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Those were classes we had in primary school in Sweden more than 20 years ago, in "Lågstadiet" (Lower stage - mandatory school in English?), when we were like from 7 to 9 years old or something.

Unlikely to even attempt to go back there :)



I completely respect your refusal to acknowledge my terrible pun :)

I remember having to learn cursive on 2nd grade in the US, so I would have been about 8 at the time. Seems like a pretty obsolescent skill these days.


!

Having cursive under your belt helps you learn the rules, so you can break them later on as you develop a personal style.

I’ve worked in roles where I had a lot of hand writing to do. If I used printing, it would take about three times as long than if I used my shorthand.

Even taking notes in lectures, I could create notes by hand much faster than I could transcribe with a keyboard.


For some reason it never occurred to me that cursive is related to shorthand. I did self study cursive a little bit when in high school, but I simply recognized it as a way to write things that are more beautiful even though to modern eyes it might be more difficult to read. I did remember annoying a few teachers in high school when my work looked like the handwriting in https://mastodon.social/@waldoj/113082201727675702 and the teachers spent extra time understanding my writing.

It never occurred to me that there is a shorthand to increase my own efficiency.


> I did self study cursive a little bit when in high school, but I simply recognized it as a way to write things that are more beautiful even though to modern eyes it might be more difficult to read.

That sounds more like calligraphy, IMHO. Many of the letter forms for some styles of cursive are similar to what happens if you write in block letters without lifting your pen. Depending on the particular style, there's some exceptions and embelleshments, but if you're taking a lot of notes in a hurry with a pen in block letters it kind of devolves into cursive naturally.

Shorthand is generally phonetic, so that's a different skill, IMHO.


Yea I recognized that writing cursive is faster because I don't need to lift the pen that often. But the question is whether that makes the reader do more work. A few teachers in high school preferred that I stop because it was more troublesome for them to read.

In any case I find any kind of handwriting to be slower than typing, and I am not even a good typist.


Side note: in the word “shorthand” itself, the “hand” is “handwriting; style of penmanship” (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hand#English meaning 10), cf. “round hand” etc.


I simply recognized it as a way to write things that are more beautiful

The whole point of cursive is to make writing easier and faster than printing.

Once you know it, and aren't struggling against it, it becomes very fluid and your hand muscles hurt less than if you print.


Pretty much the only use of cursive today is for signatures. To me, the only rule you need to remember is that the signature you use for legal documents should not be the same as what you use for autographs. Are there any others that make sense for today's limited real world use of cursive?


Seems like a pretty obsolescent skill these days.

I had a younger coworker tell me that he can't read any cursive. I asked him how he finds Walgreens, or which license plates are from California.

People act like it's Klingon. If second-graders can figure it out, an adult can make an effort.


That is a cursive-like font which is designed for easy readability. A formal handwritten document like the Declaration of Independence is slow and difficult to read. And an informal documents like San Pepys diaries are nigh indecipherable to modern eyes.

https://www.magd.cam.ac.uk/pepys/virtual-exhibitions/diary#:....


The Walgreens logo isn't a cursive-like font. It's correct Palmer Method cursive. The California license plate is, too. Though a sloppy interprtaion of it.

Cursive moved away from the style used in the Declaration of Independence 150 years ago.

Palmer Method cursive is what most people have been using for the last century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method


The diaries are in shorthand, that's different.

The usual aim is to read present-day cursive, not centuries-old documents.




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