I hate modern cell phones!

[scotpens]

The first video makes me despair for civilization. It's like the conversations I've had with teens and 20-something people on forums who have no concept of life before computers, and don't understand why they should learn cursive writing. They can't imagine that they might not have batteries to make their electronic devices work, to write stuff.

I, too, used to despair for the future of humanity when I read that many schools no longer teach cursive writing. But then I thought, how useful is cursive in today's world? Most people's cursive handwriting is a semi-legible scrawl at best. When I need to take down information on paper, I use block printing -- which I can write pretty quickly. Cursive is really useful only for professional calligraphers and for signing your name. But in this age of electronic identification, handwritten signatures may someday be as obsolete as the goose-quill pen.

 

[Sophie74656]

Prison

HAHA, well done!

 

[Timewalker]

I, too, used to despair for the future of humanity when I read that many schools no longer teach cursive writing. But then I thought, how useful is cursive in today's world? Most people's cursive handwriting is a semi-legible scrawl at best. When I need to take down information on paper, I use block printing -- which I can write pretty quickly. Cursive is really useful only for professional calligraphers and for signing your name. But in this age of electronic identification, handwritten signatures may someday be as obsolete as the goose-quill pen.

Consider all the older documents and other written material that exists. If people don't learn cursive writing, they won't be able to read this material. It becomes a matter of literacy, not just signing a name or making out a grocery list.

Calligraphy is a skill I learned during my time in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Apparently I did well enough that the teacher asked if I had thought about being a scribe - someone tasked with producing official scrolls and awards certificates that are meticulously calligraphed and illuminated.

I never did take him up on that, although I produced calligraphed menus for our Shire's feasts. And in doing this, it wasn't at all like ordinary handwriting. Learning calligraphy does tend to help one improve their ordinary handwriting... but the technique for both skills is quite different.

(And yes, I know you can do calligraphy on the computer nowadays... I even did some back in the '90s, but it was never anywhere near as satisfying as when I did it myself, with pen and ink and paper.)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Cursive writing is no guarantee of readability. Just ask any doctor.

 

[scotpens]

Consider all the older documents and other written material that exists. If people don't learn cursive writing, they won't be able to read this material. It becomes a matter of literacy, not just signing a name or making out a grocery list.

In the not-too-distant future, reading and transcribing cursive writing may well become a specialized skill, just like translating classical Greek, Latin, Old English or Middle English texts into modern English.

 

[Refuge]

Reading, writing, and 'rithmetic. To be replaced by scanning, texting, and button pushing.

 

[Astra]

Consider all the older documents and other written material that exists. If people don't learn cursive writing, they won't be able to read this material. It becomes a matter of literacy, not just signing a name or making out a grocery list.

Good post! I think handwriting is much quicker than writing every letter single. I never could do that as quick.

And we have that already in Germany before 1940. Sutterlin and Fraktur. I can read it when printed in a book, but if I try to read my grandmother's handwriting, I need the help of my father. You can learn to read and write these special letters though.

Here you can look what the letters used to look like if you are interested: http://www.digitalhistoryarchive.com/suumltterlin--fraktur-german-scripts.html

 

[Timewalker]

Cursive writing is no guarantee of readability. Just ask any doctor.

In my case, it helped that I spent years as a typist, turning nursing and pharmacy students' handwritten drafts into term papers. One of the things I learned was how to decipher the weird squiggles and abbreviations in prescriptions, so now I don't need the pharmacist to translate it for me.

In the not-too-distant future, reading and transcribing cursive writing may well become a specialized skill, just like translating classical Greek, Latin, Old English or Middle English texts into modern English.

I already spent years doing that. It was one of my home-based businesses back in the '80s and '90s, taking college and university students' handwritten essays and term papers and typing them (first on my electric Smith-Corona, and then on a computer). Some people had beautiful handwriting and I sailed through their papers quite quickly. Most were average, and there were maybe two or three people to whom I had to say, "Please go home and rewrite this so it's neater, because I can't read it."

 

[KennyB]

I already spent years doing that. It was one of my home-based businesses back in the '80s and '90s, taking college and university students' handwritten essays and term papers and typing them (first on my electric Smith-Corona, and then on a computer). Some people had beautiful handwriting and I sailed through their papers quite quickly. Most were average, and there were maybe two or three people to whom I had to say, "Please go home and rewrite this so it's neater, because I can't read it."

I remember folks offering that service.....kids today will never know that struggle.

 

[scotpens]

And we have that already in Germany before 1940. Sutterlin and Fraktur. I can read it when printed in a book, but if I try to read my grandmother's handwriting, I need the help of my father. You can learn to read and write these special letters though.

Yeah, those old German typefaces can be a bitch to read. Hitler probably thought modern Bauhaus sans-serif fonts were degenerate.

 

[KennyB]

Yeah, those old German typefaces can be a bitch to read. Hitler probably thought modern Bauhaus sans-serif fonts were degenerate.

Didn't he invent Comic Sans? I kid...........I kid.

 

[Timewalker]

I remember folks offering that service.....kids today will never know that struggle.

Judging by what I see online, having all the bells and whistles on their own computers still hasn't managed to make people more literate as far as grammar and punctuation are concerned.

That's part of what I offered. One girl asked me, "Do you guarantee me an A?" and I told her, "No. I guarantee that I will do my utmost to turn out a paper that has no spelling errors, is formatted correctly, and I will make sure the papers are grammatically correct, and so forth. The actual content of the paper is up to you, and if you write a paper that deserves an A, chances are good that your instructor will give you an A. If it's not good enough for that, there's nothing I can do about it." If I noticed that people had some specific, chronic issue with grammar, formatting, etc., I might briefly explain where they were going wrong, or recommend one of the group tutoring sessions the library offered.

In all the years I did this, only two people actually - blatantly, at that - offered me money to write the entire assignment for them. The first asked right in front of the Student Association secretary, and my grandmother said that had to be a test, to see if I was willing to break the rules (plagiarism of that sort would have resulted in immediate expulsion) because surely nobody could be that stupid.

I told him off for even thinking of asking that. And later on, a guy in the science fiction club on campus offered to pay me to write an English essay for him. He got told off, too.

Evidently nowadays there are programs and websites to keep track of such shenanigans and identify plagiarized material. I get that students have a dozen things going on at once and are strapped for time, but buying papers and taking credit for things they didn't write... sheesh.

I wouldn't even make up a title for my clients if they forgot one. Every paper had to have one, and I did remind them of that. If we were talking about it over the phone, sometimes they'd say, "Will you make one up for me?" and I told them no. If they protested, I'd explain that first of all, it wasn't my paper, it was theirs, and they were responsible for its content - including the title. Second of all, just because I type a paper, it doesn't mean I actually know anything about the topic and wouldn't know a good title from one that wouldn't have anything to do with the topic. I wanted my clients to get the best marks they possibly could, and wouldn't want any mistake of mine to ruin that.

Over the years, I did learn a lot about various subjects. It's what led me to get into classical history, actually. Someone brought me an essay to type and I thought, wow, this class looks really interesting. So I took it the following year and it was one of the most interesting, fun courses I ever took.

 

[KennyB]

Judging by what I see online, having all the bells and whistles on their own computers still hasn't managed to make people more literate as far as grammar and punctuation are concerned.

That's part of what I offered. One girl asked me, "Do you guarantee me an A?" and I told her, "No. I guarantee that I will do my utmost to turn out a paper that has no spelling errors, is formatted correctly, and I will make sure the papers are grammatically correct, and so forth. The actual content of the paper is up to you, and if you write a paper that deserves an A, chances are good that your instructor will give you an A. If it's not good enough for that, there's nothing I can do about it." If I noticed that people had some specific, chronic issue with grammar, formatting, etc., I might briefly explain where they were going wrong, or recommend one of the group tutoring sessions the library offered.

In all the years I did this, only two people actually - blatantly, at that - offered me money to write the entire assignment for them. The first asked right in front of the Student Association secretary, and my grandmother said that had to be a test, to see if I was willing to break the rules (plagiarism of that sort would have resulted in immediate expulsion) because surely nobody could be that stupid.

I told him off for even thinking of asking that. And later on, a guy in the science fiction club on campus offered to pay me to write an English essay for him. He got told off, too.

Evidently nowadays there are programs and websites to keep track of such shenanigans and identify plagiarized material. I get that students have a dozen things going on at once and are strapped for time, but buying papers and taking credit for things they didn't write... sheesh.

I wouldn't even make up a title for my clients if they forgot one. Every paper had to have one, and I did remind them of that. If we were talking about it over the phone, sometimes they'd say, "Will you make one up for me?" and I told them no. If they protested, I'd explain that first of all, it wasn't my paper, it was theirs, and they were responsible for its content - including the title. Second of all, just because I type a paper, it doesn't mean I actually know anything about the topic and wouldn't know a good title from one that wouldn't have anything to do with the topic. I wanted my clients to get the best marks they possibly could, and wouldn't want any mistake of mine to ruin that.

Over the years, I did learn a lot about various subjects. It's what led me to get into classical history, actually. Someone brought me an essay to type and I thought, wow, this class looks really interesting. So I took it the following year and it was one of the most interesting, fun courses I ever took.

I am in grad school now, after a 25 year hiatus and I'm pretty amazed at how easy writing is NOW compared to then. Word formats everything for you, does your citations in whatever style you need APA, MLA, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. I was a horrid typist in 1989........not MUCH better now, but at least I don't have to rip out whole pages and redo them. Oh and yes, everything must go through TurnItIn.com now which will ping anything that is similar to other papers.

 

[Timewalker]

What if the instructor wants a modified version of these formats? I had to deal with a couple of issues where the instructor seemed to want half-and-half, with their own bizarre ideas for margins.

 

[DimesDan]

I am in grad school now, after a 25 year hiatus and I'm pretty amazed at how easy writing is NOW compared to then. Word formats everything for you, does your citations in whatever style you need APA, MLA, all you have to do is fill in the blanks. I was a horrid typist in 1989........not MUCH better now, but at least I don't have to rip out whole pages and redo them. Oh and yes, everything must go through TurnItIn.com now which will ping anything that is similar to other papers.

Turnitin is a brilliant program. It's an originality checker while checking for plagiarism. I remember one of my first assignments when I did my Applied Computing BSc that focused on soft skills that required a CV in the appendix, several terms in my CV got flagged by the system because I had used them before in previous CVs and a similar assignment from ten years previously. It also meant that assignments needed to be uploaded by a set time and stopped the need to physically print and submit an assignment.- Although when I visited Sussex University last year to enquire about doing a Masters there, I discovered the didn't use Turnitin and students still needed to submit a paper copy.

It can also be a pain in the arse, I've lost count the amount of times I've had a student complain that they can't submit their assignment on the system - it's normally because the lecturer hasn't enabled the ability to submit the assignment and explaining that I can't do that and only upto said Lecturer is like banging my head on a brick wall.

What if the instructor wants a modified version of these formats? I had to deal with a couple of issues where the instructor seemed to want half-and-half, with their own bizarre ideas for margins.

Why would they want a modified way to reference something?

 

[KennyB]

What if the instructor wants a modified version of these formats? I had to deal with a couple of issues where the instructor seemed to want half-and-half, with their own bizarre ideas for margins.

That's just strange. Bit of a power trip.

 

[Timewalker]

That's just strange. Bit of a power trip.

She was one of the instructors in the nursing program. Thanks to word of mouth advertising, I actually ended up typing for a whole class in one of the courses, plus overlaps with other courses. Some of the standard assignments were a bit odd, and I'd get a call from a nervous student saying, "I've got this weird term paper coming up, it's not like the others ones..." and I'd ask if it was the "Rosemary Rizzo Parse paper" and they'd say yes. So I told them, "I've already typed a dozen of them, and it doesn't scare me anymore." At that point the student would relax and book the drop-off time.

The instructor I mentioned was one who took a physical ruler and measured the margins of the papers. If they were so much as an eighth of an inch out, she'd dock marks. I told the students that the paper only fit into my printer a certain way, and I couldn't make the same precise physical adjustments that I could have if I was still using my old typewriter - and if she didn't believe that, they were free to give her my number and I'd tell her that it wasn't fair to dock marks for something beyond anyone's control. When you specify a particular size font and a specific margin for the computer and printer to do, you take what you get - or so it was 20+ years ago when I was using an Amiga 500 and a laser printer.

Alas, that's one of the things I couldn't guarantee for the students. And yeah, that particular instructor was a perfectionist. It always annoyed the hell out of me if an instructor said, "I never give anyone an A. The best you can ever do in my class is a B because nothing is ever perfect." So it was a great day when a student phoned me after turning her paper in, and said, "My instructor never gives As... but she said she had no choice but to give me one, because she couldn't find any mistakes."

I had one like that myself. I went from an A to a B for misplacing two punctuation marks in my bibliography, for an essay on one of Shakespeare's sonnets. It was at that point that I became fanatical about punctuation.

 

[Astra]

I had one like that myself. I went from an A to a B for misplacing two punctuation marks in my bibliography, for an essay on one of Shakespeare's sonnets. It was at that point that I became fanatical about punctuation.

I went from a full A to A- in spelling on my 10th grade (school exit exams) German essay. The only “fault” the teacher found was a “misspelling” which wasn’t a misspelling at all as it was a quote from Lessing’s Ring parable (Nathan the Wise), and the word was in Jiddish and not German and therefore spelled differently. I have been taught that you need to spell citations exactly as they are in the book, right? It did not even occur to me to spell it differently.

And yes, 27 years later I am still bitter about it. It did not influence the grade for the whole essay which still was a full A, and so I did not make a fuss. I guess it mostly hurt that she would assume I would not know the real spelling of the word. I mean, really! Me! For such a simple word!!!!! *shakes head*

(Betrüger vs. Betrieger)

 

[Timewalker]

I went from a full A to A- in spelling on my 10th grade (school exit exams) German essay. The only “fault” the teacher found was a “misspelling” which wasn’t a misspelling at all as it was a quote from Lessing’s Ring parable (Nathan the Wise), and the word was in Jiddish and not German and therefore spelled differently. I have been taught that you need to spell citations exactly as they are in the book, right? It did not even occur to me to spell it differently.

And yes, 27 years later I am still bitter about it. It did not influence the grade for the whole essay which still was a full A, and so I did not make a fuss. I guess it mostly hurt that she would assume I would not know the real spelling of the word. I mean, really! Me! For such a simple word!!!!! *shakes head*

(Betrüger vs. Betrieger)

Your teacher was incorrect, and you should have challenged that mark. Yes, quotations are always supposed to be exact, although if the original contains a spelling error, the proper thing to do is include "[sic]" right after, to indicate that you know it's misspelled.

In your case, however, it wasn't a misspelling, and the teacher was wrong. She should not have docked you for that.


I had a junior high teacher who got visibly upset with me in class for challenging her for saying I'd made mistakes in an essay. I remember writing, "the trees lose their leaves" (referring to leaves falling from the trees in autumn) and she corrected it to "loose."

Well, that's obviously ridiculous. The tree has no conscious decision in this; the leaves are lost no matter what the tree might prefer. So I challenged her, and she muttered sarcastically, "I should have known you never make mistakes."

Funny what a person remembers, 40 years later. That wasn't the only argument we ever had, or the dumbest. She docked me marks for capitalizing "Earth." Since I'd chosen the solar system as the subject for my assignment, of course I capitalized Earth (back in those days I'd just discovered Star Trek and a renewed interest in astronomy, so I was working space-related themes into as many assignments as possible).

I asked her why she had docked marks for that, when she hadn't docked marks for capitalizing "Saturn."

"Well, Saturn is a planet," she told me, as though it was the most obvious reason ever.

"So is Earth," I told her.

This all played out in class in front of the other students, and if looks could kill I'd have become a puddle of goo right then and there. That teacher did not like to be challenged.

 

[Astra]

"Well, Saturn is a planet," she told me, as though it was the most obvious reason ever.

"So is Earth," I told her.

LOL!

There is an old German joke, I hope it goes well with translation. Children are taught in general that you have to capitalize everything that you can touch. It's mostly correct. A kid had the sentence "The Cat sits behind the Oven" wrong. It spelled "The cat Sits (seats) Behind the oven."

When the teacher asked why, it explained: I can't touch the oven, as it is hot. I can't touch the cat, as it scratches me. But I can touch the seat, and I can touch my behind."

Try to argue with that logic!

Yes, I should have challenged my teacher, but I was very shy and insecure at 16 years old. Nowadays I totally would. I contemplated for fun to bring up the issue at the next class meeting, except I really don't want have to do anything anymore with all the guys from back then. That time is over. And they probably would only roll their eyes anyway.