Talk:Cursive/Archive 1

recent edit
Someone added commentary to the article which belongs here. I removed it, and replaced the stuff that had been moved. Sfahey 20:08, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

Scribes paid by length of writing?
''They were paid by the length of writing on the page, so they preferred variant spellings that had more letters in them. This percolated into the official spelling of French.''

This looks a lot like an urban legend. Any substantiation? Ben 23:01, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

That also happened in English. Why isn't rock spelled rok?Cameron Nedland 17:18, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Question
I had heard (urban legend?) that cursive was invented/sustained because if you were using a quill and inkwell, you didn't want to constantly be lifting the pen off of the paper. Cursive allowed you to keep the pen down instead of being lifted up all the time. Has anyone heard this? If true, I think it would make a good addition the article. If not, then I was mistaken. Clarkbhm 19:14, 2 February 2006 (UTC)


 * To expand on the above question, I think this article could do with a "Perceived benefits of cursive" section. The article alludes to it being an "important skill", but AFAICS the only two examples of this property are the (obsolete) method of writing twice as much on paper by rotating it 90 degrees; and the (almost obsolete) speed advantage.  I suspect there are at least subjective ideas on its other benefits (in addition to its aesthetic ones), and would be interested to read them.--Ejrh 09:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I would assume it would be to do with blotting, so that ink did not splatter onto the page.

Arguments for Cursive Restored
I did a more extended essay on reasons for teaching cursive and posted it on the page. I hope my contribution stays there this time. Dylan23 23:17, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Arguments for and against cursive dramatically reduced
These sections do not comply to WP:OR, WP:POV, or WP:BS so I've cut them back to a bare mimimum. In the context of the length of the article (which is about cursive writing, and not US educational policy on handwriting, by the way) there is no justification for an extended analysis of the pros and cons, and in any case, it can't be original research. Don't take it personally. ElectricRay 10:17, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Defense of Cursive
I posted a few paragraphs in defense of cursive, but someone removed them. I found that very rude and disappointing. You may not agree with the arguments, but for the sake of balance they should be there. I did not remove any of the arguments against cursive. The original article did not give adequate treatment to the arguments in support of teaching cursive, so I added my thoughts so that readers could get more information. Dylan23 19:50, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Can they be restored? I agree that there should be more about the benefits of cursive.  (I personally am not a fan of cursive but I would like to be able to read about it from both sides and base my opinion on fair evidence.) --Ejrh 20:54, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Ejrh, unfortunately I did not save the paragraphs I posted. Stupidly I just assumed they would remain on the Wikipedia page. When I have time I will rewrite them from memory. I appreciate your desire for both sides of the issue to be presented.Dylan23 01:24, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

If you posted them, then they'll still be saved in the article's history. Click on the history tab at the top of the page and look for your name. They're listed chronologically from the most recent.Mustang6172 04:19, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Response to Question about "Easier and Faster" Claim
The substantiation for the claim is that cursive, because the letters are joined, removes the need to frequently pick up and put down the writing utensil. The job of handwriting thus becomes less taxing. As for the claim of cursive being faster, moving straight from one letter to the next, instead of picking up the pencil after each letter, allows the writer to move more quickly. There is of course no guarantee that an individual will write more quickly than he/she will print, but there is good reason to believe that a person who learns cursive will probably find writing somewhat easier and faster. I believe an editor took out from my contribution a reference to an article stating that the joined writing of cursive can be done faster than is physically possible with manuscript.

Dylan23 05:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Victorian Modern Cursive is equal to devil worship?
Does anyone think the section on Victorian Modern Cursive is appropriate at all?

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rrieke (talk • contribs) 22:42, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

I don't think it's necessary - if that's what you mean. At the very least, if we are going to provide examples of different cursive styles (which might be better presented in a separate section) then we should have more than one. 195.212.102.227 —Preceding signed but undated comment was added at 15:29, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

it would be fair to put up other cursive styles then. i would be happy to put up the style they teach in Croatia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.0.64.137 (talk) 23:18, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

The images at the article's beginning are creating a huge ugly blank space
I don't have the editing know-how to fix it, so could someone who does please fix it? I don't even know how it should look, just that it's ugly and disorienting as is. I thought part of the article was missing on my first view of it.Thanks, Spalding (talk) 11:22, 30 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Initially, I thought the same thing. I have placed the images on the right hand side, with paragraph wrapping.jonathon (talk) 17:01, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

international distribution
Sentences like "After the 1960s, it was reconsidered that the teaching of cursive writing was more difficult than it needed to be." made me wonder if that was a worldwide momentum. E.g. in Germany in the 60s the Ausgangsschrift has been simplified again.--Hhielscher 10:04, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Cursive writing is highly encouraged in many private English Medium schools in India. Though, I thought it is particularly difficult for my 4 year old child, The school says that it is best if a child learns Cursive writing. They did not offer much explanation though. I wonder what does the modern research in elementary education says about cursive writing? The Wikipedia article does not site any research work. It appears like observations from non-academics like myself. Nagesh from Hyderabad, India. Aug 12 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nagesh.Tummala (talk • contribs) 12:03, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

splitting off "English cursive"
As per my recent edit, I think there could be a complete article on English cursive, similar to existing articles for other languages, such as Cursive Hebrew, Roman cursive, Russian cursive. Reviewing the history of this article, it appears that content has been cut back from this section not because the content wasn't appropriate for wikipedia but because this section is already fairly long. Wrs1864 (talk) 13:19, 23 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree. English is widely spoken around the world. If other, less spoken languages have pages dedicated to their cursive writing then so should english. In fact I came across the cursive page because I was looking for a list of cursive english letters similar to the list of Greek writing characters on the Greek alphabet page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.199.45.138 (talk) 15:17, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Dysgraphia
"Cursive may be especially useful for certain students with learning disabilities such as dysgraphia because ..."

That's one of the cruelest things I've ever heard! If you really wanted to help them, instead of pushing your cursive writing agenda, you'd give them a computer with voice dictation software. --Nbritton 19:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)


 * How is teaching someone a system of writing that may be less confusing to them cruel? That's like not teaching kids how to do arithmetic because they can always use a caluculator. It's far more cruel to force them to use a computer, leaving them helpless to write if ever there is a widespread power failure. Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. -- 12.116.162.162 20:28, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Learning to write is the main access that a person can read. Daily papers, tests and exams are written. To simplify, students first learn to print capital letters. Learning to print capital letters is the easiest and most successful way of writing. Why? Because there are less reversals. For example, if you print a capital O, I, H, X, right-handed, left-handed backwards, upside down - they remain the same. So, a student is less likely to make "mistakes". The next level of difficulty is the lower case printed letters. Research indicates that what you first learn is most remembered, and difficult to change with newer information. The student is then required to re-learn letters, and there are less reversals with the lower case letters. Then to add to confusion, the student is required to combine both upper and lower cased letters. One of the reasons that adds to students reversing and may be an indication of dysgraphia, is that when they learned to print capital letters - the B and D go forward with their arcs. When the student is required to learn the lower case "b" the arc continues to go forward. That student has learned three different letters that arc forward. And, then, the student is required to make a "d" which is now reversed having the arc reversed. It is at this time with confusion of letters, some may say the student has reversals, or dysgraphia because the student can't remember which letter goes which way. To add to the confusion, when the student is required to learn cursive, the starting point for cursive letters start mostly on the top, going down. For example, the student may have learned to make his/her printed letters from the bottom up as with an "A" - go up diagnonally, stop, reverse the diagonal and go down, cross in the middle. If that student then learns to print a cursive A, and starts at the same point, the student will curve up, curve down, wing in and put a "tail" on it. It appears to be a cursive letter, but the student is NOW even more confused and will have great difficulty with such letters as a cursive H, K, X, Q, etc. The confusion is further compounded not only with learning the lower case cursive, but combining them into words, sentences, paragraphs, etc. With the K and H, one right hand side is connected from the bottom down, the other from the top down (they are reversed. The cursive X does not cross over.  The two segments touch back to back in the middle.  You learned to make a capital cursive O, the capital cursive Q is acutally the reverse of the O.  You start from the bottom left hand side up.  Left handed students are criticized because of their slant, if they get this far.  Left handed students who have been forced to become right handed will not only have problems with writing (dysgraphia) they will have developed a reading problem as well.  These are some of the ways we help to create dyslexia, dysgraphia, ADHD, ADD and other learning and behavioral problems.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rewirethebrain (talk • contribs) 14:14, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Common sense, Observation, and Own Experience
These are some noted drawn from what I think is common sense, my own experience, and observation of my two kids and their pears learning to write.

Common Sense

 * The purpose of writing is communication, with others, and with one self. Legibility by the intended reader is the single, most important quality of any form of writing.
 * Cursive is **the best** way to write if your tools are an old pen and a pot of ink. Lifting and setting the pen would otherwise leave blobs or unwanted traces. To write block letters with old tools one would have to use the techniques used to draw Kanji. Ink over paper is probably what originated cursive; research should prove it is so.
 * Speed is irrelevant if legibility is not considered. Almost anyone can write very quickly (paraphrasing C._A._R._Hoare: if the result doesn't have to be correct, I can produce it using very little space and time).
 * Speed is even more irrelevant when most personal writing is done today with a keyboard.
 * Then non-legibility aspects of the aesthetics of handwriting methods are too subjective to be considered in an objective discussion (my own opinion is that the classic cursive methods produce the ugliest handwritings, and that what people left free to develop out of block letters is fantastic).
 * The sensible way to write quickly and legibly, if the intended audience is able, is to use Shorthand. The increased number of symbols is not a problem, as the writing skills of the Chinese, Japanese, etc. first-graders prove. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juanco (talk • contribs) 18:00, 17 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Standardization of handwriting negates individuality.

Observation / Experience

 * Most people trained in cursive depart from its strictness during their adolescence, developing their own handwriting style.
 * People trained in cursive tend to have illegible handwriting in their adulthood if they stick to it.
 * People trained to write in block letters tend to develop their own very legible cursive style by the time they become adults.
 * Most sixth-graders trained in cursive have bad handwriting, and are slow writers. The wrist twisting required for cursive is difficult to learn, while the sticks and circles of block writing can be learnt in kindergarten.
 * I was trained in the Palmer Method for eight years, and was forced by sixth grade coordinator to change my handwriting in any way that would make it legible.
 * My two kids, following school policy, studied cursive for eight years with no intervention from their parents. Their handwriting was illegible by the time they had to start high school. The solution was to have them study Italic Script for a year. Now they both have very legible handwriting, and they are fast enough at it.

--Juanco (talk) 17:25, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Troubles with pictures
Near the bottom of the page the pictures of the Chinese handwriting and of the Cyrillic cursive overlap. Can anyone separe them? Thanks. --80.104.24.17 (talk) 21:44, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Cursive on its way out
Do a search for cursive on news.google.com and you'll see that just about all of the hits discuss how cursive is on its way out. It seems to me that this article should atleast discuss this increasingly prevalent view. To make it more palatable to those who might disagree references could, I suppose, be provided, but given that this seems to be, for the most part, something that most people agree upon, I'm not really sure that that'd be necessary...69.57.177.154 17:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree... I might do it myself if I get the chance. ChaosEmerald 28 March 2006

Is all this crazy stuff about joined writing on its way out some wierd American thing. I'm a student and im still expected to write, to take notes, to write easy's, not to the extent of the leaving cert, and presentations in college are all typed, but handwritting is your own and a essential part of who someone is. Even if you have to write neater for exams than you would for notes, writting your own joined way is easier for the mind and hand to produce at a persons own mental pace than full block letters. Computers and other such techknologys may be becoming more prevalent as we progress, but just make the stupid machines understand hand writting dont phase are individual handwritting style out, just because it suits Microsoft. 2255, 2nd of the 11th 2006.


 * This has little to do with Microsoft, so don't bring in that strawman. I agree that handwriting isn't on its way out. Historically speaking, however, cursive writing is certainly not as "hip" as it used to be. Personally, I loathe cursive writing (it tends to be far less readable than print-writing from my experience) and thus fully disagree that print is somehow more difficult to write or closer to the way we "think" -- it's all a matter of which style you're accustomed to (back in school other pupils would often wonder how I can write as fast as them despite writing in print rather than cursive -- throughout my 21 years of age I've only spent 3 years writing cursive, ever since I've written in print, that's why).
 * I am also a pretty fast typist (I wouldn't call myself a touch-typist as per Wikipedia, as I never formally learned typing and thus probably type a little less efficient than I could, but I still type about as fast as I can write with a pen). The two skills hardly conflict, though I can't deny that early exposure to computers is part of the reason I prefer print-writing over cursive.
 * I'm a university student and I'm also expected to write exams rather than type them. Handwriting is usually accepted for most forms of homework as well. More elaborate works, however, need to adhere to certain scientific and formal standards, so computerised text is a must (though, in theory, you could probably use an actual typewriter and still meet the requirements). The corrections and annotations by my professors, however, are handwritten and I have to hand in a print-out rather than a digital copy on CD.
 * Some students do take the notes on a portable computer, but that's a rare occurrence.
 * Regardless, the question is not whether handwriting is on its way out (as long as we have hands, it's probably not) but whether cursive writing is on its way out and from what I've seen most people who were taught cursive writing as children eventually abandon that practice in favour of printing or mixed print-writing (with some cursive letters in print or print letters in cursive writing). There are enough people who still write in a "pure" cursive style to say it's not entirely passé, though, and it probably will not die out entirely, simply because there's always a bit of personal preference involved.
 * Maybe cursive writing will the apparent development is misleading and cursive will eventually become the norm again, but right now pure cursive is definitely a bit exceptional (at least among the ~20 year-olds). &mdash; Ashmodai (talk &middot; contribs) 04:23, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

An encyclopedia shouldn't be influencing people's opinions. Cursive is what they mean when anyone wants your signature. If you're to list cons of cursive you should unbiasly list pro's also. When I see an old letter of my moms in cursive I recognize that handwriting and have feelings. Cursive is more friendly than a typed letter,not a cold typed business letter. Cursive is an art form. Can a person really print as fast as one can write cursive when taking notes in school? The main article leaves out students when it mentions secretaries,et al. Its 52 characters that we're to lazy to teach our children? One less thing for them to be proud of?Jmward 19:19, 9 December 2006 (UTC)John M. Ward (thewards@sprintmail.com)


 * I think the entire article needs much better references anyway, but the sections about "for and against" definitely so. Currently we have a "Criticism of cursive English" with the claim "Cursive writing is increasingly denounced as out-of-date and obsolete" backed up by a link to one for-and-against piece in which a single teacher gives his reasons for thinking it outdated. He may well be representative of other US teachers, but we can't have one man's opinion used to back up "increasingly denounced".


 * And there needs to be a much clearer distinction between particular styles of handwriting going in or out, (the next "reference" in the article is to a CBS article which talks about italic as if it's not cursive, but here in the UK italic is certainly "joined up") and handwriting as a practice (compared with typing) going in or out. I agree with the comments above that universities expect some things and especially exam scripts to be handwritten - and written legibly - but there is no requirement to use a particular style of writing. Just one that involves a pen :)


 * Telsa (talk) 06:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

I heard on the radio the other day that Indiana had announced they were getting rid of teaching cursive writing in school and were going to require typing instead. They also said Indiana was the 46th state to make this change. 74.140.148.158 (talk) 01:31, 30 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The info about Indiana is already in the article (in the section "English cursive in education"). As for it being the 46th state to make this change, I'm not sure about that -- they may well be the 46th state to adopt the Common Core State Standards, which do not mandate cursive, but my understanding is that not all these states are specifically dropping cursive. From reference [10] in the article:


 * Since the Common Core State Standards were introduced two years ago, 44 states have adopted the guidelines. Those states have also debated whether to keep cursive in their curriculum.... Indiana in April elected to remove cursive from its official curriculum while other states are still deciding, though schools can also choose to reincorporate cursive teaching. Similarly, Illinois does not have cursive in its mandatory curriculum and allows school districts to set the standard, Pantagraph.com reports.

I'll put some more of this detail into the article. Duoduoduo (talk) 15:34, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Cursive Arabic
I added a section on this - a glaring omission, considering it is the progenitor of a lot of the cursive scripts discussed in this article!! 86.140.128.83 (talk) 12:22, 7 October 2008 (UTC) I don't see this section anymore. I was looking for it. 71.190.89.135 (talk) 16:32, 28 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It's back now. It is true that Arabic is always cursive and there is no variant that is not cursive to contrast with it, but that's not a reason to delete a sufficiently referenced and interesting section. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:05, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Arabic
I was always under the impression (not based on any source) that cursive writing in the later Middle Ages developed in Europe to mimic Arabic writing (which the most scholarly works were written in at that time). Just wondering if there are sources that indicate this ...

--Mcorazao (talk) 17:39, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Let me check the article for you. Zobango (talk) 21:30, 6 February 2010 (UTC)

Doesn't look like it Zobango (talk) 21:31, 6 February 2010 (UTC)


 * What does that mean? --Mcorazao (talk) 21:12, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't find it in the article Zobango (talk) 22:56, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

The article starts off with romans. I was surprised no one added anything about hieratic, the Egyptian cursive handwritting of hieroglyphs. Were there any other ancient examples? Babylon? Sumer? I have no idea but this is a definite hole in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.50.216.135 (talk) 23:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Zobango: Now you can.
 * IP: I agree, Hieratic is a cursive script as well. However, there are apparently no comparable cursive variants of cuneiform scripts attested, perhaps because organic writing materials comparable to papyrus are not preserved in Mesopotamia (in Egypt, the writing material is preserved because of the arid climate). In contrast, Maya hieroglyphs (while also attested in less legible forms in a few codices and in much less legible forms on many vases) are not associated with an historical cursive script, although a couple of specialists working at deciphering the script have developped cursive-like shorthand forms of hieroglyphic characters to note them down quickly in discussions among them. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Why did connected writing evolve?
I think a fundamental question is why people started to connect their handwritten characters in the first place. That might depend on what tools were used to write with and what surfaces they were used to write on. Of course if you're cutting letters in stone, or poking a stylus into clay, you have to lift your tool. What tool would the user prefer not to lift? On the other hand it's possible that nobody knows the answer, just as there's no answer to why particular sounds change as a language evolves.

As an example not drawn from Western scripts (though personally I'm most interested in Western scripts) compare Arabic and Hebrew writing. The languages are closely related, and the alphabets have some similarity, but Hebrew is always written with separate characters, while in Arabic most characters are always connected. It would be very interesting to know why.

Similarly it would be interesting to know why William Bradford wrote the Mayflower Compact with a mixture of connected and separate characters, when documents earlier and later were written with fully connected characters. Was this a technological, cultural, regional, occupational, or individual variation? You can't look at one document and say this is how writing was done at that time. There's a good deal of descriptive paleography, based on the examination of many documents, covering historical periods. I think we need to see that kind of scholarship applied to more recent times, Thus, along with the discussion of how handwriting was taught, there might be a discussion of how handwriting was actually done (going to school in the 1930s, I saw little resemblance between the handwriting I was taught and the handwriting I had occasion to read outside of school). Marty39 (talk) 16:06, 17 December 2010 (UTC)
 * For your question on Arabic, check out History of the Arabic alphabet. The common ancestor of Arabic and Hebrew is the Aramaic alphabet as used in the Achaemenid Empire (Imperial Aramaic era). As a general answer, cursive writing can simply be written more rapidly. Especially Arabic is almost a shorthand system, as I like to point out. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Australia bias
Does anyone else notice the Australia bias in the latter part? Thanks--Dpr 18:34, 18 September 2005 (UTC)


 * It covers information on a country that's not America, therefore it's biased towards Australia? I think not. Previously, it was biased towards America and made no sense when taken outside of that context, so I added a section on cursive in Australia. I did it differently from how it currently is, and another editor's obviously rearranged it since, but the differential provision of information due to editors' knowledge isn't bias. If you want to discuss also cursive in Germany, go right ahead. —Felix the Cassowary (User talk:Cassowary) 21:50, 18 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Right now it's biased towards North America (i.e. US) with a tad of Britain and Australia in it. I'd call it Anglocentric, but not biased towards Australia in particular. The history section could need a rewrite, for example. The notion of the US Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address seems highly arbitrary to me, though these "milestones" may make sense to an American reader. I'd add something about Germany, but I'm a lazy bastard and also never cared much for cursive writing (I stopped using cursive when it was no longer required by the teachers, just as I stopped using a pen -- I always preferred ball-points and pencils). &mdash; Ashmodai (talk &middot; contribs) 03:47, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Ah, a ball-point is a pen, so I don't understand what you mean? You need to work on your English!
 * Some languages' word for "pen" more commonly means a fountain pen, with a separate word for "ball-point pen". If I recall correctly, my Spanish teacher's idiolect had boli/bolígrafo for ball-point pen and pluma for quill or fountain pens. I never took German, but if one mainland language has a feature, another is likely to share it. --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 00:30, 4 January 2009 (UTC)

In English, a ball-point pen is a subset of pen -- and we are writing in English. (In German, they are distinct, but that is irrelevant here.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.179.8.10 (talk) 06:54, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Mongolian
Modern Mongolian script is a Cyrillic script. In most hand-writing and very often on printed material (e.g., billboards), cursive is commonly used. For example, on billboards, the cpation might be in block letters and the running text in cursive. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.179.8.10 (talk) 06:58, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

Picture of chinese "cursive writing"
This picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:XingshuLantingxv.jpg

It does not represent Chinese cursive writing. It is merely written using standard characters therefore it should not be a part of this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.226.253.57 (talk) 05:16, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Suggested Addition
If someone can find a citation for this, you may wish to add to the "American education" section the GRE (for graduate school admission) require that student write a statement in their own handwriting that must be written in cursive before they will even let you in the test room. (Since I have been printing exclusively since 3rd grade, I was up a creek, the only cursive I know is my name. I did not know how to make a Q after  20 years of non-use.)TeigeRyan (talk) 02:17, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Re: Response to Question about "Easier and Faster" Claim
On "Faster": A connecting stroke in Western cursive script takes about 100ms. A between-letter pen-up movement in isolated hand print requires 250ms. For a five-letter word, the difference is 600ms, cursive being the faster mode. This has been studied over 20 years by the 'University of Nijmegen Group of Handwriting Motor Control Studies'. The price one pays, in cursive writing, is that overall legibility goes down considerably, for both human and computer. The claim of "Easier" on the other hand, cannot be corroborated by research. Psychologists consider cursive writing a so-called double task, where the motor cortex and the language areas need to process information concurrently. Conversely, in isolated hand print or or mixed styles, the writer may lift the pen, avoiding noisy visible effects on paper and enjoying a brief span of thinking time. Only with extensive practice, the cognitive load of writing in a connected-cursive style can be alleviated. A symptom of concurrency in the brain is the writing of letters which are not due yet, but which are 'too loud' (too activated) in the thinking process and enter the motor stage prematurely: A writing (spelling) error is ensued. With a hand-print style, such errors may be avoided, at the cost of slower writing.
 * So, it takes me a whole 150ms more to move my pen half a millimetre up in a gentle arc between the endpoints of my block letters? I find that difficult to believe, and I would appreciate it if a link were provided to the methods and results of this study, especially so that this article could be improved with it's research. My primary question is, are they testing actual block-writers, or cursive-writers attempt to write in block form? 71.13.147.17 (talk) 18:30, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Weird American Obsession
Americans seem to have a weird obesession with getting rid of joined-up writing. Obviously there are those who oppose the way the mainstream seems to go. It reminds me of the Antiqua-Fraktur dispute in Germany. I have only one thing to say regarding this: good luck with promoting block letters in Europe. Especially in Central and Eastern Europe (though I guess that Francophones and the Commonwealth are equally attached to their own forms of joined-up writing, except for Canada, it seems). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.112.63.129 (talk) 10:02, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Also known as longhand?
Since longhand redirects here? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 15:08, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Not encylopedic - List of all English curisve styles
I was hoping for an encylopedic listing of all the different cursive styles. I don't know much but I do can tell that none of the examples given matches what I was taught in school in Australia in the early 70s. Nor do the links or suggestions at the bottom give a full list. Robauz (talk) 04:28, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Bengali
The Bengali section was disjointed, rambling, and hard to understand, and I've cleaned it up and gotten rid of a lot of redundancy. But I had to give up on the last sentence, because I don't know enough about Bengali script to guess at what the writer is trying to say and whether it's correct or relevant. I suspect not, so I've hidden it in. --Thnidu (talk) 01:41, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

It's called joined-up writing in Australia?
This is news to me. Though I went to school in Queensland in the 80s. So perhaps it is called different things in other states or at different times. I've always called it cursive writing or running writing. 124.171.29.253 (talk) 13:04, 17 May 2013 (UTC) Seconded… I learned cursive writing in school in Hobart in the 80s, and it was called Cursive or "Court Cursive" whatever that means. 150.101.218.199 (talk) 01:12, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Faster? Slower.
Supposedly, it is faster to write in cursive than block letters, but it is definitely slower to read cursive as a majority of the people I've encounter who write in cursive have horrible penmanship. Cursive may be fine for notes for oneself but not for others. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Talkcursive (talk • contribs) 14:45, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

Hatnotes
This article has four invalid hatnotes, and I'm going to remove all of them.


 * The neutrality tag dated March 2014 does not say what is supposedly non-neutral about it. The article does not advocate one style of cursive, nor does it advocate the teaching or non-teaching of cursive.


 * The tag that it may not represent a worldwide view of the subject is dated March 2014 with the explanation there is a lot of info on English, but other languages get little info? Is that moral? Actually there's information on Arabic, Bengali, Roman, Greek, English, Russian, and Chinese. That's a worldwide view. It's not surprising that there's more on English than anything else, but the view is worldwide.


 * The November 2011 tag claiming there's a non-encyclopedic tone may or may not have been valid then, but it is certainly not true of the current version.


 * The November 2011 claim that the article has too few citations may or may not have been true then, but now there are 14 inline citations, which is pretty good for an article of this length. 208.50.124.65 (talk) 14:56, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

"Cursive is easier and faster once mastered...
...There is no need to constantly pick up the pencil point and put it down again."

Can this claim be properly substantiated? The latter sentence is not explanation enough.--AlbertW 23:43, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

what do you need explanation for? if you've ever learned cursive you'd understand it. cursive handwriting is in its simplest one complex stroke for each word. that's it, the statement states it clearly. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.172.44.238 (talk) 21:19, 17 December 2007 (UTC)


 * There is an implied request for a citation of the research that demonstrates that cursive is faster than non-cursive writing. I'm aware of research that indicates that Getty/Dubay is faster than Palmer, or Spencerian. jonathon (talk) 16:50, 25 March 2008 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth I never mastered cursive writing, my right hand just stubbornly refuses to have anything to do with it, but can write in sort-of-joined-up block capitals as fast as most people can write in 'proper' joined up writing.94.197.46.170 (talk) 18:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

"Lines crossing at 90-degrees from the original text"
''In the early days of the post office, letters were written in cursive — and to fit more text on a single sheet, the text was continued in lines crossing at 90-degrees from the original text. Block letters could not do this.'' --- a visual example would be helpful; I have no idea how this is possible or how it would be readable (or how it would be any less readable than if it were done in print). You mean something like this???

T h i s  i s  a   T t s b 9 t o t s e n t e n c e  h e h e 0 h t e A n d   a n o t h e r  i x o   ' e h x o n e. T h i s s t u a     e t i s   r e a l l y      l t t   r a n n o y i n g      d   o t o   t y p e. Thanks. PS. I write block letters (with some idiosyncratic joined letters/ligatures) a lot faster than I can write cursive. cab 14:44, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi. I think I was the one who added that passage. It's not at all like your example. Imagine two pieces of transparent plastic, as for an overhead projector. Put one with the short end of the plastic up and one with the long end up. Write the first page of your letter in cursive (why do I have to say "joined up") - say there's thirty-five short lines of text. Write the second page on the other piece of plastic - twenty longer lines of text. Turn the second sheet of plastic ninety degrees and lay it atop the other. Placing the set on a white background, you can focus on the shorter joined-up lines going across, one after the other, and then turn the combo and follow the twenty shorter lines. I have no example, I read this in some magazine. 66.19.204.153 (talk) 23:45, 24 December 2014 (UTC)


 * You know you're responding to an eight year old comment, right? Anyway, there is a picture of this at Crossed letter. Kendall-K1 (talk) 01:00, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

Possible virus in the cursive.svg file
Downloaded file and opened it up. Apparently has a virus for "deal4real" and will inject ads into webpages and downloaded several Trojans and add-ons. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.103.219.66 (talk) 22:54, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

Delete paragraph on international use of word 'cursive'?
The paragraph in the intro beginning 'While the terms cursive or script are popular in the United States...' contains no citations. It also contains some claims and implications that appear to me (an Australian) to be false or dubious: Potential inaccuracies aside, the material in the paragraph is not particularly important, and could easily be dispensed with. The intro is perhaps a little too long and detailed anyway. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 150.203.225.223 (talk) 21:44, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
 * It claims that 'cursive' is rarely used outside of the US, but it is frequently used in Australia. The OED entry on cursive does not indicate that it is chiefly a US term.
 * It implies that 'handwriting' and 'cursive' are used synonymously in various countries, including Australia. But in Australia at least, 'handwriting' need not be cursive.
 * It claims that the term 'running-writing' is popular in Australia, but I've rarely heard it used, if ever.

Cursive
Why is the form of lowercase r in Cursive is so different?

Pay attention that: In Hebrew, the "Cursive" letters usually do not touch each other.

84.95.230.168 (talk) 22:29, 17 April 2015 (UTC)

It's not art, it's a craft!
An art form emphasizes creativity and interpretation. Cursive is about proper technique and form. It's something that can be done (and is) by computer fonts; it is a solved problem. Art is something a computer could never do. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.141.136.222 (talk) 22:12, 26 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Art versus Craft argument Zzzzzz (yes I know it's an old comment. So what?) Air (talk) 21:29, 19 May 2015 (UTC)

Arabic as inspiration of Latin cursive
I think that the assertion "this flowing script [Arabic] inspired the cursive of Medieval Latin" is quite dubious. Latin (and Greek) cursive script has a well known development history and it is quite an ancient one. The source of this assertion is the book "The Eastern Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages & Magickal Systems of the World" by David Allen Hulse, not a very authoritative one in my opinion. BRG~itwiki (talk) 16:12, 10 August 2015 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Per WP:FRINGE this sentence should just be removed. Kendall-K1 (talk) 18:07, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

splitting off "English cursive" / Generic stub Cursive Western script
I would support to enter the category "Western Cursive". As a continental European, I find the iuxtaposition of Cursive Chinese and Cursive English an imperial British monstrosity. Cursive English is just a child of Cursive Western script. Should we enter Cursive French, Cursive Dutch, Cursive Finnish etc. all on this page?

Agreed, 'Western Cursive' would be better, but calling the phrase 'Cursive English' an 'Imperial British Monstrosity' is going a bit far (sounds like you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder), whoever wrote that probably just typed it without thinking. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.168.24.7 (talk) 19:40, 25 April 2016 (UTC)

English cursive final paragraphs
The essay-like template popped out at me when I scrolled down to this section, and through a cursory reading I found no blaring errors, however...

Can those last two paragraphs be deleted entirely for the present? Finding citations to match the text is vexing, though there has been extensive debate in the U.S. regarding its use or fall into disuse; the claims of other countries judging literacy by cursive proficiency and cursive being a full-ride pass into public office cannot be backed by any sources I've found, and I doubt this is related to the heading's title, English cursive, whatsoever. Kaschimmel (talk) 16:16, 7 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Silly me; I didn't think to scroll down half an inch to see the Cursive in the United States heading. This addresses half of the content of the previous rogue paragraphs in depth. I went ahead and deleted the two paragraphs I complained about earlier because of this; the first half is already addressed almost at the same place in the article, and the second half doesn't belong there (or anywhere on the page, as it was) in the first place. If my changes were too drastic or unseemly, please post here. Kaschimmel (talk) 16:24, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree, the "decline of English cursive in the United States" section is a mess. Most of the references are valuable, but they are tacked on to rambling, speculative paragraphs with bad writing like "It has been an open topic in which cursive could be soon removed from all schools." Seems like replacing this section with just a few sentences that speak concisely to the references would be a big improvement. 174.62.136.75 (talk) 14:41, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Agreed; "Decline of English Cursive in the US" needs some heavy editing w/ more comprehensive arguments and a less biased presentation of the debate. 2602:306:34AB:CF60:356F:B1A3:FE7D:4B9A (talk) 19:04, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Discussion regarding Neutrality of "English" section?
Is it here? Has it been resolved? Should the hatnote be removed? Informata ob Iniquitatum (talk) 04:04, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

The Subject is wrongly defined; you confuse ligature
Ligature is joining letters so you can write by hand without lifting pen from page in middle of words. Cursive has to do with a style, curvy instead of block. As a rule Greek texts are printed in cursive, but no ligature is used. Old Greek manuscripts were written in uncial, like all capital letters in a block type of style. Then latter medieval manuscripts used what looks more like lower case, a more curvy style. Yes, people in recent year are calling ligature cursive, but this nomenclature is unfortunate, for what is meant is joining letters, which to be sure are curvy cursive, but the point is the ligature. (PeacePeace (talk) 23:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC))

"The Eastern Mysteries" as a source
The article states that "During the Middle Ages, the flowing, connected cursive script of the Arabic language inspired Western Christian scholars to develop similar cursive scripts for Latin.", the source for this is a book called "The Eastern Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages of the Magickal Systems of the World" by David Allen Hulse. I'm not acquainted with his work, but he doesn't seem to be an authority on ancient writing systems but rather of the 'magickal' systems he claims that they're part of. If this claim is true, which it very well might be for all I know, there should be a better source to back it up. --Kaminix (talk) 03:00, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Ballpoint pen hypothesis
The reference used to support this hypothesis for the cause of declining interest in cursive handwriting is speculative and a derivative work, not a primary source. It does not provide evidence for this hypothesis other than post hoc ergo propter hoc, a logical fallacy. Unless better evidence can be provided, this hypothesis should be deleted. --Zeamays (talk) 00:56, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

"Decline of English cursive in the United States" -- Not Neutral
The tone of this section is negative and generally seems meant to reinforce the notion that American society is being degraded. Even the highlights about some states preferring keyboard proficiency is drowned out by bias and negativity. The same for "Conservation efforts and cognitive benefits." Could someone please rewrite these sections? They should be focused not just on the US, but on worldwide English cursive usage -- which is obviously not limited to "Western Europe." The majority of the information in these sections is from the WaPo article. We can do a lot better.

These sections are filled with negative phrasing, and here are a few examples: Decline of English cursive (decline is negative), new technology that caused the decline (a moral theme about the evils of technology), a cheap price (a moral judgement), perceived lack of necessity (implies lack of knowledge), school teachers lacking formal training (implies teachers lack valuable training), only 12 percent of teachers (implies 12 percent is too low), despite the decline (implies the decline is bad), being reintroduced (implies movement in a positive direction while nothing probably changed in reality), already mandated cursive (why already? implies this is naturally expected), researchers set out (implies researchers collectively had this as a goal), etc.

Other Points: Who cares about "the largest teachers' union in Fairfax County"? The "Pam Mueller study" is about writing notes on paper, not about cursive writing. This is misleading. The "Laura Dinehart study" is about neater handwriting, but the WaPo source doesn't say it was cursive handwriting. Also misleading. The dyslexia PBS article is hardly scientific, but it seems like there may be benefits for dyslexic students. However, the article is inconsistent, and some of the references are to handwriting ("when the hands are involved, it’s a stronger association") or "sky writing." So they may be talking less about cursive and more about a therapy similar to writing, and it's unlikely that these dyslexic students would write anything of length since they are in therapy for such basic issues with reading and writing letters. After therapy, I expect they would follow the same trends as everyone else.

For those not aware of US politics, it's not surprising that some states would be against federal education guidelines (Common Core), which is why they would try to mandate outdated educational practices. This is purely political posturing, and it's very unlikely to set a trend.

188.239.0.177 (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Everyone, I'm inviting comment here before making changes. If there are any objections to the points above, please state them now.
 * 188.239.0.177 (talk) 21:54, 19 November 2018 (UTC)

Monospaced
When written on a grid, the standard school writing teaching system makes for a monospaced font. But also, all non-cursive forms influenced by any font but based on the same metrics are also monospaced and metric-compatible. 2A01:119F:21E:4D00:D86C:FDEE:591E:3AC (talk) 19:11, 25 May 2019 No,no,ya olde fool, it was around November of '05. (UTC) Sorry, that seemed like the perfect remedy, on the spur of the momen, but on reflection, it's an unforgivable offense against clarity; see *  below. --JerzyA (talk) 07:29, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Perhaps my aged brain betrays me here, but please give us the punchline, the payoff: what you say seems an eminently plausible assertion, I grant, but I cannot conceive what value you see in pointing it out; please elucidate for me, and those who like me spend far too much time confused, even when not ... the expression escapes me, it's a metaphor about being prevented from running by damage to one or both Achilles tendons. --JerzyA (talk) 19:43, 16 September 2019 (UTC)
 * Beset by loss of mental dexterity, and an iPad ii, I inexplicably needed some 20 minutes for formatting that contrib properly, which then permitted me relaxation sufficient for dredging up what completes that metaphor: hamstrung). ... Oh, and isn't it ... ah, ...  poignant, that it's .... complemented by that other biomechanical metaphor,  "kneecapped"? --JerzyA (talk) 22:34, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

* Apologies! In trying to correct a colleague's long-neglected failure to sign nor date, I repeated the date part (after succeeding in copying and pasting the interminable ip-address, and rote-typed the date I thot I had succeeded in memorizing. Santa Claus only knows what happened on the date I keyed, but it was not the edit date, and rather than leave behind a baffling (rather than simply irritating) or perhaps even paranoia-inducing ) edit-history, I resort to an ugly, but relatively straight-forward date in the right (but previously hidden, decade and season of the year. (The edit history is reliable, but verifying it in the history is onerous if you don't know, in this case, roughly the year --- as i had had to determine by guesswork and cold sweat. (I really gotta buy another real computer!)Mea maxima culpa. --JerzyA (talk) 07:29, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

Removing dubious claim
I'm removing the section

During the Middle Ages, the flowing, connected cursive script of the Arabic language inspired Western Christian scholars to develop similar cursive scripts for Latin. These scripts then became the basis for all of the Latin-based cursive scripts used in Europe.

Medieval cursive styles evolved from Roman Cursive via Merovingian script, to unical, and from there onward. See https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/25/ancient-fonts-rustic-capitals-old-and-new-roman-cursive/ which says

The New Roman Cursive (also called the minuscule cursive) seem to have been used from the 3rd - 10th century, and influenced the development of the uncial script (used widely from the 4th century onward).

It cites several sources, and https://books.google.com/books?id=eEmsSZ054L8C&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false especially looks promising as a source if someone wants to give a proper introduction to its development. Jhanschoo (talk) 09:09, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Cursive Faster
I've added a citation needed tag to the claim that cursive is faster than printing. While I understand that this is a very common belief, and that it may well be the main reason that people learn to write in cursive, there is no evidence presented here for its truth. Many internet sources (which are not reliable enough to cite here) claim that mixture of printing and cursive is the fastest. It would be good if we could have some citations at least, if not a discussion about the issue. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.56.236.111 (talk) 03:55, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

The French Alphabet is just a language that utilises the latin alphabet with some exceptions. It would be much more relevant and understood just to refer to it as the Latin alphabet. 203.24.137.4 (talk) 04:57, 15 September 2020 (UTC) https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/French/Alphabet#:~:text=French%20is%20based%20on%20the,%2Dsix%20(26)%20letters. It even states in the wikiversity article that the French alphabet uses the Latin Alphabet. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/French/Lessons/Alphabet

Anne Frank
I noticed that Anne Frank (who was largely educated in the Netherlands but immigrated there from Germany) had a cursive script much like our own (suggesting that the Netherlands, Germany, and Anglophone countries were in close correspondence with one another). True, this is a sample size of 1, but whatever. &mdash; Rickyrab. Yada yada yada 16:33, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Cursive letters on the keyboard
Please add an explanation of how to write "Cursive Letters" on the phone or laptop keyboard. notify me when adding this explanation. Mohmad Abdul sahib (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 23:30, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Cursive in Marathi
Marathi also has a cursive script called Modi Script. Please add that as well. Arnav Bhate (talk) 09:16, 25 July 2021 (UTC)