Indiana, joined up thinking?

[dales]

NIL ILLEGITIMUS CARBORUNDUM

[quaddriver]

dont let the bastards wear you down either

[Gob]

Interestingly enough I'm in the process of editing some short stories. I print them off, add any and all edits in cursive on the printed page, then go back to the computer to edit them.

[Jarlaxle]

Weird...

Am I the only one that still sends a short note or card to friends or family?

No...but I print that, too.

[rubato]

Touch typing is a far more important skill than cursive writing.

And less likely to be taught in my generation.

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

I gave up cursive a bit more than twenty years ago, because mine kept shrinking. Even when I was in undergraduate school, which was more like thirty years ago, I took all my notes on quarter-size sheets (4-1/4 x 5-1/2 in.). (The quarter-size pads fit conveniently into the back pockets of my jeans.) When I saw how small my writing was getting, I was curious, so I counted. I was averaging a little over 300 words per quarter-size sheet.

The first time I ever had a secretary -- summer of 1990 -- I drafted a memo in cursive and gave it to her. After a minute or two, she gave it back, apologizing, because she could not make head or tail of it. Wondering whether I had done something wrong -- I was a brand new "summer associate" with no clue how to function in a law office -- I showed it to the managing partner of the office. He burst out laughing.

So I rewrote it in print. (It was short anyway, and I wasn't billing any time for redoing what I'd already done.) My secretary was then able to type it, but only after running it through the "enlarge" function on the copier. That was the end of my cursive writing -- except when I need to cram a huge number of words into a small space, as on a postcard -- and I've never missed it.

Even today, I use narrow-ruled paper for writing by hand (which I do a great deal of; it greatly cuts down the number of drafts). My capital letters are barely taller than 1/2 of a ruled line, and my "lower case" letters -- they are actually capital letters, just smaller -- easily fit two lines of writing per one narrow-ruled line.

As to signing one's name, the important feature of a signature is its uniqueness. I have seen, and I presume that all of us have seen, signatures which bear no perceptible relationship to the names which they represent. Mine still does, but only by force of habit, and less and less so over the years. As long as it is distinctively yours, what does it matter whether it spells out your name or not?

The demise of cursive seems to me a good thing. Cursive is too idiosyncratic. It may look good, but fighting through the peculiarities of any particular person's script is inefficient. Have you ever looked at 19th-century handwritten court records? They have a certain elegance, but if I need to know what they actually say, I sometimes have to get someone in her or his eighties to read them to me.

All in all, no great loss.

[dales]

Except for the graphologists

[loCAtek]

Maybe Indiana is trying to ensure all their kids grow up to be doctors.

[Sean]

Yes of course... doctors not being known for their cursive scrawl...

[rubato]

"Doctors all have bad handwriting" is one of the stereotypes which gets repeated back and forth between people who have no rational reason to claim an informed opinion on the matter.




yrs,
rubato

[quaddriver]

"Doctors all have bad handwriting" is one of the stereotypes which gets repeated back and forth between people who have no rational reason to claim an informed opinion on the matter.




yrs,
rubato

Every doctor I have visited has written on discharge orders and perhaps 'scripts and the writing has NEVER been legible. Male, female, white, indian, asian, middle eastern.

So within my sphere of reference, the stereotype is true. Im not complaining. Im just noticing.

(my s.i.l. is a doc, but I have never seen her writing to judge)

[Sean]

A doctor's handwriting is illegible to most of us. A lot of it is a type of shorthand which can be understood by a pharmacist but not by the person holding the note/script. Doctor's don't always want their patient to know what they are writing.

Source: A good friend who happens to be a doctor.

[Crackpot]

Not really that's why they often call and confirm perscriptions. It's also the impetus behind the push to make perscritions electronic. Even in legible handwriting can be confused when dealing with the various trade and generic names when you don't even know the diagnosis.

[dgs49]

My dear Father - may he rest in peace - had the most beautiful handwriting I've ever seen for a man. He was taught The Palmer Method, whatever that was, and he was damned proud of it.

As he became enfeebled with age, one of his biggest regrets was that he could no longer write legibly. I've kept some of his papers just because I can't stand the thought of throwing out things he wrote by hand.

[loCAtek]

RIP Father dgs49