Since I haven’t written in cursive in 20+ years I can guarantee my printing is faster.
I think the slant makes cursive look faster, it’s got that cartoon tilt.
I’m not sure when you’re estimating distance. And for where you’re putting you’re pen down I think once you’re in habit you just do. You might pick up some speed by not picking up the pen, but there’s so many more strokes I think you lose it.
I think the r, n, h problem is much worse in cursive, worse enough that I’d include m and double l in the list. That’s the group of letters that’s hardest to read when deciphering somebody’s cursive for the first time, because people tend to turn them just into loops. And the continuous strokes makes it worse, at least in print there’s supposed to be a gap between an r and an n so the reader knows it’s not an m, in cursive they both tend to wind up as 3 lumps in a row.
I don’t do any estimating of distance. It’s all just muscle memory at this point. Maybe I estimated when I was a kid, but at this point I’ve been putting pen to paper in one way shape or form for over 35 years. Much like when I’m typing (which I learned in jr high so 25 years or so) I’m thinking about content not method. The hand knows how to write, the brain is working on other stuff.
> “I think the r, n, h problem is much worse in cursive...”
Well, I suppose there are different types of cursive, but in mine those letters are both easy to make and easy to distinguish.
I gave up cursive over twenty years ago too, but I’m not printing much either nowadays, so my skill in printing has decreased a good bit as well. I doubt that I was ever completely comfortable printing ‘r’, ‘n’, and ‘h’ at a fast speed, though. If I was printing something important, I probably slowed down.