… cursive writing?

Man, I hated that.

It was designated time in each class in elementary school to just work on our handwriting. I had probably the worst handwriting and practicing it over and over seemed to just make it worse. The class was done with ink and not pencil which added a whole different level of frustration.

My Mom had the most beautiful handwriting; my Dad had nice handwriting but his claim to fame was that he could whip out whatever he was writing in a hurry. Working with money as he did, he had an impeccable skill with writing numbers.

But, I struggled. To make things worse, we had fountain pens and that meant working very carefully to make sure that it wasn’t smudged. Thank goodness I wasn’t left-handed.

I had a collection of pens that I’d pick up from everywhere looking for the pen that would make me better. I’m still looking …

I do have two prized possessions from two friends who are wood turners and they made me a custom pen and case for a retirement gift. Sadly, that didn’t improve my cursive writing either. But, they are gorgeous and are proudly displayed on the bookshelf here.

I do have a few things that were created by cursive writing and they’re kind of embarrassing.

One of the biggest things that changed my world was taking a course in COBOL programming. Cursive wouldn’t work but printing was required to make sure things were in the right place. As I look at my notebooks from times after that, I notice that I did all my notes in printing. They’re not bad for readability.

As you can see, creating something in cursive is difficult for artificial intelligence.

It doesn’t take long on social media to read the recommendation for school systems looking to improve can do so by bringing cursive writing back.

For a Sunday, your thoughts?

• did you study cursive writing as a separate subject in school?
• are you smarter because you know cursive? Will teaching cursive writing improve things for today’s student?
• have you ever written with a fountain pen that required drawing ink from a bottle? Did you have smudging issues?
• have you written with a fountain pen that uses an ink cartridge?
• did your elementary school classroom have cards with all the cursive characters on display around the room to help the cause?
• on those cards, there was one letter that could be written in two different ways, one being a number. What letter was this?
• was it those awful computer keyboards that forced cursive out of the classroom or something else?
• are you left-handed?
• do you use cursive today? Or, is it just reserved for signing documents?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this? Please do so in the comments below.

This is a regular Sunday thing around here. You can check out all the previous posts here.

If you have an idea for a future post, please reach out and let me know.