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𝓘 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓴 𝓬𝓪𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵 𝓛 𝓲𝓼 𝓹𝓻𝓸𝓫𝓪𝓫𝓵𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓸𝓼𝓽 𝓯𝓾𝓷 𝓽𝓸 𝔀𝓻𝓲𝓽𝓮, 𝓽𝓱𝓸𝓾𝓰𝓱 𝓵𝓸𝔀𝓮𝓻𝓬𝓪𝓼𝓮 𝓺 𝓲𝓼 𝓪𝓵𝓼𝓸 𝓪 𝓼𝓽𝓻𝓸𝓷𝓰 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓭𝓮𝓻.
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My cursive looks like a 10yr old wrote it, which is about the last time I actually wrote in cursive
I hate that they still teach it in schools. It means that for about 3-4 years per child, you get birthday and Christmas cards and you can’t read them.
It’s not noticeably faster and it’s certainly not neater. Just let it die.
Also writing speed doesn’t really matter anymore. Most situations where writing speed used to matter now needs typing speed instead.
My kids got just enough cursive in school to learn how to sign their names. Definitely not 3-4 years of it. Maybe 3-4 weeks at the most.
I’m 37 and can barely read cursive, I hate it. I learned it in primary school, never used it, and here I am.
I play DnD and one of our campaigns got so confusing so our DM made a huuuuge flow chart explaining the story, consequences of our actions, where we can go next, etc. It’s all in fucking cursive and I couldn’t read any of it so I continue to be confused :)
It’s definitely not neater for lefties like me who smear our script as we write.
However, OCR input tech on phones and tablets are better at reading cursive than block print. Curiously, my grandson’s curriculum in the Solano County School District dropped cursive writing and then picked it up again.
I heard more than a few US states decided to expend a law on requiring it because taught, your grandson might be a victim of such a policy.
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I never recovered, and I don’t really know how to write print. So i either write cursive at the speed of around one letter per second, produce unreadable chicken scratching, or write very ugly all caps print because that’s simple enough and actually readable and faster than trying to produce legible cursive.
I also don’t think I handwrite more than 100 words a year though so it’s ok
You may want to look into dyspraxia. (Especially so if you have ((or suspect you have)) ADHD or autism, etc.) I think it’s way more common than it’s diagnosed. I’m the same way, and it helped explain a lot for me, so I thought I’d throw it out there just in case! 'Cause I’m getting those vibes haha!
Yep, I think i even got diagnosed with something similar (tho all i have is a memory of my mom mentioning “fine motor skill development disorder” once, which my brain couldve just made up), I do have autism and probably adhd which I’m still trying to get diagnosed. I looked into dyspraxia a while ago and a lot of it fit pretty well, I still tie my shoe laces in a very scuffed way for example and it took me until I was 12 or so to learn it. And there’s nothing I hate more than fiddly stuff with my hands, so I’ve pretty much assumed I have some form of dyspraxia ever since. Though I had little issues learning to type and can do that pretty fast, and never had any general learning disability, which made me a bit doubtful. If it has high comorbidity with autism/adhd I probably do have it after all.
In any case I am glad I don’t have to handwrite a lot anymore lol
What helped me get back to block print after six years of being required to write cursive is a shop/engineering drawing class that required us to use block print for our plates.
Our teacher in that subject taught us how to do block print, paying attention to each and every stroke and in what order we write them. I remember one of our first handful of plates just being the alphabet and some of the often used symbols. That helped us with our penmanship, without shaming anyone who might have had developed bad habits from previous years. Everyone is required to do it, so there’s no shame in sucking at it.
It is neater and faster but people cannot read it nor reciprocate. It used to be more or less universal. I like it and use it, but won’t if what’s being written is for the public.
When I was young my teacher said “If you want to be taken seriously you must use cursive!” She also said I’d never have a calculator in my pocket when I needed it, so there’s that.
In my country all the work you do in Spanish class has to be in cursive from your very youth to the year you graduate.
I do not agree that uppercase G is easier to decipher than uppercase S
They’re both pretty fucking bad.
Are either of them even in the picture? If so they definitely don’t look like the ones I learned in school.
They’re right next to each other.
Oh, wtf! I just looked up US cursive, and that thing is apparently a G? The horror! That’s certainly not what a cursive G looks like where I’m from. And your capital S just looks like a bigger lowercase s. Same with capital A. Why does it look like a lowercase a?!
Edit: The cursive we learned 30 years ago, for comparison: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Svssfb.jpg
Yeah, it was about the same for me too.
Although, to be fair, a lot of these aren’t really consistent, even within the same country. I’ve seen both types of S and A around, though it’s the first time i see that weird G.
Honestly, most of the more complicated ones aren’t really used where i’m from at all. Like, if you’re really trying to be fancy, sure, i could see it, but the writing i see day to day is a lot more simplified. Whole point is to write fast anyway.
nothing in this life feels better than writing a cursive f. i put my whole arm into it. those things are the highlights of anything i write
I am very proud of my F/f, too. I do them beautifully because it is the first letter of my name.
The first letter of my name is R and I agree, my handwriting is crap but my Rs are great. I’m a fan of my Rs.
I am sad that my legal name is made only of boring letters other than a single g
you could always change it to something that’s more fun to write, like gyzgfblf
You may be cool, but you’ll never be “Capital L” cool…
Today is you 𝓛ucky day.
Let’s be honest. You didn’t like learning cursive, you didn’t like having to write full-ass papers in cursive because the computer lab was always full as a teenager, and you don’t like writing cursive now because it means you probably have to borrow a pen from somebody at work who never washes their hands. Sincerely, a 45 year old.
I ended up kind of creating my own cursive “font” because I thought several of the choices for letter shapes were, in graphological parlance, “Just completely fucking removed.” Like the lowercase S being a slightly pointy loop. I devised my own capital T as well, and jettisoned that Q that looks like a 2.
I wrote in completely illegible cursive until about halfway through college when I started using a laptop for all assignments. On a decent keyboard I can peak at 104 wpm. On the very rare occasion I do have to pick up a pen and write with it anymore, I’m usually jotting down measurements or something, or slopping out some squiggles that will just have to suffice as my signature.
I don’t see teaching cursive to children as a particularly valuable usage of time, at this point it might be worth teaching them to read it, but proficiency in writing it is not valuable.
I think kids should be introduced to it, so they recognize what it is if they find one of great grandma’s letters, for instance (my grandmother wrote the grocery lists in cursive so I became proficient in reading it), and it’s a good way of helping kids practice fine motor skills without doing as many of those godawful penmanship exercises. But I think we need to expand art education for kids and I think cursive and calligraphy should be taught in art classes moreso than in their regular classrooms.
I just modified v to be pointy because otherwise I couldn’t make it distinguishable from u.
In my experience everyone has their own brand of cursive anyway. And there’s already a lot of variation in the “official” ones depending where you’re from, so it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s close enough to be understandable.
I recently found an old letter from my grandpa to my grandma during the war in Old German handwriting. A lot of spikes. Decided to learn to read it. Nice journey, I recommend. (Not necessarily old GERMAN handwriting, but, you now, old handwriting in your mother tongue).
Cursive is still the main form of writing in Europe, haven’t seen many people writing in print/block.
For the longest time I was confused when seeing Americans talk about cursive, because I thought they meant italic print. What they call cursive is just handwriting to me.
Really shows you how US-centric many platforms are, I like seeing other cultures having very different things they deem “normal”.
Omitted is the capital Q that looks like a 2.
Go ahead and tell me that whole thing wasn’t a direct result of early 20th century lead emissions.
the bane of Ramona Quimby
Teacher took that poor cat’s head right off
It’s there, almost all the way to the right, about 1/3 from the top.
That’s a different Q.
This Q really looks nearly identical to a 2. So, for many of us in 3rd grade, we wrote about the 2ueen who 2uestioned why ducks say 2uack. It was 2uite difficult.
This one. 2uentin and Jammy
Isn’t it Tammy?
That’s a very J-shaped T.
Yep! Now look for the capital J in the xkcd image, hehe.
There isn’t one, is there?
There is, actually: far right, about 1/3 the way up, below the obvious Q.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone write a J with the top extending beyond the root. The inward curvature of the foot I think is because it loops around and connects with the «a» afterwards (that connection is either very faint or not visible in the picture)
IIRC, cursive capital
Qis supposed to start way down, so that it’d look like anOwith a broken infinity symbol in its butt, like this:
The direction of the strokes in the image is not how I learned it, though. Stroke 1 for the capital starts where stroke 2 starts, but going clockwise until just past where it starts, then smoothly start the second stroke (same direction as shown in the image).
However, I can see how it can look like a more flowy
2and how people can say “yeah, that’s a capital Q.” Heck, cursive lowercaserbarely looks like anrbut people kinda get it.Perhaps in your school. When I was in grade school learning cursive, the Q started high and looked like a 2.
I’m actually glad if they changed it.
These days, I avoid writing, but can do cursive, and will aim more for recognizable upper-case letters than standards.
Oh, yeah! It can vary from place to place and even from school to school even in the same place! There were even people saying that they can guess from which school someone graduated from based on how they do cursive. I think that’s just nuts.
My cursive nowadays is just reserved for when I really need to write fast, and would tend towards some kind of a personal shorthand than any sort of legibility. 😅
Not only did it look like a 2 when I learned it, there was a Ramona book where she liked the cursive Q because it looked like a 2.
It’s gets so much worse when you use russian cursive.
how bad is russian doctor handwriting?
Not russian doctor handwriting, Russian cursive
That cant be real ahah thats impossible to decipher
Oh it’s real, and just to rub salt in a wound, here’s a doctor using russian cursive on an entire form, or at the very least some kind of student, courtesy of Wikipedia
Try Google lens. It can read it somehow.
In the right bottom corner that’s clearly greek Xi
Or maybe zeta. Xi has a few extra bows.
I wonder how much the placement of the uppercase L stems from Randall Munroe’s own memories of Far Side comics with the “Larson” signature.
I was thinking the same thing.
Lowercase b should be lower on y axis
Honorable shoutout to words that have “br”
Looking at this, while there is some overlap, it’s very apparent that US cursive is not the same as Swedish cursive. E.g. lower case x starting from the top? O_O
That’s interesting I’ve just realized that when I write x I start at the bottom left if I’m writing it normal but in the top left if doing cursive.
Huh.
We were taught to start all capital letters at the top and all lowercase letters (as they need to be connected) in the bottom left (or just left for some like v, that don’t really have a bottom left).
Particularly for x, they said we might as well learn to start x from bottom left when printing as well, because then it’ll be consistent with the cursive, but I find that when given the choice, I’m more naturally drawn to go top left to bottom right and then top right to bottom left, so that’s what I do when not writing cursive.
Edit: See my other comment for the cursive we were taught.
Idk about “very” apparent, though.
I’m Finnish and we have much the same alphabet, and our cursive is derived from the same as the Swedish one, which is Neo-Gothic cursive, which does do the X from top down, as do we Finns.
I did check the Swedish one and it is weird you do it differently.
But how do you you even write it when starting top left? Do you just write it as a backslash and then go back and add the second stroke once the word is finished? Or do you do some convoluted thing where you go in every direction while perfectly retracing your old strokes, to draw the whole thing in one go?
Same as with dotting i’s or crossing t’s, really.
I often found that pictures speak louder than words, and it’s pictured in my earlier link.
Okay. And yeah, now that you mention it, I see that there are some tiny symbols there. 😅 It’s funny how every time I hear about cursive writing online it always sounds as if it’s one single thing that’s the same everywhere, but it isn’t. Oh, and also in our cursive, we don’t go back to cross t’s, because that’s part of the character from the beginning.
I think you’re looking at the uppercase x. The lowercase x is just below that and the stroke starts at the bottom left.
No, I’m looking at the lowercase one. I don’t understand why it comes in at bottom left but goes to top left before starting the letter.
When you have a letter that finishes at the bottom (like n in the word manx), the x starts at the bottom left and then rises to form the first downward stroke just like in the printed x. If you have a letter that finishes at the top like o, the x stroke doesn’t start at the bottom. See the sample below in the word fox
Yes, I gathered. I was just wondering what the reason is for starting the x at the top, when it’s easier, imo, to do as we do and start at the bottom.
Serious question for people younger than me: How did you come up with a signature if you didn’t learn cursive?
just write your name really fast without lifting the pen
I just do a lil scribble and call it a day. Signatures are kind of stupid anyway.
They are not especially useful now, but back before everything was computerized, signing your name on a check or a credit card receipt was a way you could help stop people from committing fraud if they stole your card or your checkbook.
Wait your signature is supposed to just be your name in cursive? But then wouldn’t that defeat the point? I thought in the olden days it was supposed to be like a proof that you were the right person since you knew how your signature was written.
Anyways, for my signature I just kinda designed it. It was ages ago so I forgot my process, but it was deliberate and I remember making a whole bunch of sketches before finding one I liked. And since then I’ve incrementally improved it.
Although cursive has a unified design, everyone writes cursive a little differently. The idea is that cursive is designed to write whole words in a single stroke. The concept of a secure signature in cursive is that the more work a single stroke is, the more uniquely a person writes it.
That is to say, even though you may have the same name as someone else, it’s extremely unlikely that a person can copy your nuances precisely enough to forge your signature on the fly. It isn’t a perfect system, but it’s easy enough to verify a signature that people could do it before technology was around to aid that process.
That concept is also why they say the actual design of your signature is less important than the consistency of doing it the same every time.
There was some guy years and years ago who tried to see how ridiculous he could make his signature and have a store still accept it. As I recall he got to the point of drawing pictures on the receipt. Eventually he tried to buy something expensive like a TV for +1000 bucks before someone finally said something.
Of course now that search engines suck I’m having trouble finding the writeup he did.
At one time illiterate people could just mark an X. The security of a signature isn’t really in it’s uniqueness or it’s relationship with your name. Security of a signature is down to the fact that you could to prison for forgery if you fake someone else’s signature.
Everyone I know my age and older signs their name in an approximation of cursive, but in a unique way.
I’m almost 50 and I’ve always had a signature that looks like I just wrote my name like normal. I’ve had a few people try to tell me it’s not a “real” signature. WTFever, it’s mine, and if someone tries to fake it, you’ll still be able to tell the difference, isn’t that the whole point?
I don’t really care how people sign their name if they’re fine with it, but you are honestly the only person around my age that wasn’t taught to sign their name in cursive.
Well, I was taught to, I just have a penchant for not doing what I’m told…
I can respect that.
I put an unreasonable amount of effort into a cool signature. But I so rarely have to sign anything these days! Disappointing.
I guess it’s because I have a lot of health issues, but I have to sign my name all the time. Occasionally when I pay with a card too.
I just scrawl my name in comic sans
In Germany, we did learn cursive (and its still being taught). Although barely anyone uses it anymore, I find it very useful for exams
I just write my name like I usually write it?
It’s very rare for me to sign anything anyways.
Just in print?
Yeah, but badly print because I have terrible handwriting.
A signature can be whatever the fuck you want.
It can be a drawing of a pony if you so desire.
Also is it still possible to sign when doing a card purchase where you live? I have never seen anyone ever do that and some stores explicitly disallow it.
I can’t remember when I last had to do it, but I definitely remember having to do the stupid ‘sign with your finger’ thing somewhere recently. I’m guessing companies like Square that serve smaller businesses must still do it.
what the hell is cursive?!
It is the way of typing in the pic
I always was taught to call it joined up but it’s the same thing. Basically where all of the letters just flow from one to the next so it looks like you’re writing in Arabic. The key is to make it as illegible as possible.
