Kids today! Hangin’ around after school, staying late to fulfill their hormone-driven passion for their CURSIVE CLUBS…
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Happy (Belated) Birthday, CLINT.
June 7, 2026
11 Comments
Kids today! Hangin’ around after school, staying late to fulfill their hormone-driven passion for their CURSIVE CLUBS…
Listen here on Soundcloud:
We never talked about Kipling’s “Gods of the Copybook Letters”
I have NO problem with cursive, I have carpal tunnel and numbness that is the problem. cursive is easy, I just can’t feel my hands or fingers.
It’s OK, I get it. There’s only so much motor control and sensory activity a lonely single brain cell can manage. That’s probably why your thought process is even poorer than your manual dexterity.
He’s baaack!. Getting my popcorn ready.
Short and to the point
Stephen, keep the BBGN background! In first grade at Catholic school, cursive was required. I am right handed, but broke my right arm partway through the school year. When I told the Sister that I couldn’t write, she said “you still have one good arm.“ Catholic logic to the core. So I learned cursive with my left hand. A couple months into *that* part of the school year I broke my left arm (really bad diet), so I finished learning cursive with my right arm. For about another 15 years, I could sign my name perfectly with either hand until… Read more »
I’m a Southpaw; penmanship isn’t in my DNA. Not only can I not see most of what I write, but quills (& fountain pens) reduce that to an unsightly smear!
I learned to write in ALL CAPS print when I was writing reports for security jobs, and never went back.
Fun little factiod about writing overhand: Invert the paper and I can write upside-down!
I should get a job at Chili’s….NOT.
I’m a GenX. I learned to write cursive in kindergarten, in West Virginia. We had handwriting practice a couple times a week in class all through elementary school. In third grade, I didn’t have to practice with the class anymore, because I could write Zaner-Bloser as good as the book. Just for fun, I started learning the Palmer method. Mastered that by 5th grade. Went on to Spencerian. In 7th grade, I started learning calligraphy. By high school, I was researching historical hands. My favorite is textura quadrata prescisus vel sine pedibus, and I could do a passable Carolingian, Merovingan,… Read more »
This is a thread to the code we older people have enjoyed. Like manual transmissions are an anti-theft devise. Cursive use to be a way to hide meaning from the young.
As bad as my handwriting is, my paternal grandparents in England, a maid and a coal miner who left school at 14, wrote beautifully. They didn’t pass the skill on to my dad, and I got my “skill” at it from him.
My handwriting is pretty awful and always has been. I like to joke that it’s bad enough that I could have gotten into medical school on the strength of that alone had I been so inclined. It was once suggested that I try italic as it would kind of force me to take it more slowly. I did that, and yes it helped a bit but I’d get so focused on that that I’d lose my train of thought.
My handwriting is so bad, that if that was the only criteria, I’d be a medical doctor.
Upside of that is that if i have enough examples, I pretty much can read anybodies handwriting. (I joke that I can read hieroglyphics.)
However, my calligraphy is considered beautiful.
I learned to write in cursive in 2nd or 3rd grade and wrote that way until I got to college. In my first class in college, the professor did not write on the board in cursive; for some reason, I copied that and printed from then on out. While I can sign my name fine, if I have to write out a check, I have to think how to write in cursive.
It is encouraging to hear of students wanting to learn something extra.
A couple of things, 1st, my mother is 90 years old and her hand writing is still amazing. She dropped out of school in the 8th grade to get married and that ended her formal education but by then her cursive was perfected and it has stayed with her. Second, Steve stop using being left handed as a crutch! My first grade teacher in 1959-60 taught this lefty to hold a pen/pencil just like right handed people and my mother encouraged my penmanship with her own. I must say that I am very happy that they have stopped burning us… Read more »