(no subject)

[rmd]

[Poll #1340512]

poll inspired by this article in the globe about the death of cursive writing. NB: back in 2006, 85% of kids taking the SAT wrote in block letters.

Comments

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Penmanship was my least favorite subject in grade school. I tried really hard but never got really good at it. I had huge fights with my teacher over it about how it was tedious and a waste of time. Despite that, I was trained to use cursive and used it in my writing almost exclusively. Once I learned how to type, at 16, I began to rely on word processing for in-depth writing and block printing for quick notes, and my cursive writing become less common. However, I still used cursive whenever I was writing anything of length and didn't have access to a keyboard.

At some point, my reliance on the keyboard killed my cursive writing, and it's in the process of destroying my block lettering too. I'm not sure exactly when I decided to abandon cursive. It would be interesting to look back at writings I still have and see if I can discern the switching point. I do recall that I used a hybrid style for a while where some of the cursive letters at the beginning of words, particularly capitals, were block printed. Ls and Ss and Gs and Qs--anything where the cursive version looks nothing like either the lower case cursive or block printing version.