What are your thoughts on cursive handwriting ? I use it every day and it is a great timesaver. I even dread the day my students will not be able to read it. I learned it in second grade and I still pretty much follow the model I practiced back then. Although I don't do it often, I can also write some fancier letters you find in calligraphy books, with a wide nib pen.

As I said I'n my post earlier, Part of the reason I can't read or write it is my eyesight isn't the best, even with glasses or contacts in. The contacts I have correct my slight astigmatism, and they give me a splitting headache by the end of the day. Well, my normal handwriting is sloppy just both my parents' writing. Guess it's hereditary.

I never really got into cursive and have trouble reading/writing with it; I stick with print.  And I'm a 12th grader! To each their own, although I agree it's falling out of popularity.

Sol, what grade(s)/subject(s) do you teach?

I despise curtive. It is very difficult for me to read and write, and I can only do a few letters very good. For school, I had to write a whole "All about me" paper in cursive, so it took me about 3 hours to write the whole thing compared to the 20 minutes I could have just written it in if I had done regular writing.

I can read it, but dont write in it

We were taught that in school at some point, i had to put much more effort and time than into normal handwriting. basically, its being deprived of 3 dimensional freedom to move the pen..... Same as Zarlog's story there. I quiclky dropped the capability to write in it after submitting the paper....



My normal handwriting is sorta "gothic scripty" though, by far not average "normal school kid" one

My handwriting is kind of like comic sans, but a little sloppier. I have a friend who rwites in cursive for almost everything, and when we do homework or projects together, I say "uhhh, can you read this to me?"

@ace100w120v : I teach a combination of sciences courses (mainly chemistry) and French language arts (I know, an odd combination).

When writing on the board, I use cursive for speed as I don't like to take too much time writing. Since it is a dry erase board, there is not that resistance offered by the chalk so it makes for a sloppier writing than it should be. Oh, well. For most other situations I use it for speed. I do write in detached letters for formal things like filling out a form, provided there is not an extensive amount of writing to do (like a paragraph). My detached handwriting is closest to the Futura font rather than the Comic Sans. If I want to be fancy, I use a calligraphy pen and use one of several styles I practiced in the past, although for that I need to warm up on scrap first.

There are several teaching methods (complete with books) to teach cursive writing. In the USA, there is the Palmer, the D'Nealian, Peterson, Smith Hand, etc. In Canada, we use mostly the Palmer or the H. B. MacLean methods. I learnt the MacLean but not with the books as they were either not translated in French or the school didn't buy them. The teacher would simply give handwritten practice sheets instead. I have seen a copy of an old Palmer method book and in the beginning there is an entire section devoted to warmup exercises (with the pen) before starting to write.

In the summertime, when on vacation, I don't write every day. When school starts in September, my handwriting is worse than normal as I have to practise again and get used to it. It only takes a few days, though.

From what i remember they let us overstrike words written in dotted line, then try to write them on our own

My fancy mode is in longer "tails" on some letters, that make it look really gothic. They are fairly long normally though. All with 0.4 mm ball point pens

HATE cursive-difficult to read-and I can't do it well.Print or type instead.It may be fast to write-but can be SLOW to read.

HATE cursive-difficult to read-and I can't do it well.Print or type instead.It may be fast to write-but can be SLOW to read.

Exactly. Onlu it is slow for me to write too. Just do regular writing. Or, better yet, use Comic sans on your computer then print it out.

i always write and read in cursive, but i think my calligraphy is more like arab than latin  (yes, i have an bad calligraphy).

Arabic cursive is very flexible i.e. what defines most of the letters is the shape of disturbance in the line (there are only few options), and dots that associate the disturbance with a specific letter

So, as long as the "knots" and the dots above/below them are right, one can basically weave all sorts of textures out of the base line (with some exceptions ie. there are handfull of letters that interrupt the line). Then they sometimes allow themselfes to skip the dots alltogether, that makes the letters ambiguous, but i guess who knows Arabic as a first lnguage can still read that, out of the context or some language rules.... (Or they just decorate with it without meaning.....)

Arabic cursive is very flexible i.e. what defines most of the letters is the shape of disturbance in the line (there are only few options), and dots that associate the disturbance with a specific letter

So, as long as the "knots" and the dots above/below them are right, one can basically weave all sorts of textures out of the base line (with some exceptions ie. there are handfull of letters that interrupt the line). Then they sometimes allow themselfes to skip the dots alltogether, that makes the letters ambiguous, but i guess who knows Arabic as a first lnguage can still read that, out of the context or some language rules.... (Or they just decorate with it without meaning.....)

i was joking about my (very) bad calligraphy 

They taught us cursive for a few weeks or months in I think 4th grade. It was hellish. They stressed how important it would be in the future, but I've never done it (can't anyway) in the 10+ years since, and I meet very few people who do it. In fact, here at university, at least in Engineering, you're told not to use it. You risk being awarded a zero on assignments/tests for unreadability.