Learning to write

[anghara]

I tripped over an article recently where a school in Indiana became the latest edcuational instution to abandon the teaching of "cursive", electing to concentrate instead on the students' proficiency on a computer keyboard

Comments

[barbarienne]

My fingers can keep up whether I write by hand or by keyboard. I do both regularly, so I expect it's simply practice keeping my neural pathways ready. But more of my writing is on keyboards, and I think my facility for writing extended digressions without losing track of the main sentence is better on keys than with a pen.

(That's why I prefer a pen for composing fiction, perhaps--one should avoid a lot of digressions in most fiction.)

Nonetheless, I confess I don't write in real cursive. I never liked it, and didn't see the use of it when one had straightforward, more-legible, print handwriting available. In the era of the ballpoint, print was as easy as script; and with the advent of the razor-point (huzzah, the late 70s), print was definitely better than script, which required one to sometimes push the wrong direction on those fragile nibs, inexorably reducing them to broken fuzzy bunches of nylon fiber.

When I use a glass pen (which dips in ink), I use script, because it is just like a fountain pen and works much better.

When I use a ball-point (i.e. 99% of the time I hand-write), I've got a sort of hybrid handwriting, mostly print with frequent joined-up letters. My lowercase letters switch erratically from print to script versions. I haven't analyzed if it's dependent on what letter follows, though I suspect that is likely the case.

Lowercase z is always script, I suspect because my most frequent use of it is in my signature, which is script. My lowercase f is neither script nor print, but something else entirely. (Yet no one is ever confused what letter it is...)

I, too, keep letters. But I don't keep emails. I haven't received a letter in years. I haven't received a chatty just-to-talk email in years either! Email is so fast and the string is appended, so the conversation rapidly gets like a phone conversation, where you reply to each bit, directly referenced, as if you're right there with each other.

Handwritten letters, by contrast, must be written as monologues, with elegant signals when the topic changes, and must indicate in new words what concern of the other correspondent you're replying to.

They also require the generation of new content, rather than simply popping out a one- or two-line response to the previous conversation. I used to write letters in college in the back of my notebook. My friends have a lot of letters that make frequent reference to "Now I'm in calculus class, but it's really boring, so let me tell you about the fencing tournament last week..."

I also miss the sense that a letter to me was written for me, personally--that it contains news the writer thinks I would enjoy, in a style that they know I'll appreciate. It would come on stationery sometimes, but often on other media--my best friend had a habit of buying little posters or picking up flyers and writing on the backs of them so I had something more entertaining than pretty flowers to look at. I have a letter from her when she was in Vietnam on vacation, written on a print of a drawing of a monkey--and the letter talks about how she chose it because the monkey is so comical and looks like someone we both knew.

Facebook status updates cannot come close to that experience.

[barbarienne]

Oh, also, recognizing the handwriting. It's like recognizing someone's face. My sister's bubbly handwriting. A friend's handwriting that is Catholic School Standard. Another friend's elegant, spidery script with exuberant ascenders and descenders and use of a European-style numeral 1 that always looks like a 7 to me. My best friend's writing, all short, separate strokes that look as if she chopped them into the page with a knife.

Even my father's letters, always typed, never handwritten--but typed on an electric typewriter, not printed from a computer. Every typewriter has subtle quirks, and Dad's was no different--I could tell when he got a new one one year while I was at college.

On the internet, you need to look at headers. In handwriting, the writing itself reminds you constantly who is speaking. I see their face and hear their voice in a way that is dimmer when reading a blog or an email.