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Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Decline of Cursive

On the decline of cursive handwriting, in a recent article.

I had discussions about this with a K-12 teacher relative, confirming the article. Little time is spent on the subject any more. As a child I had very precise handwriting, later working on calligraphy. That all ended when starting college, having to take many quick notes. I worked part time typing papers for others. My cursive became shakier. I used less cursive writing. Then with the advent of computers and word processing there was just no need any more. What happened then was my once proud cursive started to decline. A recent experiment showed I could not even do fine cursive if I tried.

So with common mobile note-taking devices does it matter? It is the kind of thing that can be handy. Common but not universal recording devices. Certainly the ability to read cursive is useful, as it starts to change into an art-form rather than a assumed skill. You cannot assume it can be read or produced by an educated person. I do regret my lost art-form.

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