I think there is a definite correlation. Scripts are looked upon as an artform that is “new” to this young generation. With script fonts, they get to avoid actual handwriting, yet have the look of the perceived artform. Old fogies like me who had their wrists slapped for poor penmanship and never learned to type, have a different outlook:-)

Students now take notes on a laptop and “pass notes in class” using text messaging on cell phones. Handwriting today is mostly self-communication and rarely is intended for reading by others. When this generation becomes teachers, handwriting will become something to be studied by archeologists and historians instead of school children.

ChrisL

Though I doubt that this is widely the case, my interest in type design and typography (aside from my background in art and design in general) grew out of the fact that handwriting has always been painful for me, both physically and psychologically. If penmanship instruction were treated as an art rather than a reinforcement of obsessive-compulsive behaviors from the earliest levels, I might have had a different attitude about it.

I think their point about the SAT is only partially correct. Every single teacher I have ever had has told me to NEVER use cursive in an essay or on a test. In fact, I would get marked off points because of it. Teachers don’t want to have to decipher hieroglyphics just to grade a paper.

Now, whether that is because of their lack of training, who knows?

I’m not sure it’s lack of training, Dan. Teachers only have so much time to mark papers — they barely have enough time now to skim through them as it is to ensure the student has some sort of grasp of the topic. Throw in having to decipher poor handwriting, and you’d get even more of them quitting.

Like Chris, I’m also in the “old fogey” category of having had cursive beaten into me at school: mine was pretty bad until I took a course in calligraphy as a teenager, and then it actually became legible.

For awhile, that is, until I started spending way too much time in front of a computer. ;-) I think the only reason it’s still as functional as it is could be because I still edit hard copies, by hand, with a red pencil, most of the time. And I’ve got an old friend who still has the most incredible cursive hand — a quick note from him looks like a fine engraved invitation. I’m jealous!

Perhaps it’s come down to “those who can write beautiful cursives, do: those who can’t, use (insert name of favourite cursive font here).”

Sad....

Linda

Perhaps it’s come down to “those who can write beautiful cursives, do: those who can’t, use (insert name of favourite cursive font here).”

If only it had ever been as simple as “those who can do, those who can’t are just people who will always have crummy handwriting so let’s just accept it.” I’m a big believer that so many people hate cursive because they got sick of elementary school teachers complaining about every little loop not being perfect, so they just stopped using it as soon as they hit sixth grade. It’s kind of like Matisse and his drawings–he just stopped showing them to people, so nobody saw most of them until after he died.

I’m a big believer that so many people hate cursive because they got sick of elementary school teachers complaining about every little loop not being perfect, so they just stopped using it as soon as they hit sixth grade.

Maybe that’s more of an indictment about how cursive is taught more than anything else. So long as my teachers could read it, they weren’t anal-retentive about exact forms. ;-)

I was also lucky to have several teachers in high school who had unique (well, for the 60’s in Canada!) scripts and actually encouraged students to inject some individuality into their own handwriting: bet that doesn’t happen much anymore....

L.

And yet, there are many Graphic Designers who refuse to use script fonts because, well, they look like fonts. Not script.

Since we’re in the same sort of field as lettering artists, we should be saying, “Yay Lettering Artists! Job security!”

The same could go for type-designers.

Dan, by “they look like fonts. Not script.” do you mean that they are just too precise? That’s how I’m reading it, and I whole-heartedly agree with you from a designer perspective. When I wrote “those who can’t use (font name here)” I pretty much meant average users. :-)

Maybe there is a connection even.

McLuhan’s Third Law: Retrieval.

Nice one Nick! Care to elucidate further?