Speed Bump by Dave Coverly for February 18, 2013

you shouldn’t cursive in front of the kids.

When I was little I was eager to learn cursive so I could read the Babar books.

By the time I was grown up they weren’t printed in longhand any more….I suppose that’s practical but sort of sad.

Becoming proficient at longhand was kind of a rite of passage in my day…from small child to big kid.Maybe today it’s learning to use a smartphone.

BTW….I had trouble when I started to compose the sentence that includes “they weren’t printed in longhand any more….”

I started by typing “they were printed in …..”and realised I couldn’t say “printed in printing” or “they were printed” meaning they weren’t cursive…..

I had to make the verb negative to refer to “that style which is NOT cursive.”

What the heck is it called, besides “printing?”

LOL

at this rate. kids will no longer be able to read or write.

BTW, I recently had to do some research involving reading the minutes of meetings over a period of 200 years. Observing the evolution of the handwriting was fascinating. It got worse and worse until suddenly they were typewritten (somewhere in the 1910s).

so what the ding dang does BTW mean?

I learned cursive writing at a Catholic school and can tell you that the way the nun taught it was to make the kid trace the letter written in cursive. The you had to try to make an exact copy of the letter, or a reasonable facsimile. I am left-handed. Before I got to grade school, they changed the rule about learning to write with the right hand only. I could never write the perfect handwriting. They gave me a passing grade only because I tried. I can believe that the writing could be identical, but it may be due more to genetics than to training or rigid conformity.

HOW did you do that??

I have a fancy internet phone but don’t text… It’s too easy to call.

my hands are so arthritic that just writing one sentence and signing holiday cards hurts. Thank goodness for keyboards

I’m proud I can write in cursive, conjugate a verb, construct and diagram a sentence, and read at only 750 WPM.

I’ve seen checks signed in print. My own signature is in cursive (and unreadable).

Just in case anybody still comes back…. “Block printing” usually means all caps, like what the post office prefers on envelopes, because they have scanners that can read it.

Nor is “typeface” or “font” the solution…. because there are many cursive fonts.

Usually in handwriting, “longhand” or “cursive” signifies that the letters are, as they say in England, “joined up.” It’s usually a different style of letters, as well… looped, slanted, and each designed in one long stroke that meets the next letter, except for a couple of extra stroke or dots for i’s and t’s.

“Manuscript” to most people does mean non-cursive handwriting….but the actual definition includes cursive handwriting and even typewritten, if it’s the original document…anything but reproduced by mechanical means.

“Printing,” when speaking about using a pen or pencil on paper, to most people, is he word that means “NOT cursive” … and usually not joined, though when I print quickly some of the letters do end up connected.

But what was confusing… and amusing, to me…. is that the same word also means printed by mechanical means…. even in what could be a cursive font.

So “printed in printing” makes sense on one level but sounds nonsensical.

And Roadrunner — that’s what I DID say!

They do not even teach it in school anymore.

I proctor SATs. At one point in the fun’n’games the kids have to write out a statement in cursive writing and then sign it. I usually write in cursive on the whiteboard at the front of the room, “Does anyone not know what cursive writing is?”

“Write” what’s that?