... which he likened to drawing a picture.

(On standardized tests.)

Everything is becoming electronic. All tests are now electronic. No paper, pencils, or bubbles.

It works fine for essays and other written assignments. In fact, my printing is much more legible than my cursive. I haven't written long form in cursive since probably junior high.

My 9 year old already has nicer handwriting than I do.

Schools don't teach anything; why would they bother with cursive?



Actually, I have to spend time insisting that my students NOT sign their names in cursive. They "get" that a signature is usually an unrecognizable scrawl. I have to be able to actually read their name on their paper to know who did it.

For the purposes of a signature, it doesn't matter what script is used to sign.

For anyone who can look beyond a simplistic assumption that schools don't teach, inferred by your words even THIS, it might be of interest to know that the teaching of cursive has been an ongoing debate in primary education for quite some time, and that different districts, schools, and teachers have come down on both sides of the argument.

For those who think cursive should not be taught, the points are these:

1. It's an archaic script that is no longer in widespread use. Today's children will do most of their writing on a keyboard, not with a pencil, so they don't need to learn 2 different scripts.

2. Teaching a 2nd alphabet script in elementary school takes time away from the all-essential focus on making sure those students pass the fucking high-stakes test our nation is obsessed with.


For those who want cursive taught:

1. Teaching of any kind of writing by hand is essential for brain development, as an abundance of research has demonstrated. (This goes beyond cursive, since some of the above group call for dropping any kind of writing by hand after 2nd grade, focusing only on keyboarding.)

2. Cursive writing helps train the brain to integrate visual information, tactile information, and fine motor dexterity.

3. As a matter of fact, cursive also impacts reading, and the generation of ideas, as well as other cognitive processes. If I were really debating, I'd have a much longer list.

The good news? While the debate rages on, some schools and districts are returning to more systematic penmanship instruction...which is a good thing.

but can't read or write a word. Brain is just not wired right to do that I guess. Other wise a wise smart old man

My boyfriend's kids, then 11 and 13 asked me how/when I learned to write in cursive. I told them in 3rd grade. They said they only went over it in a few minutes in 5th grade. I was horrified, went to google, and sure enough, tons of schools not teaching it.

So, we spent a few hours over the weekend teaching them the basics, and then having them practice signing their names.

years of signing using military meal cards, Like a doctors scribble.

the signatures are just scratches.

next question?

I'd sign dozens of papers every day.

Signing absent slips and other papers as a teacher was a little different because I was striving to set a good example.

But even my best, most careful handwriting still looks like chicken scratches or scribbles.

As a student I always had a rough time with teachers who thought penmanship was important.

I think it should still be taught.

The more you know, the better, imo.

These days, I generally start a writing project with paper and pen and then move to my computer once things get going.

I honestly feel that my most creative and compelling work is done when begun in longhand. When I'm feeling the need for even higher levels of inspiration, I use the beautiful Montblanc fountain pen that I inherited from my late father and a heavy-bond legal pad. Never fails me! Final edits are then done on my computer.

decipher unusual words or wording in a document, I can't imagine how much harder it would be (and how much would be lost) if I couldn't read/write cursive.

had not been taught to write in long hand (cursive)? I do genealogy research too and reading the letters and records from history are very difficult sometimes. The simple printed material are much easier, IMO.

think that 100 years from now someone who was trying to interpret family records would need to hire a translator because they couldn't read cursive.

I get people like it but it does not lend it's self to being legible no matter what. Some people's is beautiful and still not always easy to read some people have chicken scratch and good luck figuring it out.

I consider it poor communications, no sense in introducing lack of clarity.

And attempt to transcribe old records. It's amazing the people that have attempted to transcribe and index old census records, for instance. One of my family lines is Tucker - I've found clearly written records transcribed as Lucker, Sucker, Pucker and Fucker. Just this week I found the abbreviation for "daug" (daughter) transcribed as "wang" - that one amazed me since there are limited choices to fill in the column for "relationship to head of household."

Some of the transcriptions I can't figure out how the hell they came up with their version. Maybe I am just too experienced since I've been transcribing old records for half a century, but I'm starting to think that it may be because people are not learning cursive or not continuing to use it once they are out of school.

It is much harder to write legibly using disconnected letters with pens with nibs. Letters that flow together are easier to write since the ink wants to flow from the nib.

I learned to write term papers while using a fountain pen - back then printing was not allowed for papers written for credit, but I tried printing and it was harder and lead to many more ink blots. Maybe part of it was that my Mom was so cheap, we refilled the cartridges for our fountain pens, but I hated using those things. Other kids used ball point pens - but they were much more expensive. Since Dad bought ink in bottles for his drafting - which he did with a dip pen - it was a major cost saving.

When Flair pens came out, I bought them with my allowance since it was so much easier to write with them.

I usually don't have much trouble reading old documents - I learned to type transcribing old documents for my Mom when she was doing her genealogical research.

It will be like a foreign language to students who don't learn it, making a lot of primary documents unavailable to them except via interpretation from others.

and you didn't know how to read cursive, wouldn't you learn? You make it sound as if it's impossible to learn to read and write cursive outside of an elementary school classroom. As pointed out elsewhere in the thread, there are excellent books available for about $10. Anyone who wants to learn to read and write cursive can do so.

and I learned to read Fraktur because a lot of the older literature was printed in it.

I still sometimes use deutsches Schrift as a sort of personal code if I want to write something not easily read by others.

With a pen, obviously.

Which type of signature is more legible, anyway:



or



If the average person can't read it, what's the point?

He told me once the reason he did it was so that no-one could copy it

And I have come to recognize this after working with people using credit cards. They, most of them, have a unique "mark" that is hard, in their estimation, to reproduce by a different hand.

When someone in the tech world comes up with biometric ID for CC signatures and make it wide-spread, signatures will no longer be required. Banks are trying to get away from the use of checks so when such technology is readily available, that's how it will be. Children are now being condition for such a world where they will be worker drones with all their "earnings" being "managed" and used/spent by their handlers.

The point of a signature is not to identify the author, but to authenticate the intent of the author. Sort of like a password - the more unique, the better it serves its purpose. I could relatively easily forge Mickey Mouse's signature - far less so Mr. Lew's. That makes Mr. Lew's signature much more effective for the purpose it serves - to establish that the mark was actually made by Mr. Lew (and not someone else attempting to bind Mr. Lew to a statement - or legal commitment - he did not make).

My signature is extremely illegible but remarkably consistent from document to document (even though I cannot create it if I stop and think as I am writing it). Because it bears little resemblance to most of the letters in my name, it would be very hard for anyone else to replicate either. if someone were to show up in court with a document I signed, it would be pretty good evidence that I actually signed it. On the other hand, if someone showed up with a forgery it would be pretty easy to establish it was not my signature. And that is the entire purpose of a signature - to authenticate that the statement or legal commitment contained in the document is one I actually made.

were PRINTING LIKE A GRADE-SCHOOL CHILD.

Fat lot of fucking good it did me!

+, I haven't signed a check in years. 'cause I have a debit card and a computer.

No dog in this ring, but your post isn't too hard to rebut.

Initials, marks, squiggles, loops, and when you sign using a stylus there's no telling what it will look like anyway. Sometimes you don't even need a sig, e.g. self-serve check out using credit card at a hardware store.

Signatures do not have to be cursive. Mine is, and is unreadable. My wife signs everything by lettering her name. It's unique enough not to be easily copied. Nothing requires a signature to be written in cursive writing.

For all other writing, I use architectural lettering, which is very stroke efficient. I can letter as fast as I can write in cursive, and it's far more legible. But, these days, about the only thing I write by hand is grocery lists and filling out forms.

opened her present from one of my cousins. In it were 2 items that my mother, now deceased, had given said cousin many years ago along with a lovely note about how my cousin was so very sorry my daughter did not know her grandmother, how her grandmother would have loved her and been so proud of her and that my cousin wanted my daughter to have something that her grandmother had picked out with love many years before. How do I know about this lovely note? My daughter passed it over to me to read to her because my cousin had written it in script and my daughter couldn't read it. I will be working with her in the new year on reading cursive.

The book costs $10. My son with autism learned how to write cursive easily. He can sign his name in cursive. I have to force myself to write cursive to keep it legible. Keyboards are destroying cursive writing in our country.

I've put it on my Amazon wishlist and will get it next paycheck.

Society is changing. If you had a choice would you rather teach kids to type or write cursive?
Fewer and fewer checks are being written by hand. Almost all written correspondence is typed today.
For anybody younger than 50 the slide rule was a device you used to do math before the invention of calculators.

Exam papers from school and university students are still handwritten.

Sadly it is becoming harder and harder to read the answers since penmanship is declining with tasteless haste.

Here is Spock with an E6B, which is essentially a circular slide rule.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B

both in the 60-70's and now there isn't?

And over reliance on calculators is not a good thing, either.

It illustrates the concepts of significant digits, and opens the door to fractional exponents. It's a graphical representation of numbers, and therefore presents a "real" rather than a "digital" analog.

It has lots of reasons for it to be taught. (Including how and why slide rules work.) But it's not the end product. I like Fermi Math myself.

--imm

I can still do most multiplicative calculations faster on a slide rule than I can on a calculator. But, even more, the slide rule (taught properly) is one of the most effective ways to really understand the fundamentals of working with exponents and numbering systems - one of which is the foundation of all of digital computing.

with hashtags, emoticons,& other bits just makes one want to keep them. I guess one could print it out. Seems rather cold and unconnected.

I am curious don't people have to write essays in class anymore? I know when I did my Masters, in the course of 3-4 days we had stacks of essay books, filled with chicken scratches.

... they often don't turn in hard-copy essays at all. The trend in my university is to e-mail papers to the professor, who then marks them up in Word and e-mails them back with a grade.

In fact, the master-level classes at my university are filled with students taking notes on their laptops or tablets -- notebooks and actual writing implements are getting rarer by the day.

Why not? Fraud. I needed an official copy of my birth certificate for Social Security. Yes, I just went online to the State Bureau of Vital Records, filled in the information, and paid with a credit card online. No signature in any form required. However, I could not just get an email from them, download a birth certificate from my computer, and then end of story. Why not? Too easy to commit fraud.

My birth certificate had to have a state seal on it for Social Security Administration. Can you just print that out? No. Unlike years ago, today it is not a raised seal but a seal which could only be seen under a light. What?

To get back to topic, it was sent to me by UPS requiring that I sign for it in person. It did not matter HOW I signed, but only a living person could receive it with a signature, not a mailbox. Again, that old topic of why do we need mail because everything can be done on a computer.

Anyway, none of this could be done solely on a computer. You also cannot simply download your Federal Passport either.

Sorry to get OT with this.

Got into a conversation with a teacher in my bookstore 2 days ago and she said they don't do cursive anymore because they have to spend too much time teaching for testing. She retired early because she is so disgusted that teaching is now about prepping for testing she said.

Old documents might be hand-written. I can't imagine having a whole wealth of information close off to you because it's written instead of printed. It's like being illiterate.

It's not something that MUST be learned during childhood. If an adult finds that not knowing how to read or write cursive is a problem, he or she can learn it. As someone said upthread, there are excellent books available that cost about $10.

...but it applies equally to cuneiform and hieroglyphics.

Leaving aside the fact that writing styles were far from standardized - everyone in this thread talking about "cursive" as though Palmer or Spencer is all there ever was is definitely missing that - most documents aren't exactly put together by the practised calligraphers who produced, say, the Declaration of Independence. Lousy, rushed, non-standard, or oh-God-the-hangover's-still-here handwriting was at least as common in the past as it is now, and is entirely independent of writing methods. It only takes a couple hours working with archival records to stumble over that rather annoying discovery.

Add to that that writing methods varied hugely by time, by place - 19th century German cursive was very different from 19th century English - or even by profession, where different fields of work would adopt different styles before the broad standardization in or around the 1920s. I guarantee you that even if you live exclusively in cursive, a lot of those old documents, correctly-written though they may be, will be closed off to you, or at least require a lot more effort than you're used to to work through.

(Then there's fun stuff like people affecting different styles on purpose; I was working with some records from the thirties and forties, mostly working with cursive-as-we-know-it-today styles, and ran into one older gentleman who was still using a really distinct, gorgeous, and only barely decipherable 19th century regional style that he clearly wanted to hang on to. I picture him making the same kind of arguments about Palmer Method that people here say about printing.)

My signature is no longer legible ... Yet they still take it.

Have two checking accounts, own a car, and rent an apartment.

I know cursive so it's sort of a moot point but checks, paper contracts are almost no more.

than printing or even typing on a computer. Basically, it is because for each letter that you print or type, you have to raise your hand/fingers for each letter. That loses seconds of time. With cursive or formal shorthand each letter or sound is connected to the previous one without having to raise your finger or hand.

I still write in cursive for notes or grocery lists, but if I want to write something very fast I still use my old Gregg shorthand to take precise notes. It's also great when I don't want anybody to know what I have written. lol Cannot read cursive? NOBODY will be able to read my shorthand. It's like my own personal secretive code.

I type a steady 60 plus words per minute and can sustain that speed for quite a while. I've never tested myself on my cursive speed, but it's easily much less than half of my typing speed. Plus hand-writing is more tiring.

I don't think actual touch typing is taught anymore, so if you have to look at the keyboard to find the keys, you can only go so fast.

I do agree that cursive should be taught. My mother (born in 1916) was taught cursive when she first started school as a child, and didn't learn to print until she became a nurse in the late 1930's. Her handwriting was a very legible cross between cursive and print. It was great get a letter from her.

But cursive is much faster than printing, and studies have shown something I long suspected, that a person who takes notes by hand remembers things much better than someone who takes notes on a keyboard.

My signature has evolved over the years. Legibility isn't necessary. However, I did recently go back from the scribble mine had turned into, back to the legible version of my name.

the computer. Nobody can write at that speed. If I had to write all the words I produce to make my living by hand, I could do less than a quarter of the work I do.

I letter by hand, using very efficient architectural lettering style, and can come very close to the speed I used to have with my ugly cursive handwriting. I can write clearly in cursive, but it slows me down even further. My lettered writing is immediately legible to anyone who can read. My handwriting...not so much. The architectural lettering I use is specifically designed to minimize strokes, and can actually be done with letters connected, if you wish. I prefer not to do that, but there is no real time lost in moving my writing instrument off the paper to the initial position for the next letter. No letter I write requires removing the instrument from the paper, though.

And, finally, yes, they still teach touch typing, but they call it keyboarding these days. Anyone contemplating a college education will want to learn that, or they'll spend far too long writing all those papers they'll have to do. Hunt and peck keyboarding is a complete waste of time. It's worse than writing by hand.

I was telling someone that I do not know well about this and mentioned that if they can not read cursive someone can just read the Declaration of Independence to them

What's wrong with that he said? They could read , put in print anything they wanted for the masses who can't . It is going back to before the reformation when few could read and were told what God wanted
I think he thought I was a Teabagger but honestly my example is extreme I know , but think of future generations not being able to decode documents written in cursive
Also to print all their note taking is insane at higher grade levels although they all sY everyone prints their note taking in class. Jeez then at least teach some kind of speedwriting symbols for lecture notes. I remember old fashion secretaries used some form while taking dictation. I would think it hard to take notes printing or using one finger on an iPad or is it just me??

Eta >shorthand mentioned above
that is what I was referring to that secretaries would use

How about scrolls. These kids today don't know how to unroll scrolls and write properly on them. And don't get me started on how they don't illuminate the initial letter. Kids!

It is possible that a signature will be required for some documents in the near future , but that will change. Already my husband uses his new iPhone to make credit card charges.
Writing , whether cursive or block printing is merely a tool. It's not knowledge or learning. Why spend hours on learning beautiful cursive? Try to submit a college paper or report written in cursive. In the very near future all students will be using PC's to do homework, submit any paper and homework.
When the printer press was invented, no one complained and said that we should continue to use laboriously hand-written manuscripts. We welcomed the press as the life-changing invention it was.

There is evidence that hand writing study notes rather than typing study notes helps with learning.

Like many other things that are no longer taught in school, I think the loss of anything valuable is sad. I understand that times are changing, etc., but I like the idea that has been circulating whereby every school should have a garden. To me, to the MORE that is taught, the better.

P.S. It's "an" rather than "and" in your post where you are talking about marking x.

Printing and keyboarding do not. Cursive is more important than you think. You can search for the studies showing how cursive is good for learning.

My son is only four so we have some time yet but he will be taught cursive.

I would post links to the studies I have read but I am on my phone.

Cursive can actually help lessen the effects of dyslexia.

My son has auditory processing/apraxia of speech issues. Something as simple as writing in cursive may help him learn better than typing or printing.

Different people learn differently.

I was taught keyboarding when it was called typing. Back then, we were taught to type the words as whole words rather than individual letters - so I am much more likely to integrate the word into my thought process than the individual letter when I type. Writing by hand, on the other hand, takes enough longer that I think things out letter by letter and the word/concept gets lost. (And I was also taught handwriting when lots of attention was paid to the process of writing.)

I think it is different for people who learned keyboarding/typing as hunt and peck, or worse yet on a 10-key pad. That seems much more likely to me to create a handwriting like thought process (letter by letter).

So - while the tactile involvement does increase my learning/retention, the typing process rather than the handwriting process is a more significant bump. But I am heavily involved in high stakes testing - preparing about to be, or newly minted, JDs prepare for the bar exam - and in that role I see a wide variety of what is most effective in improving understanding and retention.

So while I agree that more sensory input (audio, visual, tactile) increases learning and retention - I don't agree that handwriting is inherently any more effective than different tactile supplementation.

I'll just do some scratch marks or loops, but never my actual signature.

As long at writing is taught and understood, the format of the signature is irrelevant.

I worked in hospitals so long mine is as illegible as any doctor's.

When we learned cursive in school, we had paper with a finer line between lines as a guide.

My signature has gone all to hell in recent years trying to sign for UPS deliveries on their screens with a stylus. It slides all over the place.

and I ran across many senior citizens in that period of time that could not read or write. They did however,sign their name with an X...and I would have to initial ever place where that X was placed. Meaning, that I verified that individuals X (signature) with my initials.

I have signed checks for years without connecting all the letters.

It can be printed or written in cursive. It can be an X, if that is how you write your name.

I think writing cursive should go the way of all the outdated skills because it's been replaced by more modern technology. It's quite overrated, IMO.

My cursive writing is good but not as good as it used to be since I don't use it as often. My husband's cursive writing remains impeccable, mostly because Sister Big Louie rapped him quite hard on the knuckles when he was being taught.

Legally, print-written signatures are fully valid — or so say the attorneys and the laws; l've checked.
-

It's a given that there are currently youngsters who will grow up to become famous, or celebrities
in sports, acting, music, etc and fans will want their autograph.

tearing about 30 checks out of our checkbook one by one as we write our year-end donation checks.

Cursive is strictly faster with quill pens, as that is what it was developed for. The hybrid style has emerged with mechanical pens and IIRC the hybrid style combining print and cursive is actually faster than cursive on mechanical pens due to different limitations and abilities imposed on the writer by the tool.

I can read cursive just fine, but I gave up writing in a strict cursive fashion because it was significantly slower than a hybrid style on mechanical pens. My penmanship was always and continues to be poor as well, so I have no idea where claims that cursive improves penmanship comes from. Additionally, claims that it stimulates brain development should come with some citations.

Ever notice how when most forms ask for a name they say "please print?" That's because people from all generations generally have totally illegible signatures. And that is because it is very hard to write cursive that other people can actually read. In fact, it is so hard that most of us, even after spending all of second and third grade practicing, have to actually write slower in cursive than in print IF we want to give others a chance to read it.

The only time anyone uses cursive is to sign documents. I've always been under the impression this is because it is much more difficult to mimic a person's cursive writing than their print. Given that most people's signatures look like a bunch of squiggles anyway, even older folks who actually used it before we invented typing, what is the point of wasting hours and hours on a skill we never use?

You're talking about cursive on a message board that uses typed words. EVERYTHING uses a keyboard! Hello?! Teach kids typing early and skip the cursive altogether IMO.

keyboarding when the power goes out or the batteries run dry

Can't read cursive? Try reading old documents in not just cursive but Old English besides. Almost like a foreign language. What are they saying??????

Imagine the children of tomorrow will never be able to read the original cursive US Constitution? Some people might like that for very devious results. The Constitution could say whatever they wanted it to say.

than printing.

America did it backwards to begin with.

Kids should learn cursive and then move on to printing. Early on, when kids absorb information like that much more quickly.

Furthermore, this will be yet another part of the class division. Upper class kids will almost certainly still be taught and disadvantaged kids will have one less tool at their disposal for advancement.

As many other DU'ers pointed out up-thread- historical and literature fields both generally require knowledge of cursive.

if a keyboard isn't handy.

I write all my short stories and poems in cursive. Its really a nice creative outlet for me, to write in cursive and no typing.

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2014, 09:25 PM - Edit history (1)

The brain's wiring is enhanced with cursive and art.

I'll have to look for a link when I get home and on a real computer and not my phone

Edited to add link:


http://stateimpact.npr.org/florida/2012/01/23/better-handwriting-means-better-grades-researcher-says/

Humans need this development to be well-rounded.

My daughter did that herself on all the walls. It was an act of LOVE. Stick ons not quite the same thing. Faster is always better? Her Grandfather painted murals on her Dad's room, and now she did the same for her own son.

Not just passing on tradition, but GENES too.

The kids have lost two languages in one generation. IMO in less than five years they will decide that we don't need to teach printing because the computer does it for us. The smart parents will teach their children cursive and encourage art and music. To do less is a disservice to the children!

My elderly mother does.

from copying my grocery lists. She could print at 3 in preschool. Ok, she had above average fine motor skills and could do those Art Schools ads at 6.

In Kinder she would tell her teachers that printing was for babies. She wanted to write in cursive. Actually. she even refused to do those computerized drawings in school. "I can draw a better tree all by myself". Back in those days, that was actually true. As a person with artistic skills, she found all this one size fits all computerization very insulting at a very young age.

Who needs artists anymore? We can all be artists on a computer!!!!!

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2014, 06:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Kids today aren't learning any of the classics. They can't write with quills. They don't know how to fill a fountain pen. They can't carve a stone tablet. They are clueless about proper scroll management. What's this world coming to?

Given the limited time we have to teach kids, I'd much rather see a focus on typing skills than writing in cursive. That has been the emphasis at our house. My kids' handwriting is ugly, but they type quickly and accurately.

They going to type on the computer too? When they buy a house and go to the closing, they will just TYPE at their closing?

Even if they don't need a signature with cursive, they will still need to somehow provide a signature NOT typed.

They can write by hand. We just didn't feel that it was important enough to drill them on two redundant ways to do it.

As a victim of an educational fad in the '70s, my cursive writing instruction was derailed by a movement to write in italics. That's right. My district decided that we would learn italics instead of cursive. As a result, my cursive handwriting always sucked. Outside of handwriting classes, it never caused me a problem because I could print when I needed to write something.

Cursive is quickly becoming a skill on par with operating a slide rule, writing with a quill and bottle of ink, guiding a horse drawn carriage, etc. Why people want to cling to dual modes of handwriting is a mystery to me.

Three of them are tools and the fourth is a skill. Typing skills are like cursive writing skills, but a keyboard is like a quill or a cuneiform stylus. Confusing one's skills with one's tools is not always a good thing.

You are right. I should have more clearly distinguished between skills and tools, although the two are intertwined.

"Stone carving" and "cursive writing" are both skills. Well, actually, the phrases refer both to the the act of creation and the thing created, but my intent was the refer to the act. As for quills, I was more clear in my message than my heading. It is the skill of using a quill that is no longer taught.

The clay tablet reference was a bit excessive and probably did more to distract from my point than to support it. I was thinking about how few people no longer know how to make, use, or store clay tablets. I should have left that off and focused on types of writing and writing tools.

My main point was that the act of writing in cursive is rapidly fading. Within another generation or two, it will be an historical anomaly. Fewer people will be able to read it and even fewer will be able to write it.

I am not opposed to old technology. I have a collection of fountain pens and inks. I just don't confuse my odd affinity for some ancient technology with things that are important to teach to virtually all students, especially when the demand for those skills is in rapid decline.

How about these analogies? Failure to teach cursive writing is on par with failure to teach the use of a sextent, riding a horse, a slide rule, a physical card catalog, developing film, setting up a MySpace account, using a fax machine, or driving a car with a manual transmission. They are all useful skills (well, maybe not the MySpace account) for people in some specialties, but they are hardly important things to spend time on in school.

My signature is just a scribble.

I do it so sloppily I sometimes laugh at myself while I'm doing it.

I later developed a personal hybrid of printing and cursive, as others above have mentioned doing.

Later in life, I proofread page proofs and edited typescripts. My mark-up had to be clearly legible to a typesetter whose first language might not even be English, and often had to be crammed into ridiculously cramped spaces along with esoteric symbols indicating this or that.

Then publishing finally, belatedly, went over to onscreen editing. I rarely write with a pen at all nowadays, and my penmanship is atrocious. My signature's just as illegible as it ever was, sometimes worse, depending on when I last picked up a pen.

it would take a teacher about 4 lessons to teach a class how to sign their own name in cursive.

Maybe they would need one refresher lesson each year for a few years.

To teach cursive the way older generations were taught takes hours out of every school day for two or three years.

There is too much else to do with precious school time.

Handwriting and cursive are two different things.

I'm sorry that you spent time in school learning an obsolete skill. You're not the only one; I learned computers by booting from a command screen on a Macintosh. and then I took web design, and learned HTML in and out. Find me a site that isn't someone's angelfire page from 2002 that uses HTML.

I also used to like Linkin Park. I got over it.

it just has to match the signature on file with the bank/credit card company.

I'm actually amazed that it recognizes cursive. Its a heck of a lot easier than texting.

The farther back I go, the more beautiful the hand.