RIP cursive handwriting..

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lsd
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RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by lsd »

Spoiler:
pic removed on request of moderation[/img]
Spoiler:
cursive handwriting will be a past progress...
[/quote]
What do you think about the abandonment of cursive handwriting...
it was a progress in the speed of writing, which came with the use of paper from the Egyptian papyrus until the end of our day, when the paper recedes in front of the screen, and the difficulty of the fingers, become sticks to tap, to handle a pencil ...
Who among you still uses it ...
Who among the creators of consript have a cursive version ...
Last edited by lsd on 14 Nov 2017 19:33, edited 1 time in total.
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Lambuzhao
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Lambuzhao »

My :con: Rozwi's script is a non-running cursive (hieratic?) offshoot of a chunk of the Persian Cuneiform Syllabary. It's usually written tategaki (vertically).


I'd show you a sample, but Photophuckit, and all. :mrred: :mrred: :mrred: :mrred: :mrred: :mrred: [}:(] [:'(] [¬.¬]

If you google image search "lambuzhao" and "aveneca", you may get some copies of images of Rozwi texts in the Neiskan script floating about with the Gingerbread Tart Toter in Cyberspatial realms.


My :grc: :con: Iveriki and Gavik both have running-hand connected cursive alphabets/scripts. I developed them before I found out that modern (and Byzantine, incidentally) :ell: actually have cursive script varieties.


Yay cursive :ell:

Apparently there is at least one scrap (the «Ave Maria» prayer) of cursive Coptic floating about. Yes, friends, cursive Coptic! [:P]
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Lao Kou »

lsd wrote:Who among you still uses it ...
Who among the creators of consript have a cursive version ...
The Géarthnuns alphabet is a pastiche of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and indigenous letters. And familiar calligraphic strokes, so nothing surprising. I still use cursive.
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Frislander
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Frislander »

I will also say I still write in cursive, simply because I find it to be more efficient and also it's a good way to avoid ink blots through keeping the pen in the same place for too long (because I write using a fountain pen).
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Evynova »

I was taught cursive in school and I never stopped writing that way. It's much quicker than writing each letter separately when taking notes, too.

I don't know if it's the case in all European countries, but I know a significant number of Americans are completely unable to write in cursive and I find that weird; the only people who can't use cursive here, are small children who have barely learned how to write.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by lsd »

My natlang cursive is kind of latin caoshu, sort of drawing of words, difficult to understand except for myself (and sometilme including myself...)... So I write in block letter to be read...
In my conlang, because of a priori ideographic system, it is hard for me to read back too cursive writing... each writing is a kind of enigma whose meaning must be pierced, difficult to complete the illegible letters without provoking any misinterpretation ...
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by kiwikami »

I was taught cursive in school - I recall being extremely excited to learn it at the time. My handwriting is terrible, and cursive makes it look a little bit neater, so I still use it now and then. Most of my conlangs don't use alphabets and I've yet to devise cursive forms of any of the syllabaries or logographies.
Edit: Substituted a string instrument for a French interjection.

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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Egerius »

I was taught cursive in grade 2 (Vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift), but my usual handwriting continues to be terrible to this day.
Two years later, I received a small book on improving one's handwriting and the look of one's schoolwork: Inside were a few different scripts, and I soon learned to read and write the Kurrentschrift (which was included there).

Later I got interested in other writing systems, and later still, in calligraphy.
So yes, I still use cursive – multiple forms of it.

... And I'm a lefty.
Last edited by Egerius on 10 Nov 2017 12:32, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Ahzoh »

I was taught cursive but abandoned it. Now I only use cursive for signatures.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by lsd »

Have you some example of evolution in your conscript from block letters to cursive...
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Reyzadren »

I can write normal alphabets quicker than writing cursive. Thus, I never use cursive as I think cursive is inefficient imo.

Moreover, the griuskant conscript uses only straight lines and has no curves, so cursive is essentially not allowed.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Salmoneus »

I don't know anyone who doesn't use "cursive" (here we call it "writing") daily, or at least several times a week. Letters and reports may now be written on keyboards, sure, but shopping lists, birthday cards, addresses on envelopes, and assorted little useful notes, are all still mostly written down. And failing to use proper joined-up writing marks you as either mentally disabled, a child under the age of five, some sort of psychotic serial killer, or an American.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

I use a bizzarre version of printed letters that join up as I write them, but not in the "cursive"
way I was taught in school.
Salmoneus wrote:And failing to use proper joined-up writing marks you as either mentally disabled, a child under the age of five, some sort of psychotic serial killer, or an American.
Yeah, this is... Somewhat offensive. Not going to assume you meant it to be, but it is.
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Ahzoh
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Ahzoh »

Salmoneus wrote:And failing to use proper joined-up writing marks you as either mentally disabled, a child under the age of five, some sort of psychotic serial killer, or an American.
yep, no, no, and no
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sangi39
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by sangi39 »

Annoyingly, offensive or not, that is what a fair few people in the UK thing if you can't or don't write in "(joined-up) handwriting" (we don't tend to call it cursive). It's taught in primary schools, IIRC, pretty much as soon as you can read (the primary school I was working in was teaching it to children in Year 2, so 6 or 7, and some younger children were already picking it up. Mixed year-groups), and you can be marked down or made to redo your written work if you fail to use joined-up handwriting, especially in primary school. We also have a punishment called "writing lines" which involves writing the same line over and over and over again for about 20 to 30 minutes and it must be completed in joined-up handwriting (one teacher I spoke to said that it doubled as both a punishment and handwriting practice which is why it's so commonly used).

The tendency to penalise students for not writing like that seems to become a bit more lax in high school, and then even more so in college where the majority of presented work will be typed rather than written, but some teachers in high schools will expect any non-typed work to be presented in joined-up handwriting.

As a result, not using joined-up handwriting is most often associated with young children, and a lack of education or "intelligence" in adults. And thanks to media, some of us do have the impression that people in the US either don't use it or don't learn it (whenever it's brought up on US TV it seems to be this thing people are forced to learn and dislike because it's "complicated" or "hard" or the reserve of those in private education).

It's a perception that, with the increased use of type, appears to be going away, but joined-up handwriting is a persistent part of our education system, or at least it has been as far as I've ever seen, for anywhere between 7 and 13 years.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Ahzoh »

It's like left-hand stigmatism.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by sangi39 »

Ahzoh wrote:It's like left-hand stigmatism.
Pretty much. There's a lot less of that in education now (you just have to pick a hand if you show ambidextrous traits, like my brother did) and most people now will just go "huh, you're left-handed" and move on, but we're still a bit stuck on handwriting.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by clawgrip »

Salmoneus wrote:I don't know anyone who doesn't use "cursive" (here we call it "writing") daily, or at least several times a week. Letters and reports may now be written on keyboards, sure, but shopping lists, birthday cards, addresses on envelopes, and assorted little useful notes, are all still mostly written down.
I have never heard "cursive" defined, nor can I find a dictionary that defines it, simply as handwriting, without any further elaboration. A key part of the definition of the word, which you have conspicuously left out, is that in order for writing to be cursive, letters must be partially or fully connected to each other. Naturally, handwritten letters have a tendency to join to a greater or lesser extent, but not everyone does this. It may well be that you don't know anyone who does this, but frankly, you don't know most people.

To be clear, the use of "cursive" to mean "joined-up letters" is not some sort of Americanism, as the Oxford and Cambridge dictionaries define "cursive" as "Written with the characters joined," and, "Cursive writing is written with rounded letters that are joined together," respectively. I'm not sure why you are being needlessly difficult on this point when surely you understand clearly the spirit of the OP.
And failing to use proper joined-up writing marks you as either mentally disabled, a child under the age of five, some sort of psychotic serial killer, or an American.
I've met numerous British people who do not join up their letters and yet are none of those things.
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Thrice Xandvii
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Thrice Xandvii »

I don't know what school curriculum is like now, but what was described above bout learning cursive is much like how I remember it in my small town American school around the same ages mentioned. For a long time it was also strictly enforced, and I hated it. Not because of the writing itself, but because of the enforced nature of the teaching. I automatically buck that type of instruction and kept looking for why this was so important that it was mandatory. I mean, if you can write individual letters quickly, then I didn't see the point when I was younger (still don't really, except to keep up appearances and stave off stigma).

As I mentioned above, my current writing is actually a type of weird mix of printed and script styles where many letters flow into each other and the last half of a word ends up being lost to a squiggle. Now I wanna see handwriting samples, but I feel like we already have that thread.
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Re: RIP cursive handwriting..

Post by Lao Kou »

Wow, who knew a benign thread on cursive could generate heated discussion? [;)]
Thrice Xandvii wrote:I don't know what school curriculum is like now, but what was described above bout learning cursive is much like how I remember it in my small town American school around the same ages mentioned. For a long time it was also strictly enforced, and I hated it.
I think I've got a couple of years on you, 37さん, and while I came up through four US school systems in the K-12 experience, the use of cursive was never strictly enforced. I don't remember exactly when, but instruction in cursive started around 4th or 5th grade, and was presented as kind of an indication that you had "arrived" -- "printing" (use of block letters) was fine for children (for whom spelling would be more of an issue?), but cursive showed that you had your big-boy pants on (this seems to be substantiated here (paragraph 1)). That said, even though we had been trained in it, I don't recall anyone in junior or senior high writing exclusively in cursive or being penalized for not doing so (though this is when a printing-cursive mélange usually got started).

I really enjoy good penmanship (though being graded on it is probably before my time).

Maternal grandmother -- cursive, her handwriting sucked (Mother and I concurred on this relatively recently)
Mother -- a mélange -- I always loved it and mimicked it as a child for which I was complimented coming up
Paternal grandmother -- cursive, gorgeous! but indecipherable to me as a child (God knows what style book she teethed on)
Paternal grandfather -- all capital block letters (as an architect/engineer, pretty meticulous)
Father -- a mélange -- all-caps plus cursive, legible (even to novitiates) but not aesthetically pleasing at all
Step-mother -- cursive mostly, very nice (a decade diff, so maybe they did penmanship grades back then)

As for me:

The mélange -- started out mimicking my mother's handwriting and getting compliments all the way up through university (avoided cursive because it didn't really look that good)
Started note-taking in cursive because it was faster (2000?), greater practice meant getting better at it
Now -- almost exclusively cursive (I guess I have my big-boy pants on), and now getting compliments therefor.

My Géarthnuns: Since it's along the same lines as what we're used to, it's good. It took some moments to get here, though.

My Chinese penmanship -- some days, it's da bomb; others, it looks like a five-year-old wrote it (my blackboard characters are nice -- even the (not-sucking-up) students say so)
My kana penmanship -- diss my kana; them's fightin' words [B)]

I would have guessed that in the light of our (relatively) recent "I loves me my fountain pen" discussion, that fountain pen users were decent calligraphers or at least cared about these things (yes, I understand that the sun still rises in the East whatever one's penmanship may be like -- I don't lose sleep). Maybe it's just pen-feel?
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