Comment by thrwaway55 2 days ago
Why would you write in cursive? If you care about WPM key board toasts it.
If you care about handwritten your receiver cares they got your letter at all not that it's cursive or not.
Cursive is an outdated skill for when it was the fastest way to get words written to paper.
If it's something I want people to read, I'd never dare write it in cursive, because if I did, I wouldn't count on them being able to read it.
I'll write in (not great) cursive for myself, but for other people? Writing in block or print is basically an accessibility feature. Even if my cursive was perfect, plenty of people would not be able to read it.
I grew up in a world where everyone knew cursive, and until this sort of discussion became popular in recent years, it honestly wouldn't have occurred to me that there were many people who didn't know. But I guess they had to cut some things out of the curriculum and it's not as useful as it used to be.
> Cursive is an outdated skill for when it was the fastest way to get words written to paper.
There was a class signifier aspect to it as well. Poor kids couldn't spend as much time practicing and perfecting penmanship. In a world where much got done through handwritten personal letters, good penmanship would make an impression similar to having properly tailored formal attire vs a tattered coat.
My grandma went to public school but grew up in an era where that sort of thinking was widespread, so she got extra tutoring. She learned to write freehand with a ruler flat baseline and machine like consistency in each letter. You could recognize a card or mail from her instantly just by the addressing on the envelope.
I wasn't taught that strictly but I did spend years of elementary school with those Red Chief notebooks copying letters page after page much to the frustration of my young ADHD brain.
I doubt I could properly write cursive today. I barely ever hand write notes anymore, so there's no real point.
>>Why would you write in cursive?
I'm confused. How do you write if not in cursive? Do you just write in block capitals? With each letter on its own? Do you just not hand write anymore?
>>Cursive is an outdated skill for when it was the fastest way to get words written to paper.
But....It still is? Without using some kind of machine of course.
> Do you just write in block capitals?
Block capitals? no. It's print. With upper and lowercase letters.
I rarely handwrite now. The last time I really did was in college.
> But....It still is? Without using some kind of machine of course.
But of course this is HN where most people are technical. We all have some sort of machine at our disposal otherwise we'd not be writing back and forth to one another.
>>It's print. With upper and lowercase letters.
So like.......not linking the letters together then? Doesn't that just actually take more effort than just writing cursive? And is slower?
>>But of course this is HN where most people are technical.
For sure, and as a professional programmer I keep a notebook with hand written notes - the fact that I have a keyboard and multiple monitors in front of me doesn't change the fact that hand writing is still the best(for me) way to save and recall information.
> not linking the letters together then?
Correct.
> Doesn't that just actually take more effort than just writing cursive? And is slower?
Probably yes to both counts.
However, when I'm handwriting I'm generally not in a position where speed or effort is the most important thing. To me, it's not much more effort to print and I get the added bonus of legibility. When I write cursive, it can be hard for me to understand what I wrote when I come back to it. I'm just a little too sloppy. It would take effort for me to get to the point where my cursive is neat and I frankly just don't handwrite enough to warrant that effort.
Consider this, do you use shorthand? I'd assume not. But why not? It's the fastest way to write anything. Cursive, by comparison, is both a lot of effort to write, is slower, and it wastes space.
I'd say for (some of) the same reasons you likely don't write shorthand, I don't write in cursive.
I'm a person who mostly types, writes tons of code, but also is a graphic designer, and I also have pitiful penmanship. I can write regular sans-serif (all caps or properly capitalized), as well as cursive, but ultimately the concept of fonts make more sense to me than anything else in terms of an expression of letters and typography.
There are a million ways to articulate a glyph, from thick to thin, clear to murky, big, small, harsh, soft, whatever. Some people still use typewriters or typeset a printing press. Others use spray paint or marker.
End of the day for me it's just about communication and expression and aesthetic and clarity (or sometimes intentional LACK of visual clarity in honor of a style), not technique or medium. I dunno.
I do think every bozo should be able to pick up a pen and make his mark, and I think humans should practice the art of crafting a sentence and turning a phrase, but I really don't focus on the how, and more on the what, the message.
Even the Zodiac Killer had a unique and bizarre style with his handwriting and cipher LOL can you imagine if it was just bog-standard 5th grade cursive?
>>Most people do not hand write anything more than a short note in 2025
Is this like....a personal feeling? Or something with actual data behind it? But even if so - why does it matter? If you write short notes, do you not write them in cursive?
>>Of course to be pedantic, modern pens are machines too.
That's beyond pedantic, I struggle to imagine that anyone other than the a professional linguist would call a ball pen a machine.
It's an impression from my own social circle. I looked for data briefly because of this comment, but didn't find anything conclusive.
It does make sense to hand write short notes in cursive if you're hand writing short notes at all, but many people never learned it, or are so rusty it would take deliberate practice to restore proficiency.
I’m not sure the last time I’ve handwritten anything longer than a signature and my cursive skills show it.
On a white board or diagram, block letters seem like the most legible choice.
Everything else is typed.
I'll be honest I actually prefer my words to be lasting and have weight so I prefer block letters carved into lead which doesn't benefit much from cursive
> How do you write if not in cursive?
I write with mix of cursive and sorta print letters. The sorta print letters are more readable, actually.
Based on what teachers said, kids use cursive while they are forced to and switch to sorta print when they can. But everyone invents their own "font", so it is a challenge to decipher them.
okay, but if you care about recall and activating regions of the brain that create a better understanding of what you're learning, handwriting wins according to research.
But is there a difference between cursive and block lettering? I fully agree with your overall point about handwritten notes being far superior to typed notes. It forces you to filter out extraneous information instead of being a live transcriptionist of your professor.
I've found drilling notes via method of loci of visualized flashcards/facts for this to be superior for myself which I always sourced from typed notes. Not really familiar with the research that cursive would improve over it.
Can you link to some of that research? The last time I saw such research get shared on HN, the researchers were limiting the typists to 1 finger (per hand?), which is patently absurd.
More than that, I would be curious to see research that controls for proficiency at writing/typing. My theory is that if more kids were taught to properly touch type from an early age, the alleged differences between writing/typing would be far less dramatic. I was taught since kindergarten and there's no doubt in my mind that I absorb and understand information better through typing than writing. I'm also much, much, much faster. Brief Googling suggests I'm at least 10x faster than the average WPM for handwriting
Instead, here we are talking about how cursive should actually still be taught.
Mueller & Oppenheimer (2014) – available via Psychological Science / SAGE (DOI: 10.1177/0956797614524581)
Longcamp et al. (2005) – PubMed or Elsevier (Acta Psychologica)
Smoker et al. (2009) – Human Factors and Ergonomics Society proceedings
Umejima et al. (2021) – Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience (open access)
Ito et al. (2020) – HCII conference proceedings (Springer CCIS)
I don't comprehend your stance at all. Where I am from, handwriting IS cursive and the other thing is called print for a reason.
> Why would you write in cursive?
Anyone using paper + pen? Writing a letter or thank you note?
You know, stuff only people who grew up before the internet was popular still do.