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The End of Handwriting

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Re: The End of Handwriting

#251

Post by watwut »

skirge wrote: post #33
IT4MD wrote: post #7

I don't see a lot of people still writing with quills, and there's a reason for that, yet there have been no catastrophic consequences, excepting maybe for "Big Quill". Personally, I think this veers into hyperbole a bit. The degradation in motor skills is barely measurable when compared to common tasks required of people today and we're talking about a skill that has less and less use cases every day. I believe this…

If you don't want to be replaced by machine you need a skill which machine can't replicate and train that skill somehow. Or become a very good machine operator.

Yeah, but fine motor skills is not something required today all that much. Machines already took over all the fine motor skills jobs.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#252

Post by NoGravitas »

In the late 1970s to early 80s, I learned a more or less standard cursive for the time. My high school, college, and even graduate school education relied a lot on "blue book" exams, short essays written in class, in cursive. Over that period, my cursive declined into an illegible scrawl simply because I was optimizing for speed. I did develop a 100wpm typing speed, but that probably wasn't a major contributing factor.

Years later (early 2000s) I decided my handwriting was unacceptable (was still using it for note-taking), and taught myself cursive Italic, which I still use today. Both prettier and less fussy than the cursive I was taught, works well with fountain pens, which in turn reduces muscle cramps.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#253

Post by ACCount37 »

gyomu wrote: post #247
IAmBroom wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 “…

I've seen a suggestion that a signature is now nothing but a signal. An agreed-upon way of communicating "this is serious and binding". Being able to point out that a signature was faked in some cases is a rare side benefit at best.

If papers were signed, then something was agreed upon. A trade performed, a commitment made. If no papers were signed, then it's just idle talk.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#254

Post by metalman »

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.…

the article links the decline of cursive writing and the rise of the AI cheat happening at the same time as a definitive moment, and suggests bieng locked in an exam room with blank(unlined) paper might be a good way to force peoples hand(accidental pun) and seperate the knowlegable from the rest. my personal feeling, that as you so well illustrate, is that a significant number of academics and hobbiests will want to study and experience past practices as to keep the undestanding of cursive alive into the forseeble future unlined, just for the extra test of focus

Re: The End of Handwriting

#255

Post by janfoeh »

IAmBroom wrote: post #230
dranudin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, in Germany, it was always cursive from the beginning to the end of school. We learned to write in the first class of elementary school. I still only write cursive and cannot write any other style, by hand. And only with a fountain pen. The style I was taught is called "Lateinische Ausgangsschrift". At a catholic elementary school in NRW. If you are interested here is an overview of the different cursive style…

Fascinating! So, you weren't ever taught to print?

Different German: it is hazy, but I believe I started out with block/print letters in pre-school, and then "graduated" in some early class to cursive.

Print was more seen as a stepping stone, a teaching aide, something to be eventually superseded.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#256

Post by lo_zamoyski »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #139
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.…

Lol I have a friend whose handwriting was so bad, his mom found the leading expert in teaching how to write correctly (at the time / wherever he lived at the time), that eventually broke him and he gave up. We are all very unique and different. What's funny is I gave up on cursive as long as I hit the internet in the mid 2000s because I instinctively knew it was fruitless.

The fact that some people are totally unable to draw while others excel at it would alone imply that you should see similar variation in writing. And we do.

> What's funny is I gave up on cursive as long as I hit the internet in the mid 2000s because I instinctively knew it was fruitless.

Not exactly. Handwriting better reinforces information in our memories than typing or reading or listening alone. So, if we're going to be doing a lot of writing because we intend to do a lot of note taking (and reading of our scrawl later on), then effective writing is obviously useful, which is what cursive is supposed to be. Now, perhaps that doesn't necessarily mean you have to use cursive as you are familiar with it, but inevitably, all handwriting written quickly turns into some kind of cursive. Writing block letters is slow and tedious.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#257

Post by scotty79 »

nancyminusone wrote: post #188
deadbabe wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must know how to at least read cursive, otherwise you will see a word like minimum written in cursive and think it’s just a scribble.

The point is that you almost never see text written in cursive anymore. For me, I encounter things written in Chinese way more often than I see cursive. I don't know how to read Chinese, but I don't really worry about not being able to.

My eInk notepad recognizes my attempt at cursive surprisingly well. Maybe one could one day read cursive with something akin to Google lens.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#258

Post by NoGravitas »

varjag wrote: post #116
endgame wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The thing with fountain pens that many sibling commenters miss is that they run the ink so much more smoothly, which means you can use much less force when guiding the pen. It's not just pining for the old ways but that the writing feels completely different with a different class of tool. I spent a bunch of time working through https://www.briem.net/free-books/handwriting-repair and am really satisfied with…

With a really good ballpoint there's no difference. Saying this as someone who had to use fountain pens throughout the school. I now been using UB-157 for years and it is entirely effortless.

Depends what you mean by ballpoint. For a liquid ink rollerball, that's true or very close. For a gel ink pen, or an oil-based standard ballpoint, that's very much not true. Conventional ballpoints require much more pressure than a rollerball (like the UB-157) or a fountain pen. Gel pens are in-between.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#259

Post by lo_zamoyski »

IAmBroom wrote: post #230
dranudin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, in Germany, it was always cursive from the beginning to the end of school. We learned to write in the first class of elementary school. I still only write cursive and cannot write any other style, by hand. And only with a fountain pen. The style I was taught is called "Lateinische Ausgangsschrift". At a catholic elementary school in NRW. If you are interested here is an overview of the different cursive style…

Fascinating! So, you weren't ever taught to print?

In Poland, children are likewise taught cursive from the get go when they are taught to write. There is no initial block letter stage.

Re: The End of Handwriting

#260

Post by lo_zamoyski »

Tagbert wrote: post #196
eviks wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The studies you linked are garbage not related to the only part that matters - learning. What they measured is that if you ride a bike while listening your legs will have higher muscle activity, and so will your brain that managed those legs. There is only downside in distracting yourself to have to copy everything verbatim instead of, you know, actually focusing on the material being presented

good handwritten notes do not copy everything verbatim. You tend to summarize as you write it. That is part of the learning process.

Although they can - this was a method of instruction. It's not a terrible idea for assimilating information, but of course, the cranky, opinionated by low info peanut gallery always knows better.
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