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Handwriting & Cursive Fading?

Eldanen

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CBS News: Penmanship

Thoughts anyone?

I personally think handwriting is a mode of communication that transmits a lot of deep information subconsciously. I recently signed up on a forum of which I'm a member to the snail mail exchange program and found a pen pal. After receiving my first letter, I thought to myself, "Gee, this is fun!" The person who sent me the letter used pink stationary, matching letter card and envelope, and used red cherry ink (gradient medium-dark red ink) from a nibbed fountain pen. Needless to say, after reading it, I stored the letter in my drawer. I've already read the thing several times just to absorb the meaning from it.

Forms of contact like e-mail and instant messaging, to me, seem more transient. Perhaps it's possible to make a deep connection with another person online if you're intuitive enough (note: not MBTI iNtuition), but there still seems to be something of a person's character that bleeds through in a note that's sent by the post. Not only do you have the color of ink that they choose, but their handwriting, the type of paper they write it on, and so forth.

I really feel that communication is gaining a lot of bandwidth at the price of depth. There's only so much information that can be exchanged over a telephone call: for detail, writing is a must. Also, I really feel a deeper connection with my subject and I actually take time to think and parse my words when I'm writing on paper, versus at a keyboard. If a person knew that it took time to write something, perhaps they'd think twice before writing something they didn't really want to say.

God help them all if they don't have access to a computer keyboard or a cell phone 24/7. (Actually, most of them have the latter at all times.)

I think modern culture is having its effect. I recently read an accepted thesis that had many instances of the simple grammatical error of not capitalizing the personal pronoun "I."
 
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Sniffles

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They keep saying this every year or so. There's always going to be handwriting of some kind.
 

Eldanen

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They keep saying this every year or so. There's always going to be handwriting of some kind.

True. The question is whether or not it'll be any good. In 8th grade English I often turned in assignments where the teacher called me up to her desk a few moments later asking me to tell her what I wrote. I usually replied with, "I have no idea."

I remember commenting once on a History teacher's handwriting, that I thought that it looked nice, and she told me that she and her classmates would often sit and copy one letter over and over taking up several sheets of paper to increase their letter-drawing skill.
 
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Sniffles

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True. The question is whether or not it'll be any good. In 8th grade English I often turned in assignments where the teacher called me up to her desk a few moments later asking me to tell her what I wrote. I usually replied with, "I have no idea."

Touche. I often have trouble reading my own handwriting, since I write in a weird mix of cursive/printing.

A great sense of balance needs to be instilled in kids. Yes computers are great, but one has to also know how to operate without them as well. A big part of my life as a young person has been to trying to discover that balance.

Kids don't know what they're missing really.
 

Anja

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Many of the rules of good grammar have been discarded as the sheer force of ignorance of language as an art form has flooded our culture.

I have old family letters from the eighteen hundreds and even the laborers in the family wrote beautifully, both in content and in hand-writing style.

I doubt, that given the present state of education in this country we can afford to devote much time to teaching handwriting skills. The preference now is given to the most expedient methods.
 

Eldanen

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I seem to remember a scene in a movie that I watched a long time ago, or perhaps it was a scene from 1984 I visualized where the common people had to dictate what they wanted to remember into a machine. None of them knew how to write. (Or read for that matter, so it's only partially related.) Please forgive the reference to 1984. I'm not making a political statement here. It's just something I remembered.
 

Athenian200

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I hope handwriting does go out the window. It takes more time than typing and has no advantage over it. It's a waste of time, energy, and material.

I personally can't write in cursive. :) I refused to learn it, telling my mother when I was 7 "Handwriting is going to be obsolete. Why should I waste my time learning that when I can type on a computer?" She accepted that logic, and to this day I've gotten by just using print or typing on a computer. And she admits now, that things do sure enough seem to be going in that direction. Don't get me wrong, my print is quite legible... I just don't see the need to use a pen any more than necessary.

The only real remnants of it are in quick post-it notes and signatures. We won't be able to obsolete those as long as we use physical paper as much as we do.
 
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Sniffles

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I hope handwriting does go out the window. It takes more time than typing and has no advantage over it. It's a waste of time, energy, and material.

Efficiency is the end of all things now?

Oh well, pray your city is never hit by an EMP bomb anytime soon.
 

placebo

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Erg, I think this is absurd. I can't think of a future where my kids won't be able to WRITE WITH THEIR OWN HANDS.
 

Eldanen

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Efficiency is the end of all things now?

Oh well, pray your city is never hit by an EMP bomb anytime soon.

:rofl1:

I was thinking about some cataclysmic event like that. Tools are okay until you become reliant on them for survival. Then your species becomes endangered.

Oh, and Athenian, I tried to explain some possible advantages to handwriting over typing in my original post. Do you have any thoughts on what I said about the subconscious influence of it, that is, some extra bits being transferred through it that don't carry over in typing?
 

Athenian200

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Efficiency is the end of all things now?

Well, with something like the method of getting words down on paper, yes. I'm not talking about art.
Oh well, pray your city is never hit by an EMP bomb anytime soon.

Allowing handwriting as a primary form to go away doesn't mean people would forget how to depict the symbols without a computer in an emergency. Just like writing with a pen doesn't mean people have forgotten how to use a chisel and hammer to carve things in stone.

I'm just saying that handwriting should be relegated to a ceremonial or artistic significance much like carving things in stone was after we started using ink.
 

Anja

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I started to think about my earlier post and expected to hear a question about why waste the time to communicate in an elegant style.

And I began to think of the "perfect" handwriting of my mother and father. All the letters uniform and in a straight row. They were very proud of their hand-writing and I remember when they began to bemoan the fact that their writing became increasingly unintelligible with age.

I thought a possible anti response would have something to do with expediency and productivity. And I began to think of the previous generations who had time to both write well AND invent the airplane, the computer, etc. while they were also dealing with forming modern social culture, dealing with financial depression and two world wars. Heh.
 

Eldanen

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I started to think about my earlier post and expected to hear a question about why waste the time to communicate in an elegant style.

And I began to think of the "perfect" handwriting of my mother and father. All the letters uniform and in a straight row. They were very proud of their hand-writing and I remember when they began to bemoan the fact that their writing became increasingly unintelligible with age.

I thought a possible anti response would have something to do with expediency and productivity. And I began to think of the previous generations who had time to both write well AND invent the airplane, the computer, etc. while they were also dealing with forming modern social culture, dealing with financial depression and two world wars. Heh.

Maybe people spend too much time on Youtube today. It's probably why we're so fat. I've very often wondered the same thing myself: how did those people from yesteryear manage to accomplish so much, and do it all very well? Probably because they did more, period. I remember a P.E. teacher in his forties telling us that he wouldn't run laps with us because he would embarrass us schoolkids, haha.
 
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Sniffles

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Well, with something like the method of getting words down on paper, yes. I'm not talking about art.
Thank goodness I have a sense of aesthetics.

Allowing handwriting as a primary form to go away doesn't mean people would forget how to depict the symbols without a computer in an emergency.

That's not really true. You retain skills best by actually using them on a continual basis.

Just like writing with a pen doesn't mean people have forgotten how to use a chisel and hammer to carve things in stone.
I don't know about that. I remember having to teach kids how to use a ratchet to unscrew a bolt in my Auto mechanics courses.

I'm just saying that handwriting should be relegated to a ceremonial significance much like carving things in stone was after we started using ink.

Or how about you have a more balanced approach between the two?
 

Athenian200

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:rofl1:

I was thinking about some cataclysmic event like that. Tools are okay until you become reliant on them for survival. Then your species becomes endangered.

Oh, and Athenian, I tried to explain some possible advantages to handwriting over typing in my original post. Do you have any thoughts on what I said about the subconscious influence of it, that is, some extra bits being transferred through it that don't carry over in typing?

I don't think anything that's being lost is significant enough to warrant holding on to it as a primary tool rather than an auxiliary/emergency one. The point of writing is to express language in a text format. We can still use different fonts, bold and italicized text, and change the color of our text on a computer, remember.

Handwriting makes sense as an art form or something ceremonial, but surely you must agree that it's impractical for everyday use.
 
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Sniffles

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Handwriting makes sense as an art form or something ceremonial, but surely you must agree that it's impractical for everyday use.

I use handwriting everyday, especially at work, where we don't even have access to computers except for higher up business.

Plus this is built on the false presupposition of the disconnect between art(aesthetics) and everyday life - which is a false premise of modernity. We can also add the semi-Spenglerian contrast between culture and civilization.
 

Anja

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Don't look now, Athenian, but you've been brainwashed by the tech culture. :smile:
 

Athenian200

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Wow, Athenian. It seems short-sighted. . .

I think you're romanticizing it too much because you grew up with it. Don't feel bad, a lot of people do that.

I'm just saying that it makes NO SENSE to do something in a slower way that takes more resources just because of the fear of what will be lost. Handwriting should be preserved as an art form, for ceremony, and for emergency situations, but I don't see any good reason to keep it as an everyday tool when it's no longer the best way.
 

Anja

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I hope this isn't a derail. Perhaps it is connected to the OP.

It was an article I read in the paper last week about the narrow window of opportunity each child has to learn certain basic communication skills. It mentioned that today's children are defficient in some areas of one-to-one communication because they have been interacting with machines to the detriment of their living skills.

It's not surprising to hear someone verbalize the thoughts that they are expendable but it is frightening. I do see the tendency toward your thoughts and attitude, Athenian. But I also see the social state of things these days and it doesn't look like the prevailing direction is for the positive.
 
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