I don't understand people complaining about cursive. Do you never write with your hands? Or how do you write with your hands then? Just block letters? Isn't that super inconvenient?

@Gargron no, never.

I don't have paper to write on and I only own two pens for super rarely signing a physical document.

@Gargron I write badly block letters, even worse cursive. I can't get a consistent flow unless I slow down to a crawl, which was incompatible with taking notes at school.

@Gargron lmao. yes i just write block letters. i do not even know how to write cursive properly.

@trwnh No? Being convenient is it's point. Lets you write without lifting your pen.

@Gargron @trwnh Except for i, t and accentuated letters. I remember hating going back and "fixing" everything afterwards.

@Gargron scratch it out quickly enough and it's not a speed benefit anymore

@trwnh @Gargron But also, ugly and unreadable? Cursive lets you write fairly neat AND fast, is the main appeal.

Not that I use it much anymore, but trying to write legibly in block is sloooooow in comparison.

@WAHa_06x36 @Gargron it's quite loopy and hard to read, as well as hard to write due to the learning curve. i understand the appeal in theory though.

plus nowadays most people don't write enough to want/need to learn cursive. that time investment would go to waste.

@trwnh @Gargron Yeah, the fact that I don’t write much is why I’ve mostly stopped, but I would never want to write an essay in block letters for instance.

@WAHa_06x36 @trwnh In the post-apocalyptic world we, the cursive writers, will have a competetive advantage

@WAHa_06x36 @trwnh @Gargron I would also never want to write an essay and anyone who has ever said they would like to at any point in time after the invention of the typewriter is objectively wrong

@WAHa_06x36 @trwnh @Gargron this should say "an essay in cursive" but I stand by my statement that no one should write an essay

@Gargron block letters, or what we called 'print', yes. The standard kind of writing. We learned cursive in school but I never found it significantly faster, and it was always WAY less legible to me than print. An absolute nightmare to decipher.

@natecull In my schools both in Russia and Germany, cursive was standard!

@Gargron @natecull Me too, but I couldn't drop it fast enough when I learned block letters.

@Gargron It was for me in the 1970s-1980s, but I think ours was the last year in which it was taught.

For which I was very grateful. So many kids who didn't have to go through the pointless hell we did of learning two separate handwriting systems, one useful and readable, one absurd and unreadable, refused by industry and never to be used.

By my high school year keyboarding was coming in, instead, which was much more useful for the future.


Basically my experience learning Cursive taught me an important lesson, which is that sometimes teachers are wrong and schools teach you stupid stuff that only wastes your time and hurts you.

@Gargron block, always

learned cursive back in school, but at some point found block easier and quicker for me

cursive only when in need to sign some document

@Gargron Nope! Block letters, yep! And yep!

(Apparently it's a common thing for folks with ADHD to prefer block letters. I learned cursive as a kid, almost completely lost the skill by my late 20's, and nowadays I write in all caps. Give me a calligraphy pen and I can still do Carolingian minuscule, but handwriting is somehow different. Brains, who can explain them.)

@Gargron In my experience cursive is a pain to read whenever it's not your own and in my case even when it is. Unless I write very meticulously & at that point block letters is quicker and easier.

Specifically, I use all cap block lettering for anything someone else needs to be able to read, because it's the only truly reliable one, and what I'd call "print" (with lower case) when it's only for me since it can dip into cursive at times.
Note: my written 'a' is the "o with a vertical line" kind.

@Gargron those Englishmen don't understand how fast and satisfying to write cursive can be

Sign in to participate in the conversation
Mastodon is a general-purpose server for everyone (except bots). Here, you are the tooting AI! We aim to provide a stable and fast Mastodon experience and a safe environment.