Posted on 02/26/2009 9:21:28 PM PST by Steelfish
The slow death of handwriting
Christmas cards, shopping lists and what else? The occasions in which we write by hand are fewer and fewer, says Neil Hallows.
So is the ancient art form of handwriting dying out?
A century from now, our handwriting may only be legible to experts.
For some, that is already the case. But writer Kitty Burns Florey says the art of handwriting is declining so fast that ordinary, joined-up script may become as hard to read as a medieval manuscript.
"When your great-great-grandchildren find that letter of yours in the attic, they'll have to take it to a specialist, an old guy at the library who would decipher the strange symbols for them," says Ms Florey, author of the newly-published Script and Scribble:
The Rise and Fall of Handwriting. FAMOUS HANDWRITING
King Henry VIII wrote this love letter to Anne Boleyn (pic: British Library)
Jane Austen completed her last novel, Persuasion, in 1816
In 1864, Lewis Carroll wrote his most famous work for Alice Liddell.
Aged 16, Winston Churchill wrote to his mother Lady Randolph Churchill
Jimi Hendrix's lyrics for Machine Gun were written in 1969
She argues that children - if not this generation then one soon to come - may grow up using only a crude form of printing for the rare occasions in life they need to communicate by pen.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.bbc.co.uk ...
It’s already happening. We were at a restaurant the other evening and I couldn’t make out one of the words on the board where they write the specials. I asked my son if he could figure out the word and he promptly said no, he couldn’t read cursive. My husband and I both just looked at him like ‘what?’.
They don’t write anything anymore. They don’t even have to type their reports like we did. No white out needed etc.
Computers and printers are making ‘writing’ obsolete.
Oh darn, and we’ve lost that clay tablet carving skill too.
I didn’t know until a couple of weeks ago that schools around here don’t even teach cursive writing any longer!
I was shocked! They all PRINT!
What are the people running these schools thinking?!!
I can write Arabic and Russian faster than I can write English cursive.
The last time I used cursive was in 3rd grade. I really don’t care though, I prefer print.
What are the people running these schools thinking?!!
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It’s about time to go to bed and have nice dreams. You really don’t want to spoil your sleep.
The fact that they weren't teaching it as a class anymore shows that even then it was on its way out. Because of typewriters? Today of course it would be because of computers and they just don't teach it at all.
xmas cards, shpg lists n w@ Ls? d occasions n wich we wrt by h& r fewer n fewer, sEz Neil Hallows.
I recently had to write a personal letter in cursive and it was nearly illegible. I hardly use it anymore.
I switched to block printing sometime near the end of High School, but I’m old enough to have learned the art of penmanship in the elementary grades.
In fact, I had pretty good handwriting for a guy, but I found that I simply favored printing over cursive writing. I was probably influenced by my dad, who never wrote in cursive.
Funny that we’re working on the kids’ cursive writing skills right now. We home school, so they’re getting a real education.
I think cursive is a waste of time. I wish I learned how to type instead of spending time on something I only use for signing checks.
They went to the well one too many times.
So it’s not just ‘old fashioned’ teaching but some schools just don’t teach it?! I guess I don’t ‘get’ exactly what is taught in public school anymore!
We have two dogs, no kids, which may explain it.
It already died with me... :-)
Cynical thought: Make handwriting obsolete, control all typed (computer/internet) means of communications...
On a less cyncial note, typewritten or “e-card” stuff is not the same as a handwritten letter that someone took the time to write.
Handwritten Russian is always cursive--or at least it was when I studied it. After I learned to write Russian cursive, I found it difficult to write English cursive--I had to make sure I didn't inadvertently write Russian letters.
ur nutz
I have typed for over forty years (I love to type) but I still write in cursive. And I’m ‘only’ in my fifties.
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