An important reason to learn cursive is so that you can sign credit card receipts on a screen with your finger, where you can literally write in primitive caveman and the transaction will still go through.
I expressed once to a server that finger signing made me feel, and look, as if I'd lost IQ points. She said don't worry - I could put a smiley face there and it would be accepted.
Wonder if you can sign checks with a happy face, at least for checks you like to write, like birthday presents. Maybe a frowny face for paying state taxes.
Brilliant. Now I want to try this... only I cannot for the life of me remember how to form a "K in cursive/signaturese. Plus, I'm left-handed, soooo...
It has been so long since I wrote in cursive, I have no idea how I would go about cursively writing a "Z" or a "Q." Seriously, I cannot even picture what those letters look like in cursive.
When I was a kid--around 10, so this would've been about 2005--I read a website by a guy who's decided to push this to its limits, on physical and digital signatures. His site even had pictures of each one. It started with vague scribbles, then went on to abstract shapes like grids, then smiley or frowney faces. One which stood out to me was when he outright printed "I didn't authorize this" and the transaction went through fine.
It finally ended when he bought a TV for $2,000 ($3,500 in 2026 money) and signed with a filled-in rectangle. The manager came out and told him they couldn't accept the purchase.
To this day, my signature is a couple of squiggles, but they're consistent squiggles.
😅. In 2026, I wonder if the filled in rectangle would even get noticed! You can steal a credit card and go crazy on Amazon and never sign a thing. Maybe there are more safeguards now, but this fact-in-theory makes the signature moot for most everything. Legal documents even have “Docusign” - which, incidentally, creates a lovely cursive signature that looks nothing like my real one.
If the whole thing is a legal fiction at this point anyway, why can't we at least use a cool fake symbol, like a wax seal? Digital signet rings anybody?
I love the signet ring idea! But let’s bring back the ring itself, and stamp our emblems in hot wax on the little receipts we have to sign! It’d at least be entertaining.
I don't need any more reasons to be creeped out these days, but thanks. No, really, THANKS. 😱 Now I want to start carrying around a box of those rubber fingertip covers. (Er, do they still make them?)
Whenever I have to sign with my finger, my signature looks like I’ve been doing some really heavy drinking. I dunno why we sign anymore; nobody cares if signatures are even signatures. I could draw a cartoon porky pig instead of signing something and nobody would notice.
You've hit upon a deep and mysterious and perhaps terribly dark question---why? Why, if no one cares, do we do this? Why, if no one cares, do companies require this? Is it just to prove that we are sheep? That we will, in fact, do anything they tell us? Why? Why?? Why?????
How you can go from Thor having sex with a tree to going on a limb against teaching cursive should warrant a red card, but damn, it’s so smooth and funny. I’m in awe.
Dave, your commenters are almost as funny as you. My comment is not funny. Seriously. There have recently been a couple of legitimate studies that showed enhanced neurological activity when the subjects, whose brains have been wired up in a legitimate neurological lab, wrote cursive. BUT, when those same subjects typed on their keyboards, there was Zero (O) brain activity in the wired-up neurons. I can send the study reports if you or anyone else wants to verify what I’m saying.
That is interesting indeed! I'd be curious to see the reports.
I'm a Millennial, so I was forced to learn cursive along with the rest of y'all ... I immediately stopped using it the second I was allowed. My cursive sucked.
Meanwhile, I learned to type on a keyboard just a few short years after learning to write. I learned that at an early enough age that I can type on a keyboard WAAAAAAY faster than I can write longhand -- in cursive or otherwise.
For many years, I wrote almost exclusively on a keyboard. I had no reason to write longhand. In 2017, I started keeping a (longhand) journal. There IS something different about that ... It feels more "real," more personal.
In terms of idea generation, however, typing is more pure, for me. It's just my ideas, coming through my hands. When I write something longhand, there is another element involved.
I wonder if that's what the studies were picking up on.
My senior year of high school(1971) I won the award from the Business and Professional Women’s Club for being able to type 110 words a minute. It just took me about five minutes to type this comment. At least typos are easier to deal with now than back in the Dark Ages of typewriter erasers.
Eraser tape? Luxury! Fancy! In my day, we learned to type on manual typewriters had only typewriter-eraser sticks with brushes on the end for whisking away the debris left behind by the eraser. And we were grateful!*
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Writing cursive hurts my head. Typing only hurts my wrist if I do it for a long time. Perhaps the thought that goes into writing cursive (as opposed to puking out random thoughts through typing) is what triggers brain activity? I’d be curious to know the why behind this.
It makes sense that there is more thought behind cursive, because it is slower, and harder to correct or edit. I have been amazed at some old books that the authors wrote by hand, and how thoughtful and literate and well-composed and readable they are. Am reading U. S. Grant's memoir and find it compelling. They were probably better orators then, too.
My own theory is that yes, there was zero brain activity in the wired-up neurons (hence their scientific name, "norons"), but that there was an enormous spike in the activity of neurons which *weren't* wired up. Like, say, the neurons which fire when trolling inoffensive targets on The App Currently Known As X, or the ones which fire faster and faster and faster andfasterandfaster while scrolling through OnlyFans.
just larger; enough to cover a double bed. Some of those mindnumbing stitches are actually quite complicated Looking. But then, sometimes it is the yarn which makes it look neat
I can confirm that the state bird of Texas is the Northern Mockingbird…in fact we have a stuffed one in a case in our state Capitol building in Austin, and you can buy a plush version of it in their gift shop. Research shows that this bird was adopted as the official state bird of TX on January 31, 1927, when Governor Dan Moody (having nothing better to do that day) signed a legislative resolution. This made TX the very first state in the US to officially designate a state bird. Four other states copied TX and adopted it as their bird. Florida did so on April 23,1927.
Regarding cursive, I had a student who requested I show him how to sign his name in cursive as it was required on a job application. I demonstrated a few examples of how he might write it, and he picked one. I then had him practice writing it by tracing it repeatedly on lined paper. He did get the job but then told me later that he still doesn’t use cursive because his office uses Docusign for all its paperwork.
College papers are of course typed/word processed for submission, but even that isn't fool proof… beware auto correct.
While teaching a business class at the local college in Austin, I assigned a paper where students needed to describe a situation where they had exerted leadership and what they learned from that situation. It could be any situation...in a scout meeting, volunteer organization, even a work situation.
While grading these papers one stood out. Rather than using the word exerted, autocorrect changed every use of this word to excreted.
Here are some brief snippets of this submitted paper:
At first, I didn't feel comfortable with excreting…
I have grown used to excreting in teams at work…
My boss and I together excreted…
I am now in favor of everyone excreting…
I will continue to excrete to the best of my ability…
I could not stop laughing while reviewing this paper. When I returned this paper to its author the student’s face turned very red, and she blurted out that she was glad she didn't have to read it to the class. We both had a good laugh! Per the grading rubric I had to deduct a point, but I added a point back in, as it was the funniest paper I've ever read.
BTW, I read a couple weeks ago that some universities are reverting to using the old "blue books" for class writing assignments -- forbidding word-processed papers -- because of the influx of AI-generated essays etc. No idea if they're requiring *cursive* specifically, but I thought, like, "Haha! Yeah! That'll teach the little monkeys a lesson!"
This will not last past the first paper. Instructors will revolt due to the impossibility of reading these things. It will take them waaaaay longer to decipher what is written and will likely give them all headaches.
You’ve never taught in the UK, where sat exams are deeply rooted in tradition all the way through university. Students get points off if it is illegible.
What a wonderful story! Thank you. I was going to write that as I retired person, I no longer have to excrete myself, at least not very often. As an aging retired person, that statement has more meaning to me than ever. 😳 Maybe I’d better just move on… 😳😊
Hahaha! I used to have a client that was a pension — for some reason the computer wanted to correct that as penison. We had to read every page of our report VERY carefully!
Cursive is stupid. But I’m a boomer geezer who had to learn it (and a left-hander, to boot!), so I say: make the kids do it too. Also, get off my lawn!
There is a movie but doesn't look like a superhero!
"A burnout couple squat in abandoned Florida mansions. As past traumas resurface, the couple's behavior gets more and more erratic, as whispers of the enigmatic 'Florida Man' engulf the neighborhood."
Your strike-through is brilliant. It will become part of my writing style - I’ve long wished to state the filthy-minded undercurrent and distress I go through NOT saying those things. And the sad thing is that strike-through is not available in social media, most likely because the unbridled masses have no strike-through
Actually, at least in Zuckerface you can create strikethroughs using underscore characters, You type a character, then an underscore, another character and another underscore, etc. Like t_h_i_s_. (I have no idea if Substack will turn that into a strikethrough.)
You reminded me of the one question I've ever been afraid to ask anyone. When I was a kid, whenever my grandma would see one of us drinking a Coke, she would wrinkle up her nose and say, "How can you drink that stuff? It tastes like varnish." I was always tempted to reply, "Hey Grandma, when did you drink the varnish?" But then my life would flash before my eyes and I kept my mouth shut.
I'm a native Florida Woman, but I lived in a Maryland suburb of DC for a while. My house looked like a beach house, so I put flamingos in my yard. DUH! I used to dress them up for holidays, e.g., folded newspaper hats for July 4. The college kids across the street tended to leave me alone.
Also a left hander, I struggled with cursive. My fifth grade teacher finally gave up on me, and said I will likely become a doctor. Little did she know I would be a journalist/graphic artist.
When I get a fundraising letter from a politician or organization and the signature is a sloppy scribble, I never send money. If they don’t have time to sign their name legibly, I don’t have time to send money.
back in the Stone Age, my left handed friends had first grade teachers who forced them to write with their right hand. A couple of mother read them the riot act and that stopped right quick
I had heard that happened. Fortunately, I'm from the late Stone Age (first of the Boomers) plus my first grade teacher was a new recruit to help fill in the gaps so we got the latest thinking of the time.
New Jersey, a state widely considered superior to Florida (think diners and bagels), is also mandating cursive in grades 5-8. Draw your own conclusions. PS - Old Woody Allen movies are laugh out loud hilarious.
An important reason to learn cursive is so that you can sign credit card receipts on a screen with your finger, where you can literally write in primitive caveman and the transaction will still go through.
I expressed once to a server that finger signing made me feel, and look, as if I'd lost IQ points. She said don't worry - I could put a smiley face there and it would be accepted.
I did. It was. Along with the significant tip....
Wonder if you can sign checks with a happy face, at least for checks you like to write, like birthday presents. Maybe a frowny face for paying state taxes.
I asked one time if a person could just scrawl an "X" and have it go through. The answer was "Yes".
For the past year or so, I’ve simply been entering “ O K “ on the screen and wait for my receipt.
I then leave with a smile and a thank you.
No one seems to care…or even notice what I wrote on the silly screen….
I just enter a squiggle. In cursive. One cannot print in squiggle
Brilliant. Now I want to try this... only I cannot for the life of me remember how to form a "K in cursive/signaturese. Plus, I'm left-handed, soooo...
Me too. My advice: learn Hebrew.
(laughing)
I have always felt sorry for left-handed people when it came to writing in cursive.
Yeah, but we're at least writing in a forward direction, unlike you backwards writing right handers. :)
Left-on!!
Also feel sorry for we left-handers who have to write on whiteboards with dry-erase markers. Whether it's cursive *or* print!
I actually rather enjoy the arrogant capital ‘Z’ and ‘Q’ in cursive. Very florid and “Declaration of Independence-y”.
*nodding appreciatively at use of "florid" in a comment on a FLORIDa news roundup*
It has been so long since I wrote in cursive, I have no idea how I would go about cursively writing a "Z" or a "Q." Seriously, I cannot even picture what those letters look like in cursive.
When I was a kid--around 10, so this would've been about 2005--I read a website by a guy who's decided to push this to its limits, on physical and digital signatures. His site even had pictures of each one. It started with vague scribbles, then went on to abstract shapes like grids, then smiley or frowney faces. One which stood out to me was when he outright printed "I didn't authorize this" and the transaction went through fine.
It finally ended when he bought a TV for $2,000 ($3,500 in 2026 money) and signed with a filled-in rectangle. The manager came out and told him they couldn't accept the purchase.
To this day, my signature is a couple of squiggles, but they're consistent squiggles.
😅. In 2026, I wonder if the filled in rectangle would even get noticed! You can steal a credit card and go crazy on Amazon and never sign a thing. Maybe there are more safeguards now, but this fact-in-theory makes the signature moot for most everything. Legal documents even have “Docusign” - which, incidentally, creates a lovely cursive signature that looks nothing like my real one.
If the whole thing is a legal fiction at this point anyway, why can't we at least use a cool fake symbol, like a wax seal? Digital signet rings anybody?
I love the signet ring idea! But let’s bring back the ring itself, and stamp our emblems in hot wax on the little receipts we have to sign! It’d at least be entertaining.
Firstly, 🤣🤣. But also, I wonder if the "I didn't authorize this" would stand up in court if he challenged the charge (refused to pay it)?
A lawyer friend has assured us that as soon as the person takes the card, you have agreed to pay. No Backsies!
Does it creep anyone else out that we’re trading germs on our fingers when we do that?
Which is EXACTLY why I smell my finger both before and after I sign.
So you transfer the germs to your nose? Seems like a good plan.
I don't need any more reasons to be creeped out these days, but thanks. No, really, THANKS. 😱 Now I want to start carrying around a box of those rubber fingertip covers. (Er, do they still make them?)
Yes they do.
One of proctology's favorite accessories.
Hallelujah! SAVED by the office-supplies supply chain!
carry a stylus or two. I have at least 3 dead pens with a stylus on the end,
Our voting machines and sign in equipment uses touch screens. We have a ton of stylus (styli?) ready for use, with a special little cleaner for them
Ingenious! Thanks!
YES! Of course, I'm the weirdo who wipes down the grocery cart handle before I touch it.
Me too
Every single time.
I electronic sign everything ‘Theodore Roosevelt’.
(‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ joke)
Whenever I sign off on a screen, it always winds up looking like I flunked third grade, like maybe 52 times in a row.
What’s with these southern states that have a Nothern bird for the State Bird?
They fly south for the winter.
Expert studies have shown that this is because it is too far to walk.
Whenever I have to sign with my finger, my signature looks like I’ve been doing some really heavy drinking. I dunno why we sign anymore; nobody cares if signatures are even signatures. I could draw a cartoon porky pig instead of signing something and nobody would notice.
You've hit upon a deep and mysterious and perhaps terribly dark question---why? Why, if no one cares, do we do this? Why, if no one cares, do companies require this? Is it just to prove that we are sheep? That we will, in fact, do anything they tell us? Why? Why?? Why?????
Maybe @Dave Barry can use his investigative skills and maybe win another Pulitzer.
Wish I could do that!
I asked one time if you could just scrawl an X and have it go through. The answer was "Yes".
Whenever I sign a screen, it winds up looking like I failed third grade, like maybe 52 times in a row.
You can also sign it "Donald Duck" and the transaction will go through. This is America - commerce first.
Sometimes I sign my dog's name. Literally no one is checking this anymore.
I just print my initials on those f-ing screens. PRINT.
How you can go from Thor having sex with a tree to going on a limb against teaching cursive should warrant a red card, but damn, it’s so smooth and funny. I’m in awe.
BTW, if flamingo doesn’t work out as a state bird, consider the Dicsissel — for no other reason than I find the name to be very funny.
Now there's a name with SIZZLE!
I am always in awe of Dave's output. He's been *getting paid* to do this for mumbledy-mumble years!
Either 50 or 70
I think it’s due to his hare. If he changes it he’ll lose the power to write, like Sampson.
I see. An excellent understanding of the issue.
It is so touching seeing you come to the aid of a frond in need.
Now I'm kinda hoping James Taylor is a DB fan and will stop by to croon "You've Got a Frond" for Dave.
Or you can combine with another pun and have Randy Newman sing "You've Got A Frond in Need"
Yes, well, Dave has always been a frond indeed…and we love him for that.
Did you mean "frond in need"?
Dave, your commenters are almost as funny as you. My comment is not funny. Seriously. There have recently been a couple of legitimate studies that showed enhanced neurological activity when the subjects, whose brains have been wired up in a legitimate neurological lab, wrote cursive. BUT, when those same subjects typed on their keyboards, there was Zero (O) brain activity in the wired-up neurons. I can send the study reports if you or anyone else wants to verify what I’m saying.
Thanks again for another week’s dose of hilarity.
That is interesting indeed! I'd be curious to see the reports.
I'm a Millennial, so I was forced to learn cursive along with the rest of y'all ... I immediately stopped using it the second I was allowed. My cursive sucked.
Meanwhile, I learned to type on a keyboard just a few short years after learning to write. I learned that at an early enough age that I can type on a keyboard WAAAAAAY faster than I can write longhand -- in cursive or otherwise.
For many years, I wrote almost exclusively on a keyboard. I had no reason to write longhand. In 2017, I started keeping a (longhand) journal. There IS something different about that ... It feels more "real," more personal.
In terms of idea generation, however, typing is more pure, for me. It's just my ideas, coming through my hands. When I write something longhand, there is another element involved.
I wonder if that's what the studies were picking up on.
And now our prized wpm typing skills are reduced to using two thumbs (or in some mysterious cases, a singer index finger). SIGH
My senior year of high school(1971) I won the award from the Business and Professional Women’s Club for being able to type 110 words a minute. It just took me about five minutes to type this comment. At least typos are easier to deal with now than back in the Dark Ages of typewriter erasers.
And eraser tape
Eraser tape? Luxury! Fancy! In my day, we learned to type on manual typewriters had only typewriter-eraser sticks with brushes on the end for whisking away the debris left behind by the eraser. And we were grateful!*
——————
*We were not really grateful.
we had the round pink ones with a brush on the end And Royal typewriters with no letters on the keys, and I swear the keys had weights on the bottom
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1219945/full
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/
Wired-up Neurons would be a good name for a rock band.
Haha. Good one!
This really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Writing cursive hurts my head. Typing only hurts my wrist if I do it for a long time. Perhaps the thought that goes into writing cursive (as opposed to puking out random thoughts through typing) is what triggers brain activity? I’d be curious to know the why behind this.
It makes sense that there is more thought behind cursive, because it is slower, and harder to correct or edit. I have been amazed at some old books that the authors wrote by hand, and how thoughtful and literate and well-composed and readable they are. Am reading U. S. Grant's memoir and find it compelling. They were probably better orators then, too.
That sounds like a very interesting read!
My own theory is that yes, there was zero brain activity in the wired-up neurons (hence their scientific name, "norons"), but that there was an enormous spike in the activity of neurons which *weren't* wired up. Like, say, the neurons which fire when trolling inoffensive targets on The App Currently Known As X, or the ones which fire faster and faster and faster andfasterandfaster while scrolling through OnlyFans.
Have you just admitted to scrolling through OnlyFans?
(laughing) No. I did think twice before putting that comment, but decided I liked that sentence too much to kill it. Art requires painful decisions. 🤣
I love it! Thanks for your reply.
This makes intuitive sense to me. I suspect the physical action of crocheting does the same thing. Thanks for the educational post!
The right type of crochet stitch can lull you into peaceful relaxation. Others of course can make you pull your hair out. I do not use those.
So everything you make looks like a potholder.
just larger; enough to cover a double bed. Some of those mindnumbing stitches are actually quite complicated Looking. But then, sometimes it is the yarn which makes it look neat
Comparing writing to typing is what the studies did; probably if the subjects had printed, the result would have come out the same.
Now that’s the funniest comment so far
I can confirm that the state bird of Texas is the Northern Mockingbird…in fact we have a stuffed one in a case in our state Capitol building in Austin, and you can buy a plush version of it in their gift shop. Research shows that this bird was adopted as the official state bird of TX on January 31, 1927, when Governor Dan Moody (having nothing better to do that day) signed a legislative resolution. This made TX the very first state in the US to officially designate a state bird. Four other states copied TX and adopted it as their bird. Florida did so on April 23,1927.
Regarding cursive, I had a student who requested I show him how to sign his name in cursive as it was required on a job application. I demonstrated a few examples of how he might write it, and he picked one. I then had him practice writing it by tracing it repeatedly on lined paper. He did get the job but then told me later that he still doesn’t use cursive because his office uses Docusign for all its paperwork.
College papers are of course typed/word processed for submission, but even that isn't fool proof… beware auto correct.
While teaching a business class at the local college in Austin, I assigned a paper where students needed to describe a situation where they had exerted leadership and what they learned from that situation. It could be any situation...in a scout meeting, volunteer organization, even a work situation.
While grading these papers one stood out. Rather than using the word exerted, autocorrect changed every use of this word to excreted.
Here are some brief snippets of this submitted paper:
At first, I didn't feel comfortable with excreting…
I have grown used to excreting in teams at work…
My boss and I together excreted…
I am now in favor of everyone excreting…
I will continue to excrete to the best of my ability…
I could not stop laughing while reviewing this paper. When I returned this paper to its author the student’s face turned very red, and she blurted out that she was glad she didn't have to read it to the class. We both had a good laugh! Per the grading rubric I had to deduct a point, but I added a point back in, as it was the funniest paper I've ever read.
What a great story. Thanks!
BTW, I read a couple weeks ago that some universities are reverting to using the old "blue books" for class writing assignments -- forbidding word-processed papers -- because of the influx of AI-generated essays etc. No idea if they're requiring *cursive* specifically, but I thought, like, "Haha! Yeah! That'll teach the little monkeys a lesson!"
This will not last past the first paper. Instructors will revolt due to the impossibility of reading these things. It will take them waaaaay longer to decipher what is written and will likely give them all headaches.
You’ve never taught in the UK, where sat exams are deeply rooted in tradition all the way through university. Students get points off if it is illegible.
Thanks! I certainly used my share of those 'blue books'.
What a wonderful story! Thank you. I was going to write that as I retired person, I no longer have to excrete myself, at least not very often. As an aging retired person, that statement has more meaning to me than ever. 😳 Maybe I’d better just move on… 😳😊
"Move on" ... ISWYDT, Bolter.
Your comment certainly made me laugh! Enjoy your weekend!
Hahaha! I used to have a client that was a pension — for some reason the computer wanted to correct that as penison. We had to read every page of our report VERY carefully!
Very funny!
My guess is she was spelling exerted as “excerted” (which autocorrect just tried to change to “excreted”)
I believe you may be right! Enjoy your weekend!
Also, it won't do any good in that department. The kids will still use AI to write their papers, they will just copy it over by hand.
I have wondered, is it legal to "sign" official legal documents in print?
Cursive is stupid. But I’m a boomer geezer who had to learn it (and a left-hander, to boot!), so I say: make the kids do it too. Also, get off my lawn!
At least we had a secret written language that the kids couldn’t make out!
There are t-shirts like that now! In cursive, spelling out, "Skilled reader and scribe of the ancient texts."
Good point. It's like we're in the CIA communicated in secret code!
"Florida Man" is the superhero movie that America needs right now.
Agree…PROVIDED it stars Dave.
He needs to at least write the screen play. And get full credit of course.
There is a movie but doesn't look like a superhero!
"A burnout couple squat in abandoned Florida mansions. As past traumas resurface, the couple's behavior gets more and more erratic, as whispers of the enigmatic 'Florida Man' engulf the neighborhood."
Your strike-through is brilliant. It will become part of my writing style - I’ve long wished to state the filthy-minded undercurrent and distress I go through NOT saying those things. And the sad thing is that strike-through is not available in social media, most likely because the unbridled masses have no strike-through
Actually, at least in Zuckerface you can create strikethroughs using underscore characters, You type a character, then an underscore, another character and another underscore, etc. Like t_h_i_s_. (I have no idea if Substack will turn that into a strikethrough.)
Your Friendly Ubergeek Dave's Substack Neighbor
I hope so because it pains me to be unable to strikethrough.
And yes Dave, I will give you full credit for my brilliance
I do write in cursive. My daughters tell me I have the handwriting of a serial killer. I was offended.
I would ask, how do they know?
You reminded me of the one question I've ever been afraid to ask anyone. When I was a kid, whenever my grandma would see one of us drinking a Coke, she would wrinkle up her nose and say, "How can you drink that stuff? It tastes like varnish." I was always tempted to reply, "Hey Grandma, when did you drink the varnish?" But then my life would flash before my eyes and I kept my mouth shut.
As a child, I once drank paint thinner because someone had put it in a Coke bottle. Perhaps something like that happened to your grandma.
Maybe. Maybe that means she didn't know what actual Coke tasted like.
I'm a native Florida Woman, but I lived in a Maryland suburb of DC for a while. My house looked like a beach house, so I put flamingos in my yard. DUH! I used to dress them up for holidays, e.g., folded newspaper hats for July 4. The college kids across the street tended to leave me alone.
They probably thought you were one of 'em, but from an even crazier fraternity.
More like crazy, but harmless, Aunt Mabel.
But if kids can’t read cursive, how will my grandchildren read the birthday cards my mother sends them?
Exactly!
Dave, come on. Why should the youth of today not suffer in the same ways we suffered? What kind of Baby Boomer are you?
Also a left hander, I struggled with cursive. My fifth grade teacher finally gave up on me, and said I will likely become a doctor. Little did she know I would be a journalist/graphic artist.
When I get a fundraising letter from a politician or organization and the signature is a sloppy scribble, I never send money. If they don’t have time to sign their name legibly, I don’t have time to send money.
I don't know for sure, but I suspect politicians can get a machine that will automatically sign their name for them. I think it's called an auto-pen.
And I'm sure if someone has access to such a machine, they can likely get an artist to create their signature that will be readily readable.
As far as sending money to politicians, that's something I do rarely.
back in the Stone Age, my left handed friends had first grade teachers who forced them to write with their right hand. A couple of mother read them the riot act and that stopped right quick
I had heard that happened. Fortunately, I'm from the late Stone Age (first of the Boomers) plus my first grade teacher was a new recruit to help fill in the gaps so we got the latest thinking of the time.
Actually, my friends and I were Early Boomers (1948-49) Our teachers also were the age of our grandparents
I only use cursive to sign my name and that has also become mostly illegible.
Almost fell out of my chair reading "we’re in a nonconsensual polyamorous avian relationship involving four other states."
Well done today!
My Dad was an architect and I used to try to print like he did. I still do using mostly all capital letters.
And I'm left handed too and my cursive slants backwards!
my daughter is a talented tattoo artist. However, I defy you to read her signature.
Mechanical engineering drafting classes circa the late 1960s cured me of cursive. All my written correspondence morphed into capital block letters.
But it's so slow! Cursive isn't fast, but it's twice as fast as printing.
If all you do is block letters for 40 years, it becomes pretty quick - plus my fast cursive is virtually illegible.
New Jersey, a state widely considered superior to Florida (think diners and bagels), is also mandating cursive in grades 5-8. Draw your own conclusions. PS - Old Woody Allen movies are laugh out loud hilarious.