I read recently that college entrance exams (SATs?) in the US will by 2005 include a mandatory 20-minute essay as a significant portion of the mark. Markers will have only 5 minutes to decipher and grade the essay.

As a result, schools that wish to produce college-eligible graduates are scrambling to re-introduce cursive and make students' handwriting legible. Supposedly, anyway.

On a different note, cursive arose naturally out of the need for Europe's literate (mostly nobles and members of the clergy) to write quickly and legibly. I'm sure that literate and educated Americans will always be able to write cursive; the question is, how much of the population will be literate and educated in 10/50 years? (some would argue the majority of graduates these days are neither.)

Paul

What kind of cursive?

When I came to Canada as a schoolboy I was surprised to discover -- and knew enough about calligraphy from my mother to be think it weird -- that kids were being taught to write copperplate style with ballpoint pens. I'd come from a school in Wales where ballpoint pens were forbidden, and where a neat Fairbanks italic running hand was taught. In Canada, it seemed incredibly perverse that kids were learning a style of writing developed specifically for a split-nibbed pen. Thankfully, my teacher was content to let me continue using my messy fountain pens and running hand, although it never improved very much and I gradually dropped most of the connecting strokes and became a type designer.

when I visited amsterdam a couple of years ago
I noticed a lot of people using old style numerals when
writing. was this just a coincidence or something
taught in school?

I also notised a sweet and heavy odour in a lot of places...

Kids will soon have to learn writing for machine recognition, instead of stuff that pleases dead people.

hhp

"instead of stuff that pleases dead people"

Nice one hhp.

Due to a learning disability as a kid I never learned how to write in cursive. It was caps only until about a year ago when I taught myself an italic hand for fun. It's a nice hobby, but that's about where it ends.

I was always frustrated getting graded down when I combined uppercase letters with cursive. Then when I got out of elementary school I was pleased to find that creating those cumbersome cursive caps were no longer neccessary.

I'm still not sure what people on this thread mean by 'cursive'.

"Cursive" means a connecting, slanted, script. You can generally write complete words without picking up your pen (except to cross t's and dot i's). I think the idea is (was) that you can write faster that way.

I was taught some form of cursive in grade school back in the sixties. I was never very good at it and switched to unconnected "printing" by high school (forever preserved in a certain font of mine). I do tend to connect certain runs of letters when I'm in a hurry. My handwriting is generally more forward slanting now than when I did the font over ten years ago.

My mother was taught the Palmer Method and has beautiful handwriting. I have her old Palmer instruction books. It looks very rigorous to learn.

My daughter (9) is learning "Denealian" handwriting which is a kind of unconnected sloping style with some cursive-like forms. Much closer to calligraphy than cursive.

Slight correction: Denealian includes both cursive and non-cursive forms. The non-cursive forms are taught first. She's been learning the cursive form this school year (third grade).

The impression I get from some of the comments on this thread, particularly Tim Drabant's regarding uppercase letters, is that 'cursive' in the context of American education means a particular kind of 'connecting, slanted, script'. I'm wondering if this is the same as the copperplate-derived script I referred to earlier, which Canadian kids were learning in the late 1970s?

The italic hand I learned in Wales was also cursive -- connecting, slanted -- but was a very different thing to the copperplate style. In Britain there was a huge reaction against the copperplate style in the early 20th century, expressed in a renaissance of the italic hand promoted by Alfred Fairbanks, and copperplate had completely vanished by the time I was born. It was strange to come to North America and find kids writing an 18th century split steel nib script with ballpoint pens.

Here's what I was talking about when I
mentioned cursive...
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/shinn/handsome/
or

That's close to what I was taught (minus the thorn, the bullet, etc.).

Here's what the D'Nealian (not Denealian, sorry) script that they teach in my daughter's school looks like:

http://www.abcteach.com/DNealian/cursivechart1.htm

Some schools do still teach cursive.

There is also a "manuscript (printing)" version that is taught first:

http://www.abcteach.com/DNealian/dnprintChart.htm

D'Nealian and similar scripts (my Mom calls it "Catholic School Handwriting," though I'm sure there's nothing Catholic about it) are a plague and must be destroyed. The capital forms are not good for pencils or ballpoints. The design retrofits modern instruments like ballpoints and pencils to a ductus that only looks good with a split-nib. This weekend I am learning to write copperplate the correct way with the correct tools. (Finally!)

An italic ductus is a much better basis for both connected and unconnected handwriting. I recommend the Barchowsky approach for young people and either Barchowsky or Fred Eager for adults. Briem's site has some useful info including a complete English translation of Arrighi's Operina. If you're going to learn italic, you might as well start at the source.

Can someone post images or links to some
of the other styles that have been mentioned?
When I hear Copperplate, I think of the
typeface...and I've never heard of italic ductus.

I was required to learn to write something that resembled what people are calling cursive in England in the 1970s. I seem to remember having to copy letters out in something called "Vere Foster's Copy Book". It was, as it happens, a Catholic school. I was bad at it, and I hated it, and I thought (and still think) that the resulting writing is pretty ugly (f, s, z especially, and the fussy capitals) ... but not as ugly as the dreadful "bubble writing" most people now produce.

On the other hand, I do think that most writing now is pretty undistinguished; it often seems childish.

I agree that the ballpoint pen is to blame for much ugly writing: it offers no resistance to the page, no distinction between thick and thin (which even a pencil will often give) and it encourages writing with no real rhythm. Whereas a fountain pen gives writing an axis, ballpoint pens encourage endless looping. And no (or little) pride, because whereas one can sometimes look at a page written with a fountain pen and think "that looks beautiful", one can never look at a page of ballpoint and think anything better than "that looks tidy".

Can someone post images or links to some
of the other styles that have been mentioned?
When I hear Copperplate, I think of the
typeface...and I've never heard of italic ductus.

Copperplate is one of the terms applied to the very rounded writing style (roundhand is another name) developed in the 18th century to be written with split steel nibs. It is called copperplate because the same style of lettering was used in engraving. The best known exemplar of the style (actually a collection of styles) is George Bickham's Universal Penman; there is also an excellent section on l'ecriture in Diderot's encyclopedia. The style relies heavily on the characteristics of the writing instrument for which it was developed: the flexible steel nib that applies more or less ink depending how hard the writer presses. The 'cursive' lettering shown above by Kyle is derived directly from these 18th century styles, and is properly called a roundhand for obvious reasons. As John Butler points out, writing this style with a pencil or ballpoint is silly because neither tool can give you the variance of what Cresci called 'the swelling line' that gives the style its beauty.

Ductus refers to the effect of the combination of nib thickness and writing angle. An italic ductus implies a broad nib pen (as opposed to the pointed, split nib used for copperplate/roundhand) usually held at an angle around 40 degrees off the horizontal. This gives a pattern of thick and thin strokes that we are familiar with from the italic types of the renaissance; by contrast, the romantic italic types of Bodoni and Didot are based on the swelling line of the split nib.

When I grew up in Hong Kong they first taught us 'printing' (or 'block letters'), then all of a sudden they said we had to learn 'cursive', which was really copperplate. It wasn't the Palmer Method (as they were taught in North America), but a pure copperplate script. I was 8 or 9 at that time, and absolutely hated it. I thought it was really ugly. So I decided to go back to the block letters. My English teacher obviously didn't like that and said I had to write in cursive. After I went to study in England, I taught myself Italic hand (Fairbank's method, more or less) because I thought I had to improve my handwriting which, up to that point, was just a disjointed copperplate. I knew that's what they used to teach in England. The way they do it now is probably more like the Sassoon Method. Again, they first teach 'printing', then teach them how to join the letters. Sasson Primary, the type face designed by Rosemary Sasson, is still the de facto font to use in primary schools in England.

Copperplate, when done well by a skilled calligrapher with a broad-nib pen could be extremely beautiful. But as an everyday script for handwriting, it is not very practical nor legible. Fairbank's italic hand is the best, in my opinion: clean, legible and beautiful. Still a very good modern hand. I think it's a shame we don't handwrite a lot of things now. We're losing the human side of written communication. I still enjoy handwriting a lot. Typography should not be the be all, end all of visible language.

As a lefty, I always resented being told that my impeccable
handwriting was not good because the slant was wrong.

Another good sample of the 'cursive':
http://www.schoolfonts.com/printouts/ZCursiveHandwriting.gif

A sample of the block letters:
http://www.schoolfonts.com/printouts/ZBlockLetters.gif