#1 2009-09-19 23:03:04
I'm not convinced we need to give up our ability to write neatly and clearly by hand but - to be honest - I rarely do it myself anymore. Thoughts? 
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#2 2009-09-19 23:08:27
I think would should keep in practice. Surely, penmanship is a beautiful art, that should be practiced at least as in a sense as meditation?
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#3 2009-09-19 23:20:50
The girl sitting next to me in typing class 40+ years ago would soon become a cover model. Without her distraction, I'd have learned the same lesson.
Typing, longhand, drawing, painting, it's all the same disipline: Thinking with your fingers.
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#4 2009-09-19 23:22:49
Yeah, just like books printed on paper became obsolete a decade or so ago with the advent of e-books, and all the book publishers went out of business and the libraries were all razed to the ground. Y'all remember that, don't you?
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#5 2009-09-19 23:25:57
George Orr wrote:
Yeah, just like books printed on paper became obsolete a decade or so ago with the advent of e-books, and all the book publishers went out of business and the libraries were all razed to the ground. Y'all remember that, don't you?
I'm not arguing with you on those points, but when was the last time you wrote out a full-length letter (more than a single page, at any rate) in longhand? Other than quick thank you notes or condolence letters, I can't remember the last letter I wrote by hand.
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#6 2009-09-20 00:11:39
Taint wrote:
I'm not arguing with you on those points, but when was the last time you wrote out a full-length letter (more than a single page, at any rate) in longhand? Other than quick thank you notes or condolence letters, I can't remember the last letter I wrote by hand.
The Reporter's numbnuts editor forced you bang out indecipherable meeting notes on an arthritic Remington, am I right?
I still noodle with a pencil when I'm stuck, still feel naked leaving the house without a pen but I haven't written anything without a keyboard since 1970 and I'm sure I don't want to try.
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#7 2009-09-20 00:14:11
I have found (and I am in danger of exposing myself here) that one cannot produce poetry on a keyboard. In fact poetry should be first committed to memory without writing as it is pre-writing anyway.
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#8 2009-09-20 00:20:07
Taint wrote:
when was the last time you wrote out a full-length letter (more than a single page, at any rate) in longhand?
I wouldn't argue that point. But people often still need to fill out forms and such by hand. I do a good bit of composition/revision/editing on my job and a lot of that is done by hand (by me and others).
Person-to-person interaction wasn't eradicated when the telephone was invented; public gatherings weren't made extinct by the invention of television; etc. The world is always changing, but it's almost always a more or less glacial process.
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#9 2009-09-20 00:25:07
choad wrote:
The Reporter's numbnuts editor forced you bang out indecipherable meeting notes on an arthritic Remington, am I right?
I still noodle with a pencil when I'm stuck, still feel naked leaving the house without a pen but I haven't written anything without a keyboard since 1970 and I'm sure I don't want to try.
No, but I did take hand written notes for the first couple of years I began covering government - that alone was enough to cripple whatever semblance of decent handwriting I might still have had - but when PDAs first began hitting the market, I bought a Palm V which also had a small keyboard attachment one could buy separately. I did, and I began taking meeting notes on that, and then would download them onto my computer at home to send into work. Then laptops became a little less expensive (my first one cost me $700) and I switched to those. Even now, I'll take notes on paper, but if I'm interviewing someone over the phone, I type 'em. I can type faster than I can write on paper and the notes written that way are easier to read.
In all my time as a reporter, I've never used a typewriter. We always had word processors including the enormously bulky Coyotes (is that what they were? I've forgotten their name).
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#10 2009-09-20 01:06:41
I'm still teaching my students good penmanship skills. It's much easier to teach them to become good writers (and by extension, good readers) when the act of writing itself is not such a chore. The third graders I teach this year are absolutely foamy about learning cursive--it's like they're being initiated into an ancient mystery cult. For those who continue to write in longhand into the future, it turns out that cursive writing, with a smooth-rolling pen, is one of the most efficient ways to put thoughts onto paper.
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#11 2009-09-20 01:25:38
whiskytangofoxtrot wrote:
The third graders I teach this year are absolutely foamy about learning cursive--it's like they're being initiated into an ancient mystery cult.
Suppose most kids are adaptable until puberty, but isn't 8 too late, two and three years after they were drilled another way?
Show them a fountain pen. One or two should reveal remarkable skill with it.
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#12 2009-09-20 02:12:32
choad wrote:
whiskytangofoxtrot wrote:
The third graders I teach this year are absolutely foamy about learning cursive--it's like they're being initiated into an ancient mystery cult.
Suppose most kids are adaptable until puberty, but isn't 8 too late, two and three years after they were drilled another way?
Show them a fountain pen. One or two should reveal remarkable skill with it.
Yes and no. It really is a developmental question. At 8 years of age, most children have developed the necessary fine-motor control and familiarity with the alphabet to make the transition to cursive easier on them (and their teacher.) Also, some students are taught the D'Nealian, or Modern Manuscript, alphabet, either from Kindergarten or in the second grade, which is a slanty, semi-joined, and more-curvy version of printing. It makes for a smoother transition, as well. The main goal in teaching early penmanship is standard letter forms and sizes, so the teacher will teach the students that all letters start at the top of the letter form, making size judgments easier for new writers. When learning cursive, students learn instead that letters begin all kinds of different places. Experience shows that when you don't have all day to spend on penmanship, simplifying the task is the best way to bring success to most students. Of course, in my grandparents' and great-grandparents' day, writing was done in cursive from day 1...
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#13 2009-09-20 09:09:45
Dusty wrote:
I have found (and I am in danger of exposing myself here) that one cannot produce poetry on a keyboard
Yeah, I write all of my poetry and lyrics out as well. Using a key-board just doesn't seem right during the creation pro-cess; But, I'll oft type it out later once I am cer-tain that I am pleased with a piece. I don't write them in cursive though. Other than writing out checks, I don't use cursive at all any-more. The only other pur-pose that I ever did use cursive for was taking notes in school and I rarely ever did take notes as it was.
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#14 2009-09-20 10:42:26
Bah!! I never could do it well even after countless painful hours at the kitchen table practicing, it's death is well deserved and long over due.
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#15 2009-09-20 11:46:06
My mommy got me a calligraphy set when I was a kid, and I love to write.
My kid always tries to type his stuff for school, but I make him handwrite it.
People need to learn to handwrite, if only to sign their name.
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#16 2009-09-20 13:16:47
whiskytangofoxtrot wrote:
in my grandparents' and great-grandparents' day, writing was done in cursive from day 1...
I learned that way myself and think it makes more sense, acquiring words and the alphabet to go with them. I was reeducated in block lettering when I first attended US schools and my handwriting never recovered.
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#17 2009-09-20 13:48:16
Sofie wrote:
People need to learn to handwrite, if only to sign their name.
Eh . . . It's a rather over-rated "art" in my less-than-humble o-pinion. I pre-fer to use a "mark" as the il-literati did when first ex-panding in-to the Western territory. The only "down-side" is that my checks oft fail to "clear" at the bank.
Auto-edited on 2020-08-02 to update URLs
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#18 2009-09-20 18:10:46
Cursive is obsolete, manuscript is not.
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#19 2009-09-20 19:47:36
Kanji, now that I can do - just very large.
Fuck that cursive shit...
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#20 2009-09-20 20:52:04
My penmanship started it's glorious decline about 10 minutes after I installed my first word processor on the TRS-80. I can "write" about 30 words a minute or type about 90. Which do you think that I choose?
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