I used to practice my signature everywhere. I wrote on napkins and notebooks, in crayon on restaurant placemats, with a finger in the wet sand. I even remember a grade-school art project in which I wrote my name and its mirror image, and then used the pair to create a creature: the top loops of the “C” as its antennae, the lagging tips of each lowercase “n” its feet.
That carefully-practiced motion has become a jumble, even though now I have more reasons to write it: in pen on the bottom line of checks, in crayon when frantically filling out preschool forms in the car, with my finger when I use my chiropractor’s smartphone to pay my bill.
Some would say I’m not losing much: longhand is so last century. My kids might never have to learn how to write in cursive: it’s not included in the Common Core standards that California recently adopted, joining 44 other states.
But while our keyboards and our thumbs have elbowed out our handwriting, practicing with a pen or pencil isn’t passé for the brain. A study last year found five-year-olds who practiced writing by hand activated parts of the brain that weren’t recruited for using a keyboard or tracing letters—parts of the brain that may also be linked to reading. And studies have also linked writing by hand to better learning, perhaps by combining what a person’s learning with the motions and senses involved with putting pen to paper.
The slow disappearance of handwriting, both my own and others, seems bittersweet. If I wrote this by hand, you might have been so frustrated that you wouldn’t have reached this sentence. But my discomfort with the idea comes not even for the reason it should—cursive might help our brains!—but that the evolution of my own handwriting seems to track some other sort of growth.
I couldn’t wait to learn how to write, buoyed by my mom’s cheerful calligraphy and my dad’s fuzzy pencil scrawl. At first I traced the practice letters we had on paper with a dotted middle line. Letters took on their own characteristics. The lowercase z with its strangely attractive hunchback, the small s that looked like a sailboat. And I had a stormy relationship with my own big W, which I could never get at quite the right angle.
Then I tried to copy. In fifth grade, a new girl sat next to me who used thin ballpoint pens and had loopy, backward-leaning cursive. Guess who started using ballpoints and slanting letters to the left? In junior high, my pen pal in Texas had balloon-like vowels—I started to expand mine. In high school, I started to have too much to write to start copying how anyone else did it—and by college, when a roommate had the exquisite kind of cursive that got her roped into doing other people’s wedding invitations, all I could do was admire her. (Oh, fine. I still use the fine-point roller balls she does, hoping something of her skill will rub off on me.)
As a writer, maybe I should say that how we write doesn’t matter, it’s what we write that counts. That I should be able to recognize people from how they put their words together, regardless of the shape of the letters. I should immediately know that the text with a bad joke is my husband’s, that PUMP-YOU-UP post is written by a high school buddy who’s now a trainer, and the email with the rAndOmlY cap1taliZed letters and the ~*<3* is from a free-spirited musician friend.
But for me, something’s still missing. On my bulletin board I have a birthday card from a woman who was like a second mother. After she died, I ripped the cover of the card off so I see her last birthday greeting to me her startling, ornate cursive every day.
Seeing it, I remember other small things that belong to her alone: her barking laugh, the fringe of her black shawl, how good she was at explaining things. Maybe that’s what handwriting is now, an intimacy that’s still protected, while our brassier fonts and status updates and blog posts like this are our public faces.
Handwriting fades, too, I know—but seeing the shape of her letters is like the delight of glimpsing of a friend at distance, recognizing what’s familiar and dear even when it’s far beyond reach.
**
Image: Schreibunterricht, oil on canvas painting by Albert Anker, 1865
The more I write on the computer, the worse my handwriting seems to get. It’s as though the hand muscles don’t have fine control any more. Either that or it’s arthritic old age. I prefer the former.
I love this. I still write drafts in pen, myself. The rises and curves of the letters are so meditative to me.
I just received a thank you card from a group of high school students. While I was impressed and grateful that they wrote it, I could barely read their writing. Not that mine is much better at this point!
Thanks for writing this. It’s weird to see something that used to be so widely common transform into something unusual and specialized, isn’t it?
I’ve always had crummy handwriting, and by that I mean my print letters. My script (which is what my teachers taught me to call it instead of cursive, for some reason) is an outright disaster. In that sense, the popularity of type has been very good for me, though I do kind of wonder when we’ll finally stop using the bizarre letter-layout our keyboards have, rendering my typing methods antiquated.
I can still do quite a nice script, although that’s more art than writing. In letters to friends, my writing devolves as my pen scrambles to keep up with my thoughts, sprawling across the page and rolling up and down hills.
I will never have as beautiful a signature as my mother’s.
Handwriting matters — but does cursive matter? The fastest, clearest handwriters join only some letters: making the easiest joins, skipping others, using print-like forms of letters whose cursive and printed forms disagree. (Sources below.)
Reading cursive matters, but even children can be taught to read writing that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive can be taught in just 30 to 60 minutes — even to five- or six-year-olds, once they read ordinary print. (In fact, now there’s even an iPad app to teach how: named “Read Cursive,” of course — http://appstore.com/readcursive .) So why not simply teach children to read cursive — along with teaching other vital skills, including some handwriting style that’s actually typical of effective handwriters?
Educated adults increasingly abandon cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority — 55 percent — wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive. When most handwriting teachers shun cursive, why mandate it?
Cursive’s cheerleaders sometimes allege that cursive makes you smarter, makes you graceful, adds brain cells, or confers other blessings no more prevalent among cursive users than elsewhere. Some claim research support, citing studies that consistently prove to have been misquoted or otherwise misrepresented by the claimant.
For instance:
The much-ballyhooed difference in SAT scores between cursive writers and non-cursive writers is … brace yourself … 1/5 of a point on the essay exam. That’s all.
(Yes, I checked with the College Board — see below for the source info they sent me — because not one of the many, many media that mention the “slightly higher” difference actually states _how_much_”slightly higher” the difference is. The College Board researchers who found the difference note, in their findings that this one isn’t statistically significant: in other words, it’s so small that it’s less than the difference you’d expect if the same person took the same test twice. In fact, it’s even smaller than the score differences between males and females taking the SAT.)
So far — in this article, this thread, and elsewhere — whenever a devotee of cursive has claimed the support of research, one or more of the following things has become evident when others examine the claimed support:
/1/ either the claim (of research support for cursive) provides no traceable source,
or
/2/ if a source is cited, it is misquoted or is incorrectly described (e.g., an Indiana University research study comparing print-writing with keyboarding is usually misrepresented by cursive’s defenders as a study “comparing print-writing with cursive”),
or
/3/ the claimant _correctly_ quotes/cites a source which itself indulges in either /1/ or /2/.
What about signatures? In state and federal law, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over any other kind. (Hard to believe? Ask any attorney!)
Questioned document examiners (these are specialists in the identification of signatures, then verification of documents, etc.) inform me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest. Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls: the rest, if they follow the rules of cursive all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger’s life easy.
The individuality of print-style (or other non-cursive style) writings is further shown by this: six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from the writing on an unsigned assignment) which of her 25 or 30 students wrote it.
All writing, not just cursive, is individual — just as all writing involves fine motor skills. That is why, six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from print-writing on unsigned work) which student produced it.
Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.
SOURCES:
Handwriting research on speed and legibility:
/1/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, and Naomi Weintraub. “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility.” JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 91, No. 5 (May – June, 1998), pp. 290-296: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542168.pdf
/2/ Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger, Naomi Weintraub, and William Schafer. “Development of Handwriting Speed and Legibility in Grades 1-9.”
JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, Vol. 92, No. 1 (September – October, 1998), pp. 42-52: on-line at http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/27542188.pdf
Zaner-Bloser handwriting survey: Results on-line at http://www.hw21summit.com/media/zb/hw21/files/H2937N_post_event_stats.pdf
College Board research breakdown of SAT scores (the cursive/printing information is on page 5)
http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/cbs-2006_release.pdf
Background on our handwriting, past and present:
3 videos, by a colleague, show why cursive is NOT a sacrament:
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CURSIVE —
http://youtu.be/3kmJc3BCu5g
TIPS TO FIX HANDWRITING —
http://youtu.be/s_F7FqCe6To
HANDWRITING AND MOTOR MEMORY
(shows how to develop fine motor skills WITHOUT cursive) —
http://youtu.be/Od7PGzEHbu0
[AUTHOR BIO: Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest]
Yours for better letters,
Kate Gladstone
Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works
and the World Handwriting Contest
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com
Sean, I agree with you–it does seem strange that something so popular becomes done by a small, self-selecting group (maybe there will be a script revolution, like knitting! We’ll have cursive circles and drive wine!)
Kate, thanks so much for all of your links. You’re right, I probably played a little fast and loose using “cursive” and “handwriting” in the same article without clearly distinguishing the two–and it’s interesting to note that many handwriting teachers use a hybrid. I’m not sure that I’m a champion of cursive, but I miss seeing it and, particularly, the people who practiced it. But then again, I’d probably wear a stovepipe hat, too.
What a great article- I thoroughly enjoyed it! I remember as a child my grandmother was always very interested in the pseudoscientific study of graphology. She would try to analyze everyone’s handwriting to see what she could tell about them for fun. Because of this, my mother stopped writing handwritten letters to her!
I actually found it funny that when I went to the store not too long ago, the cashier noted that when I signed my receipt, she thought it was unusual that I actually wrote out my name legibly rather than just scribbled chicken scratch or wavy lines. I think it’s because of my grandmother!
Great post, Cameron! This has been on my mind since my daughter is starting to learn cursive – she goes to a Montessori school, and cursive remains a big part of the Montessori approach (however, even her teacher says that cursive is really most useful as a teaching and motor-skills-development tool – no need to teach cursive per se after age 6, she says). I was writing with my daughter the other day and realized how long it had been since I’d used proper cursive – I could do it, but I had to remind myself of many of the letter forms and the result looked like it’d been written by an elderly relative.
I can relate to your feelings in respect of how emotionally evocative written script is. when I see the identifiable handwriting of someone I know (including, in particular, people who have passed), it brings to mind all of the things about them I hold/held dear. Handwriting is a visible imprint of the peculiar movements of our body – we should hold on to it, memorialise it, the same way we do a bronzed footprint or a recording of someone’s voice.
So sad that our dependency of automobiles made most of us forget how to saddle a horse.
Good old times when you had to make your own parchment paper, ground your own bread flour or gather the tribe to hunt the mammoth.
Perhaps the value of writing by hand is what we’re all getting at…taking the time to put your body in motion to accompany your mind or heart in the effort to express something. Having a tangible relationship to that expression is different (perhaps not better or worse, but different) from having a digital relationship with it.
Of course, I lean towards the “cursive supporter” and “written by hand” camp. I’ve been an avid letter writer all of my 29 years, and I hope never to fall out of the habit. I also do a lot of field journaling and urban sketching, and I annotate my sketches with a range of hand writing styles. And, sometimes, I get a gig to do some hand lettering for a project, oh joy! I find they keep my mind and hand creative and inventive in a way that selecting computerized fonts just doesn’t.
Bottom line, writing by hand remains a meaningful part of my life, despite being a writer and nonprofit/science communications professional. Thanks for providing me a moment to appreciate that fact.
I really enjoyed your post. Now I’m inspired to teach my daughter how to write by hand. Maybe I’ll download that app and see if I can do it without actually using paper!
When I commented to my daughter on my grandaughter’s “writing,” saying that it resembled printing more than cursive, she replied that noone uses cursive anymore. I remember having to use Palmer Method wring–we had long practices in class in elementary school. Anyone recall Palmer Method. Anyway, when I started this my handwriting was more like printing–I was copying my Dad’s. As a result of being forced into cursive I one of the world’s worst handwriting, lacks any kind of distinction. Alas.
My handwriting can be illegible scrawls, and I prefer to use my computer for correspondence. But I look at my mother’s recipe cards, and I see that my handwriting is often indistinguishable from hers, and my sisters’ look similar too. I feel linked by the similarities. The recipes my paternal grandmother recorded are typed and uneven as the card scrolled and slipped through the platen (anyone remember what that is?). They are typed because she had arthritis and writing was difficult for her. When I see that typing, so distinctly hers, I see her gnarled hands and hear her voice with the Germanic “v” for “w”. We leave our imprint whether we print or write cursive (and I suspect, do calligraphy). I recognize my daughter’s imprint in the pieces she writes, in her “voice,” and I usually don’t need to look at the author’s name to know it is her. I look at my mother’s school notebooks, where she wrote poems in the old Germanic script, and I can no longer read them, but I still recognize her in the swoop and swirls. Cursive may be relegated to the drawer where the old Germanic script lies, but our personalities will live on in our writing regardless.
My mother was from New Zealand and her cursive was very distinct and a bit old fashioned. To this day when I get Christmas or birthday cards from NZ relatives all I have to do is glimpse the handwriting to know it’s from a Kiwi cousin. It’s so interesting at how the style of handwriting can mark you so distinctly. I don’t know if there is an “American” cursive but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Oh Cameron, I too went through a backwards-leaning handwriting phase in high school. Constantly changed the capital “J” of my name until I settled on the one I use know. Still love it.