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Post by mailartist on Mar 22, 2017 15:35:12 GMT
A received a group email from an acquaintance in our church congregation who (for some homework for a class in her program) needed a certain number of letters from those who knew her. The letters needed to be short, be addressed to "thus and so" person, and cover this point, that point, etc. Kind of like a letter of recommendation or reference. Business-like.
I could have just responded to the email, hitting type and "pixel send," but I was in a handwrite-y mood, so got out a ballpoint pen, a small piece of writing paper, a small homemade envelope, and some retro stamps, and complied with the request.
The next Sunday, she came hustling up behind me in the church hallways, thanking me not only for responding, but for "making it snail-mail." "I can't even THINK of the last time that I got something in the mail that was actually handwritten!" she excitedly said.
-- and this from a letter sender whose handwriting would, hands-down, win the "last place" ribbon (maybe of a drab olive green color, instead of the typical blue, red and gold ribbons?) in any sort of cursive competition.
Personalized snail mail still does make a difference!
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Post by blessed on Mar 22, 2017 18:55:42 GMT
Writing in cursive was compulsory in my son's primary school from year 2 (or whenever they learned cursive) onwards unless a child had motor deficiencies that prevented him or her from writing cursive. Now he's in secondary school he's reverted back to print. I prefer writing in print too. They do teach a simplified form of cursive in German schools which just isn't very pretty.
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Post by Mia on Mar 22, 2017 19:55:55 GMT
It did take me a little while to get used to my German school exchange student's handwriting; it was neat.
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Post by radellaf on Mar 23, 2017 3:09:52 GMT
I despise writing the standard Zaner-Bloser or D'Nealian cursive they teach here in the USA. Never was any faster than un-joined and a lot less legible. I'd love to see it relegated to more or less "read-only" standards for required education.
I trained myself in the Italic hand in an attempt to give joined another try, and while I can do the joined version, I don't really find it any faster. Lifting the pen just doesn't slow me down. Joined italic is a lot easier to read than typical cursive, though, IMHO.
What is annoying about lifting the pen is when the paper isn't lying flat enough and keeps popping up a few mm every time you lift the nib. I _hate_ that, and it's pretty common.
In engineering school it wouldn't have done me any good to take notes on a PC or tablet. There were as many diagrams and equations as text, and those are just quicker to draw by hand. Unless the professor gives you all the stuff that was on the board in the classroom as a PDF or something. Even then, though, it'd help to have just the important stuff in your own notes.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 23, 2017 5:51:05 GMT
My son is in grade 3 and they've just started to learn Sütterlin (old German handwriting), which was taught in schools until the 1930s - in additin to the usual cursive. The subject is "School today - school in the past" and I'm truly impressed. I think the teacher just considers it as fun and a good training for cursive in general so that every child can develop his/her own cursive. This is how I learned to write in grade 1. I now write a mixture of cursive and print for no particular reason. My handwriting has just evolved like that.
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Post by radellaf on Mar 23, 2017 13:40:54 GMT
I'm all for something like that: teaching more than one hand to write in. Computers have more than one font, why not learn a few letter styles? I just read a book called The Missing Ink: The Lost Art of Handwriting that talks about what was taught in various eras. Unfortunately, it's downright insulting to those of us who think Italic is just the best thing ever and claims it's inefficient (it isn't), writing for someone thinking about death (i guess because he thinks it's slow?), and something only an "art school" type would use (whatever that means). Still, interesting book if you're into handwriting as a topic.
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Post by Mia on Mar 23, 2017 14:04:46 GMT
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Post by sails on Mar 23, 2017 15:10:36 GMT
They should just teach Palmer again.
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Post by penguy on Jan 2, 2018 3:06:50 GMT
I was just visiting my daughter who has an eight year old. He is learning cursive using Cursive Without Tears. The letter forms are vertical and very simply formed. When I learned cursive it was using the Palmer Method where the letters were fairly simple but with a slant. The Palmer letters are a bit more pleasant to look at but for facilitating learning cursive the Cursive Without Tears is probably simpler and the student will probably not be doing the repeated oval and other hand and arm exercises that I had to do. I might say that I agreed wholeheartedly with the article and there are many other studies that have come to the same conclusion.
When I found out my grandson was learning cursive I immediately sent him a letter in cursive. When we visited him I found he had saved my letter and that he had no problem reading cursive handwriting. Some time ago my wife and I had occasion to look at the first school board minutes for the local school. They were from the 1860's and written in the most beautiful hand. So another advantage of learning cursive is being able to read historical documents or even grandma's or grandpa's or even great grandpa's letters.
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Post by radellaf on Jan 2, 2018 6:12:11 GMT
Learning to read it is fine, I just don't want to ever be _required_ to write it. However, reading someone else's handwriting is another matter, and if it's cursive, then it can be all the worse. I have a grandma's letter that I can read maybe 70% of, but if she'd used an unjoined hand I could probably read all of it. For all the claimed advantages of cursive, nobody has ever said that joined writing is easier to read than unjoined. Mostly, it's just supposed to be faster to write.
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