The kids today are not taught writing at all. My son was taught keyboarding in his NYC private school, and can barely sign his name, let alone produce a shopping list on paper anyone can read.
I remember being eager to get to 4th grade, when we finally were given writing books that instructed us in cursive. It made me feel so grown up to be able to read and write in cursive.
Unfortunately, my handrwriting, which used to be quite fine, has deteriorated over the years. I sometimes cannot read what I wrote on paper just last week.
My mother had over 200 pen pals. She would keep each on an index card, so she knew what order to answer them in. She always felt “bad” that she was so far behind. I suggested she type out the “news of the month” on a computer, then do individual stuff, to save writing all of her news multiple times. She tried it once, then the computer became a gynormous paper weight. She wrote with an old fashioned nib pen and just loved the act of writing itself. Of course her writing was as gorgeous.
One of the Facebook pages I follow is for a historic site. They have hundreds of documents from the 18th and early 19th centuries. Every now and then they will post one of these documents and request help deciphering the handwriting. It’s fascinating to decode these old papers. It provides a look at life 200 years ago.
I have a letter that my grandmother wrote to my mom in the 1930’s. It tells about activities on the farm and people they visited. My grandmother’s style of writing was mostly run-on sentences with very few periods or paragraph breaks. It is still interesting though.
Her commitment is very honorable. To the quote above, I wonder if the Kindle Scribe could replace something like that. Not that is made to communicate or print. I have one for some testing on products we are doing. The pen does have a great feel.
My mother’s handwriting was nearly perfect. But also nearly impossible to read. I think that you need some irregularity in cursive to make it easy to tell some of the letters apart; when they are all exactly the same height and tilt (is that the correct term?), there is sometimes little left to go on.
As for me, my cursive was never very good. But my printing got VERY good when I was working redrawing technical documents (good old-fashioned Flow Charts). And related to that, some of my writing was used for training OCR in the day.
I used to tell myself that my handwriting merely “evolved,” but now I accept that “deteriorated” is more accurate. Though to be fair, it was my worst subject throughout elementary school and was only ever barely legible anyway. And that was true for print and cursive and whatever hybrid D’Nealian is. Even now, my print looks like cursive, and my cursive is, um, “unique”.
Even so, I much prefer making and taking notes by hand rather than typing, and I still organize my thoughts, points, and outlines for (official) written pieces by hand. I will enter events onto a digital calendar only because it’s shared by the whole family, but my actual planner is a manual hard copy by hand. Something about the act of handwriting and then the visual encoding of handwritten data just works better for me.
I sometimes wonder how younger people will be able to do historical or genealogical research when they are unable to read the various cursive writing styles from different countries over the years. A lot of handwritten historical records may now be found on the computer, but their translations are only as reliable as the humans who made them.
Can AI be trained on 17th C. letters and household inventories?
One of my internships in college involved producing an index of an American artist’s letters written in the late 18th and early 19 century. Fortunately, some some patient volunteer who came before me had made typed versions of most of them so I did not often need to refer to the original letters.
For all our nearly 14 years in business( in 2 weeks), we’ve sent a thank-you note, in cursive, to every buyer except drop-shippers, on the back of the folded packing slip. Used to be quite effective in bringing in feedback.
For the first time, we’ve gone a whole holiday season without a FB, and our percentage of responders continues to plunge, wondering if our buyers can no longer read our handwriting-still large and legible, I’ve been told–or just can’t read cursive, period, because they’re out of the habit or never been taught! .
I studied German in HS and college, and was minimally able to read old German script, as was my dear neighbor who was brought up in Vienna, and died at almost 100 a few years ago.
Since I “inherit” a lot of my neighbors’ books, and have for many years, long ago, there were many books in old German. There was no market for them, except as decorative shelf fillers, so they all had to be recycled, the highest and best use for them at the time.
I do wonder about those who came to New York, escaping Germany and fortunate enough to bring their books along.
Cursive was always a hobby/craft being as long as I have been employed, or attempting to gain favor with any institution, as typed communication was expected as the professional standard. College was a typed essay, job resume’s were typed, even the letter about why you want the job was typed and not hand written. No formal report/document was used when hand written in court, at work, etc. Now that I look back the only time cursive was actually appreciated was sending letters to my spouse because I was bored, and to send holiday cards to my grandmother who probably saw the Wright Brothers first flight on the back of her brontosaurus.
Then we get into the grammar police… Once spell check came out in word processors, I got to steer clear of the decades of abuse by those who had just a bit too much free time.
Most importantly, speed. If I want to covey to someone something of importance like how much I love or despise them, the speed of my typing allows me to more vociferously use @Dogtamer - esque words to convey that message in the same amount of time it takes to write my name.
As a left handed person all I can say is F cursive and I am glad it died a slow miserable death. My blue/black pinky finger, palm and wrist say “good riddance”!!!.
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I have a letter that my grandmother wrote to my mom in the 1930’s. It tells about activities on the farm and people they visited.
Ha! My grandmother wrote to my Mum about once a week, in her absolutely undecipherable handwriting. My grandparents lived 40 miles from us. It was a long-distance call, billed in 3 minute increments, so we had a sand-timer that measured three minutes by the dial telephone on the kitchen wall, only used for emergencies.
Many of my relatives on my mom’s side settled in Lancaster, PA, immigrating from Germany. Several fought in the Revolutionary War and one, in both the Revolution and War of 1812.
There’s a big family plot in the State Street Cemetery(now Woodward Hill).and we traveled there when doing research for DAR membership. Many of the tombstones were in German Script, into the 1830’s. Then English, then after the Civil War, reverted into German, then, the few 20th-century ones back into English. Don’t know the reason-and nobody could tell me since they all dispersed to TEXAS or points west.
My kids say it’s just another font; but then again, they did learn it in 3rd grade (only to never use it again, LOL). I don’t think they have problems reading it so much as writing it.
I did work with a college student who held a pencil like a kindergartener and wrote just as poorly.
I used to to hand write Thank you on packing slips, which I think helped, sometimes, but i have not done it in many years. Writing on the back of a packing slip, might not be much seen. Try the front…
When we pack, the handwritten quarter of the packing slip is facing the customer, along w/ a bookmark that my cousin designed for us when we first went into business in 2012.
I rarely leave feedback on books; am sure most feel the same, exhausted by constant requests to leave a comment on the smallest purchase/service. Either buy new paperbacks from AMAZON or I’m not completely happy w/ my purchase from 3rd parties, to whom we, as vendors, can’t leave pejorative remarks which might negatively effect their business.(How I would love to say-WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU’RE A BOOKSELLER? Or THIS IS V/G CONDITION?-TRY ACCEPTABLE!)
Sometimes get mailed notes from customers instead of feedback-all in cursive, by the way. I think most readers today are Boomers-when we’re all gone-what will happen to the book trade?
I cannot admit to ever have handwritten (or hand printed) a note on a packing slip.
I prefer to be viewed as a larger, colder and impersonal organization to the buyers of all but a limited subset of my buyers.
I would never complain about an item in VG condition having that old time booksellers negativity to VG books, I would not have bought it as a keeper. I would only sell it because the title had sufficient merit that I would condescend to offer it in that condition.
I have pretty much given up believing the grade given by “online bookseller” they are a different breed from a “bookseller”, I will believe a detailed condition description by an online bookseller, but that might be a serious error.
But my standards are different for sellers I know, and another standard applies to megas who I prefer to unknown online booksellers. Megas who have multiple copies of a title tend to undergrade in my experience.
I wrote some holiday gift checks to members of the family and realize how much I resent the deterioration of my handwriting.
