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Backtrack-Free Cursive

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Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#51

Post by gumby »

I am not sure what country the author is in, because when I learned to write English in school (decades ago, and it was the language of instruction) very few letters required backtrack, pretty much only ‘i’ and ‘j’. I just looked at an image of the US Declaration of Independence and the same is true (the ‘t’ has a wiggle in the middle).

Other languages are similar: for German if you look at either Kurrent or Sütterlin really only i gets special treatment. The umlauts are given as two dots in examples, but when i read letters and other informal documents they usually end up being a bar.

I like the connected dot for i and j! Clever, and i will try to adopt it. Most of my handwritten writing these days is for myself.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#52

Post by richrichardsson »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #19

This is the kind of thing that makes cursive painful to read . The `i` and `j` in this script are harder to quickly lex, and the `t` (especially in the `tt` ligature) with the added loop flourish diverges sufficiently from a standard `t` to make it hard to decipher in running text. In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.

I read the backtrack free "pretty" as "pretly" at first; it adds cognitive load to understand it as intended.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#53

Post by [deleted] »

usrnm wrote: post #24
a115ltd wrote: post #18

This is unrelated to the main thesis of the article, but worth pointing out as too many people equate the Cyrillic script with Russian language. The Cyrillic script was invented in Bulgaria (during the First Bulgarian Empire), and was used to write Bulgarian language, creating a huge literary corpus, long before it began spreading to Kievan Rus. The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavon…

> The Russian language itself comes from Old Bulgarian / Old Church Slavonic, as does Serbian and other "Slavic" languages. That's some interesting nationalistic propaganda, never heard that one before

[deleted]

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#54

Post by gumby »

andreyvit wrote: post #30

Wondering how many people are like me and hate writing in cursive. I stopped using it right after graduating high school (where it was required), never used in drafts after elementary school, and only ever used normal print letters in the university (and also included TeX commands because I was typesetting lecture notes later and was figuring out the optimal command set on the fly).

I’m surprised, as the whole points of it are speed and duration (less cramping, less energy when moving the wrist). Discrete lettering is simply slower because it requires more motion.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#55

Post by thaumasiotes »

Cockbrand wrote: post #38
hk__2 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s addresses in the blog post: > One way to remove backtracking is to lift the pen immediately instead of waiting until the end of the word, as if doing italic calligraphy. Pen lifts alleviate the mental queue problem and give a chance to readjust the palm, but they break the writing flow.

This is how I learned cursive in school, and it never occurred to me that this may interrupt my writing flow. I agree that doing the backtracks after writing the entire word would add to my mental load, but that's probably because I'm not used to that. So generally, I'd say that the mental load is basically a matter of how one learned cursive in the first place. Though I agree that the mostly backtrack-free Cyrillic…

Cursive isn't seen as being fancier than the reference form of a character in China. It's something you do to make writing easier.

I've gotten comments about how neat my Chinese writing is from people surprised that I don't use handwriting. There's a simple reason for that: I've never learned how to do Chinese handwriting.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#56

Post by demetrius »

I like writing in cursive, but I don’t see backtracking as a problem. I backtrack quite a lot in Cyrillic, even in Russian, e.g. I always underline ш and write a line over т (which looks like m) to distinguish them (otherwise they look quite similar, see the famous example лишили лилии — you might want to google it if you haven’t seen it yet). I also normally write д as ∂, which breaks the flow.

Belarusian Cyrillic requires more backtracking: we have і, ў, obligatory ё, apostrophes. Never saw it as a problem.

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#57

Post by [deleted] »

gumby wrote: post #54
andreyvit wrote: post #30

Wondering how many people are like me and hate writing in cursive. I stopped using it right after graduating high school (where it was required), never used in drafts after elementary school, and only ever used normal print letters in the university (and also included TeX commands because I was typesetting lecture notes later and was figuring out the optimal command set on the fly).

I’m surprised, as the whole points of it are speed and duration (less cramping, less energy when moving the wrist). Discrete lettering is simply slower because it requires more motion.

[deleted]

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#58

Post by vanderZwan »

sollniss wrote: post #33
vanderZwan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, that's the same one I was taught in the Netherlands in the late 80s! It seems to have been replaced with an English-style in recent decades though, is that the case in Germany as well?

According to the wiki, the Schulausgangsschrift is mandatory in 5 states and optional in 4 states (out of 16) (probably on a school/teacher level). So it still seems to be taught in some places.

After searching a bit more I discovered the situation is similar in the Netherlands too: schools can choose between the two styles (or more like three publishers each with their own styles, really).

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#59

Post by thaumasiotes »

zczc wrote: post #36
chrisjj wrote: post #22

> ... in Russian. Only й (short i) and э (pronounced like e in end) require two strokes. Plus some uppercase e.g. A, B, H, right?

In school-taught cursive, the uppercase A is written with a single stroke, but the upper element in Б, Г, Т and others need a separate stroke. The full alphabet sheet: https://upload-995750d0fd20690d889c7a976af524b6.hb.bizmrg.co...

Do you start with the top stroke so that the bottom stroke can continue into the rest of the word, or do you start with the bottom stroke and handle the top later?

Re: Backtrack-Free Cursive

#60

Post by usrnm »

demetrius wrote: post #56

I like writing in cursive, but I don’t see backtracking as a problem. I backtrack quite a lot in Cyrillic, even in Russian, e.g. I always underline ш and write a line over т (which looks like m) to distinguish them (otherwise they look quite similar, see the famous example лишили лилии — you might want to google it if you haven’t seen it yet). I also normally write д as ∂, which breaks the flow. Belarusian Cyrillic r…

> I always underline ш and write a line over т

Interesting. I think this style completely died out in Russia, I wasn't taught it and never really seen it outside of some old letters and documents. Interesting to hear it survived in Belarus

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