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The End of Handwriting

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Re: The End of Handwriting

#241

Post by criddell »

StableAlkyne wrote: post #47
tbrownaw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, fountain pens have a "cool" factor and can be made for decorative stuff, but that's it. Sure the super cheap bic pens that come in boxes of 100 aren't great, but that's because they're cheap (besides being inexpensive). Something like those G2 gel pens that are also available everywhere for not very much (fairly inexpensive, but not pejorative-cheap) these days work just fine.

Fountains also feel incredibly good to write with once you find the right nib + pen + ink combo you prefer. Deliberate practice is the #1 way to get better at most skills, and making the activity feel good will encourage that: if it feels good to write, you'll probably be more deliberate when doing it and really think about the strokes you're making. Then you have a few "oh hey, if I do this with this part of the let…

> find the right nib + pen + ink combo

You left out paper. I have fountain pens that I love to use on particular types of paper. However, on the paper I mostly use (cheap paper) fountain pens aren't great...

Re: The End of Handwriting

#242

Post by randcraw »

privong wrote: post #101
Swizec wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In France, back when I went to school, not sure now, though I hope it hasn't changed, as a child, you'd only be allowed to use fountain pens. Kids learning to write have constantly stained hands while they learn to use it properly, almost as a rite of passage. I'm very thankful to have learned it like that. In Slovenia, back when I went to school, we all learned with fountain pens and cursive. From 1st to 8th grade…

> If you turned in an assignment written in pencil, it was legit for the teacher to use their eraser and give you an F for turning in empty paper. (They never did this but threatened it a lot). I find this slightly amusing/ironic because many (most?) fountain pen inks are not waterproof. I had a sheet of paper that was full of (fountain pen written) writing on my desk when I spilled a glass of water -- after the pape…

Apparently the inks used in antiquity were not waterproof either. Even though vellum or high quality parchment could last several centuries (if not eaten by moths or other bugs), a single slip of a beverage could erase an entire scroll. Perhaps that's a primary reason that 90% of the works written before the fall of Rome have been lost.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#243

Post by nancyminusone »

1718627440 wrote: post #194
IAmBroom wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating! Can anyone from other countries chime in?

I find the discussion very weird. I'm from Germany, cursive is taught in class two. There were people in class who never got it, but mostly one or two. I don't get how people can stand writing in printing letters, doesn't it take too much time to essentially stop writing after each letter?

It takes too much time to write, period. I'm not really interested in incremental improvements in my handwriting when I can already type an order of magnitude faster.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#244

Post by merlynkline »

IAmBroom wrote: post #186
XorNot wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching cursive seems like a weirdly American obsession, because during school in Australia it just...wasn't a thing. Like teachers did take you through what "running writing" was, but we were never required to actually master it the accomplishments level was just "can you write? Good let's move on to how sentences are structured".

Fascinating! Can anyone from other countries chime in?

UK: I find all this fascination with "cursive" very odd. I was taught to write indivdual block letters before and in the first year of school, and then like every other pupil, was excited to move on to "joined up" writing, which was (is) very similar, with the letters having small extensions to link them to the adjoining letters in a word, thereby making writing much faster. The way I was taught to write block letters was cleary designed to lead to this - there really wasn't much difference. Reading and writing joined up letters seems pretty normal to me and to my kids.

My handwriting was, and still is, pretty awful but I soon learned to argue that the legibility of one's handwriting is in inverse proportion to one's intelligence, citing doctors as evidence and positing that higher intelligence leads to faster thinking leads to faster writing leads to decreased legibility. Never really had any problems in school (or since) and I will note that when I left secondary education my school still did not have a computer, even in the admin offices. My kids' experience has been very different but with similar outcomes in this regard.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#245

Post by garciansmith »

cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

There are ancient (e.g., Roman) and medieval cursive scripts, so I'm not sure what you mean by it being a couple hundred years old. Unless you just mean the current script we use now? (As for whether it should still be taught or not I'm impartial.)

Re: The End of Handwriting

#246

Post by potato3732842 »

IAmBroom wrote: post #185
cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

I was sternly told by a nun that, with my handwriting, I would never get a job. The only thing in my entire career I've ever been asked to write something in cursive is my signature, which I reduced to a squiggle for efficiency reasons. (The history of signatures is fascinating, BTW. Illiterate Charlemagne "signed" documents with a single horizontal stroke of the pen, inside of a premade 99%-completed "signature".) I…

Charlemagne wasn't exactly please about that state of affairs though.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#247

Post by gyomu »

IAmBroom wrote: post #185
cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

I was sternly told by a nun that, with my handwriting, I would never get a job. The only thing in my entire career I've ever been asked to write something in cursive is my signature, which I reduced to a squiggle for efficiency reasons. (The history of signatures is fascinating, BTW. Illiterate Charlemagne "signed" documents with a single horizontal stroke of the pen, inside of a premade 99%-completed "signature".) I…

Signatures seem to be completely useless. Like you, my signature has devolved into a squiggle that is never the same, and it has never mattered.

I remember experimenting as a bored young adult with my first credit card, before tap to pay, when you often had to sign with a stylus on a terminal (in the US) - I would sign something different every time, sometimes nonsense, sometimes a little drawing, sometimes writing “Obama” or “Einstein” to see if I’d get a call from my bank or something - never did.

Maybe there was an era when actual matching signatures mattered, but it seems long gone.

I guess if you’re a celebrity signing autographs then it matters.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#248

Post by lo_zamoyski »

cyocum wrote: post #111

I find these articles both baffling and frustrating at the same time. I find it frustrating because I spent recess after recess locked inside to practice cursive. After many months of this, my handwriting had not improved. The teachers finally relented and stopped punishing me because the punishment never actually improved my handwriting. My handwriting is now print only and is still horrible and has never improved.…

> Cursive is actually only a couple of hundred years old.

You must mean modern cursive, which is definitionally true. The ancients used cursive writing of various forms, of course (for example, hieratic)

But fret not! Reputedly, only a few scholars in the world are able to read the scrawl of Thomas Aquinas!

Re: The End of Handwriting

#250

Post by watwut »

bayindirh wrote: post #112
trylist wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate writing by hand the same way I hate walking through deep sand. It's extra effort for the same distance and I'm mentally way ahead of where I am physically.

Why not try to refine what you have in your mind for a couple of cycles before putting it down to paper, or typing it out? Mind likes to run in circles with scissors at both hands and hurt itself while trying to think fast. Teaching it to walk slowly results in clearer and more refined results.

Not that person, but because there is an option to use a keyboard and easily edit, reread, reedir and again.

As why go in circles in own head when I can be moving forward with keyboard.

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