuild a carburetor anymore. Cursive greatly aids in legibility for things like quills and fountain pens, but it's hardly a necessity in the age of dirt-cheap ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils.
- mistrial9 3y ago
  carburetor skills was an advanced training topic at the Ford Company Training Camp, I did not need it for our squad assignments, so I guess I did not miss out. I make good money on our conveyor line. Fancy decorative writing means nothing to me.
stetrain 3y ago
What's the alarm? Without cursive you can still communicate perfectly well by most forms of reading and writing, with the specific exception of longer form hand-written documents which are becoming rare in society. In elementary school I learned cursive and was told it was very important because when I got to college all professors would require submissions to be in neat, legible cursive writing. When I got to high school any submission not printed in Times New Roman, 12pt, Double Spaced would be graded as zero. When I got to college it was the same but submitted to an online portal instead of printed.
kayodelycaon 3y ago
Not to me. Cursive writing has changed significantly over time. The formal flowing cursive from previous centuries was already unreadable to students from two decides ago. Ballpoint pens removed many of the advantages of cursive, since you didn't need to worry about how the ink got from the pen to the page. Today, typing has already largely replace handwriting. History matches on. Some of the traditions and methods of the past really aren't as long lived as you think.
- mongol 3y ago
  I never thought about that. Was cursive a workaround for non-modern pens? I thought it has to do about writing speed, but this was a relevation..
- timeon 3y ago
  > Cursive writing has changed significantly over time. The formal flowing cursive from previous centuries was already unreadable to students from two decides ago. I had no problem reading 18th century scripts while doing amateur genealogy research. And I'm not specialist - almost dyslectic.
owlninja 3y ago
We had to have our 15 year old daughter do some paperwork to start her driver learning and when I asked for her signature, she was quite puzzled! Cursive was taught when I grew up but I don't find a use for it anymore myself. I am sure it lends to speed but my cursive handwriting is awful to try and reread, but normal case I can do pretty well.
benreesman 3y ago
My cursive has utterly atrophied from disuse over decades. Even my signature is losing any aesthetic it ever had, because I only ever do it on a shitty stylus screen where it makes no difference.
gwbas1c 3y ago
I didn't start cursive until 3rd grade. I wrote it for at least a decade in school. Now I can't write it. In 1st grade we spent about 30 minutes practicing typing positions on a photocopied PCJunior keyboard. I still use those positions.
lotsoweiners 3y ago
I wonder how much “many children “ is. My kids go to a charter school and learned cursive in 3rd or 4th grade. They are required to do all of their writing assignments in cursive. The public school district is we’re in also teaches cursive.

> Many children no longer learn to write cursive in school. [...] People may recognize the signature, but they weren’t necessarily reading it. Does this sound alarming to anyone besides me?

amanj41 3y ago

I don't have a problem with children not learning cursive, but the idea that one couldn't interpret the J&J logo is pretty absurd. It's a very intelligible script.

retrac 3y ago
That's probably because you can read English in cursive. It's hard to imagine what it might might look like without that knowledge. But try reading something written in cursive in a language you don't speak. Even with the clearest penmanship, it's very difficult. All the letter-forms are similar and context is really important for decoding it. Here's an example of something in Norwegian [1], written in a style of cursive quite similar to how I write English cursive. I can make out some letters and a few words with confidence, but it's mostly scribbles to me. Even this Swedish text, with such perfect penmanship [2], is a bit challenging in spots. (I don't speak either language.) Going back to Johnson & Johnson, that "ohn" sequence in the cursive "Johnson" could easily be confused with sequences like "iunr" or "lins" or "fins". The only way you can learn to read that is probably by learning to write it. It relies on knowing that e.g. there's a sharp flick of the pen, and a very light line drawn, between the tail end of the "h" and the start of the "n". That's how we know it's the end of an "h" and the beginning of an "n", and not the middle of an "u" which would be drawn with a slightly darker, more curved line. Along with context hints, from the language and content. [1] https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/unnamed-1.png https://readcoop.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/unnamed-1.png [2] https://i.imgur.com/S8QTFDp.jpg https://i.imgur.com/S8QTFDp.jpg
- iteria 3y ago
  Exactly this. The last time I used cursive was 3rd grade when I learned it. When I was in college, the admin were appalled that I couldn't read their handwriting. I'd have to take these cursive notes to other older adults to narrate for me. It turns out no one my age could read cursive, despite all of us being perfectly literate.
  - bmitc 3y ago
    That's hard to believe. Only five out of the twenty-six letters have different lowercase representations than their print versions.
  - timeon 3y ago
    > perfectly literate Does this not include handwriting as well?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

_ea1k 3y ago

Not at all. I bet most commonly seen brand logos are recognized rather than read. I'm not even sure why that'd be a bad thing. Cursive serves very little purpose today. I'm not surprised to see it steadily disappearing.

WillAdams 3y ago

Soon it'll be like in Turkey --- there will be a specialty of folks who can read cursive scripts and transcribe them (though in Turkey it's reading Turkish which was written using Arabic script and transliterating it into Roman)

Brendinooo 3y ago

A ton of kids did not understand that Disney's "D" was a "D" and the brand seems to have done okay in spite of that.

patrickthebold 3y ago
Funny you mention Disney as I feel the 'y' is clearly the hardest letter to make out.
dkdbejwi383 3y ago
Waly Gisnep
- jihadjihad 3y ago
  I thought it was Disnep as a kid. Even as an adult now the 'y' looks much more like a handwritten lowercase Greek 'phi' than an English 'y'.
gwbas1c 3y ago
As a kid in the 1980s, I always thought the logo was spelt "Disnep," even though we all said "Disney." I think plenty of people can read cursive without spending 2-4 years writing it.

nickthegreek 3y ago

No. I would have been much better off learning proper typing than cursive.

notsurenymore 3y ago
They tried to teach us both in school, but neither really stuck.

crazygringo 3y ago

Nope. Cursive today is archaic. And that's fine. It's no different from not knowing how to use a slide rule.

deepspace 3y ago
I am old enough to still know how to use a slide rule, but I have not used one in decades. I can also scribble in cursive, but I have not done that in years either. At some point, I noticed that I rarely wrote down something, and when I did, it became instantly unsearchable and therefore as good as lost. For a while, I scanned my written notes, but as soon as swipe keyboards on smartphones became a thing, I just switched over to 100% digital notes. So, yes, it is hard to imagine a use for cursive anymore. Good riddance.

jjice 3y ago

I grew up at a time when cursive was obviously fading away. In third grade we had to write cursive for all our work after half the year because we were going to use it all the time. Haven't written cursive since (signatures aren't cursive, they're more of a logo than anything) maybe fourth grade. I type all day. I can read cursive but I swear cursive has so much variation in legibility that it's a nightmare sometimes. Typing as a skill has replaced cursive and, while I think knowing to read cursive is good, I don't find it important.

maxwell 3y ago
"Cursive handwriting engages sensorimotor brain regions that are not activated by typewriting" https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202107/why-does-writing-hand-promote-better-and-faster-learning https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-athletes-way/202... "For young adults, we found that when writing by hand using a digital pen on a touchscreen, brain areas in the parietal and central regions showed event-related synchronized activity in the theta range. Existing literature suggests that such oscillatory neuronal activity in these particular brain areas is important for memory and for the encoding of new information and, therefore, provides the brain with optimal conditions for learning. When drawing, we found similar activation patterns in the parietal areas, in addition to event-related desynchronization in the alpha/beta range, suggesting both similarities but also slight differences in activation patterns when drawing and writing by hand. When typewriting on a keyboard, we found event-related desynchronized activity in the theta range and, to a lesser extent, in the alpha range in parietal and central brain regions. However, as this activity was desynchronized and differed from when writing by hand and drawing, its relation to learning remains unclear." https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01810/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.0181...
- true_religion 3y ago
  Neither of those references are about writing in cursive. They are about writing with hand vs typing. Any benefit found will still be there if people use print letters; or scribble fast shorthand.

yeouch 3y ago

Cursive really shines with fountain pens. Your modern gel/rollerball/ballpoint pin barely benefits from cursive. It’s like lamenting that the kids these days don’t know how to use an abacus. If you only had enough time to teach a kid how to use excel or an abacus I’d choose excel. If you only had enough time to teach a kid how to type or how to use cursive I’d choose how to type.

aidenn0 3y ago
As far as ballpoints go you're right, but I struggle to write in print with my Stabilo roller-ball pen; it really wants to write cursive.

0xcde4c3db 3y ago

You're definitely not alone, but I don't really get it. As far as I'm concerned, it's like worrying that people don't learn how to rebuild a carburetor anymore. Cursive greatly aids in legibility for things like quills and fountain pens, but it's hardly a necessity in the age of dirt-cheap ballpoint pens and mechanical pencils.

mistrial9 3y ago
carburetor skills was an advanced training topic at the Ford Company Training Camp, I did not need it for our squad assignments, so I guess I did not miss out. I make good money on our conveyor line. Fancy decorative writing means nothing to me.

stetrain 3y ago

What's the alarm? Without cursive you can still communicate perfectly well by most forms of reading and writing, with the specific exception of longer form hand-written documents which are becoming rare in society. In elementary school I learned cursive and was told it was very important because when I got to college all professors would require submissions to be in neat, legible cursive writing. When I got to high school any submission not printed in Times New Roman, 12pt, Double Spaced would be graded as zero. When I got to college it was the same but submitted to an online portal instead of printed.

kayodelycaon 3y ago

Not to me. Cursive writing has changed significantly over time. The formal flowing cursive from previous centuries was already unreadable to students from two decides ago. Ballpoint pens removed many of the advantages of cursive, since you didn't need to worry about how the ink got from the pen to the page. Today, typing has already largely replace handwriting. History matches on. Some of the traditions and methods of the past really aren't as long lived as you think.

mongol 3y ago
I never thought about that. Was cursive a workaround for non-modern pens? I thought it has to do about writing speed, but this was a relevation..
timeon 3y ago
> Cursive writing has changed significantly over time. The formal flowing cursive from previous centuries was already unreadable to students from two decides ago. I had no problem reading 18th century scripts while doing amateur genealogy research. And I'm not specialist - almost dyslectic.

owlninja 3y ago

We had to have our 15 year old daughter do some paperwork to start her driver learning and when I asked for her signature, she was quite puzzled! Cursive was taught when I grew up but I don't find a use for it anymore myself. I am sure it lends to speed but my cursive handwriting is awful to try and reread, but normal case I can do pretty well.

benreesman 3y ago

My cursive has utterly atrophied from disuse over decades. Even my signature is losing any aesthetic it ever had, because I only ever do it on a shitty stylus screen where it makes no difference.

gwbas1c 3y ago

I didn't start cursive until 3rd grade. I wrote it for at least a decade in school. Now I can't write it. In 1st grade we spent about 30 minutes practicing typing positions on a photocopied PCJunior keyboard. I still use those positions.

lotsoweiners 3y ago

I wonder how much “many children “ is. My kids go to a charter school and learned cursive in 3rd or 4th grade. They are required to do all of their writing assignments in cursive. The public school district is we’re in also teaches cursive.