A Writing Question

[Spot's Meow]

Yeah my cursive and print looks about the same as tsq's, except with my own unique little style for some things.

We had to turn in essays in elementary school in cursive, but for everyone in the class it was always a case of writing it first the way you most naturally would, in print, and then having to go back and copy it into cursive.

 

[kes7]

I'm 28 and write using a combination of both. Letters that are easy to connect, I do ... letters that are awkward to connect, I don't. I'm left-hand dominant, if that makes a difference.

 

[Canadave]

Don't people who print find it a lot slower? Lifting the pen off the paper not only for each new letter, but even the letters themselves aren't a smooth single movement! I find nothing more painful than being required to fill forms in print form.

Not really... I've been printing since high school, which is pretty much when schools stop forcing people to write in cursive, and I find I'm pretty fast.

 

[Mallory]

I'm on the cusp of 49 and I haven't bothered with cursive since Second Grade. The only time that my Second Grade teacher ever got mad at me-- I was the little intellectual, teacher's pet, class librarian-type-- was when I said, "Why have a second way to write that's harder to do and harder to read?"

I still feel the same way. Writing is about communication. One clear method is sufficient.

I agree. And the habit became ingrained when I went to college in the 70's. As an IT major I had to take a lot of programming classes and this was back in the days of using coding forms and keypunch machines. You simply can't print one letter per box on a coding form using cursive.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

You can actually see examples of both types of writing from me in the drawing I did here...

Not much of an example, but I like my cursive better. My printing looks like a kid did it.

(The drawing is of my alternate version of Dukat. This scene takes place when another character in a round robin I entered him into realizes that this version actually has a heart.)

 

[sidious618]

I print everything but my name and I hate having to do even that in cursive.

 

[Nathan_Heller]

I write in cursive all of the time and even strangers tell me I have beautiful handwriting (many thanks to my early grade school teachers).

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I write in cursive all of the time and even strangers tell me I have beautiful handwriting (many thanks to my early grade school teachers).

And see, I'm not sure HOW my writing got to be that way. When I was in grade school, it was horrible!

 

[Holdfast]

Is it true what they say about doctors having a pathological inability to write clearly?

Pretty much... I just copied this out of a book lying near me as an example. Admittedly, I wasn't writing quite as freely as normally, since one hand was holding the book open, so it's marginally worse than normal. But you get the idea:

 

[trampledamage]

I got as far as "delighted by this coup de theatre" - after that is beyond my reading capabilities!

 

[Kestra]

You can tell the Brits - we say "joined up writing"

What actually is "print" - to me it means block capitals, but I don't think you all are writing everything in all caps, so is it lower-case but not joined up?

I used to think of it as block capitals too, but I think it's just not joined up, to you guys.

Don't people who print find it a lot slower? Lifting the pen off the paper not only for each new letter, but even the letters themselves aren't a smooth single movement! I find nothing more painful than being required to fill forms in print form.

Not really... I've been printing since high school, which is pretty much when schools stop forcing people to write in cursive, and I find I'm pretty fast.

Same here. Here's an example of some recent notes I took in class, so not my best writing, but still pretty legible.

I print everything but my name and I hate having to do even that in cursive.

Yeah I refuse to even sign my name in cursive, it's more of a scribble but it's still in print.

Is it true what they say about doctors having a pathological inability to write clearly?

Pretty much... I just copied this out of a book lying near me as an example. Admittedly, I wasn't writing quite as freely as normally, since one hand was holding the book open, so it's marginally worse than normal. But you get the idea:

That's actually fairly legible! My parents are both doctors and while my mom's handwriting is mostly legible, my dad's is ridiculous and I find having to ask his office manager to translate it some of the time. After years of working for him, she can read it better than I can!

 

[Holdfast]

I got as far as "delighted by this coup de theatre" - after that is beyond my reading capabilities!

A good place to stop, I guess.

Same here. Here's an example of some recent notes I took in class, so not my best writing, but still pretty legible.

This is just amazingly neat.

BTW, you can add "partial agonist" to the bottom of that page of notes.

Is it true what they say about doctors having a pathological inability to write clearly?

Pretty much... I just copied this out of a book lying near me as an example. Admittedly, I wasn't writing quite as freely as normally, since one hand was holding the book open, so it's marginally worse than normal. But you get the idea:

That's actually fairly legible! My parents are both doctors and while my mom's handwriting is mostly legible, my dad's is ridiculous and I find having to ask his office manager to translate it some of the time. After years of working for him, she can read it better than I can!

This is a good point really - joined-up writing is only illegible to those not used to reading it. Once you get your eye in, it becomes much more legible. When I was a kid, I remember it was really difficult to read my dad's handwriting, but by the time I was a bit older, it was no problem at all.

A colleague of mine has what could qualify as the most appalling handwriting in the world. Seriously bad. But even there, I got better at reading it with practice. I bet if I tried reading his writing now, I'd have trouble again, since I haven't had to for a couple of years now.

 

[Kestra]

This is just amazingly neat.

BTW, you can add "partial agonist" to the bottom of that page of notes.

You know, I almost didn't post the notes because I was like "I bet Holdfast will have comments on it." That's just a portion of my notes, but the topic of the class is addiction studies and we're not really going into anything in detail. The prof himself isn't a scientist, which is good in some ways and bad in others.

I do enjoy writing by hand in general, though. I have variations on my writing that don't resemble each other very much .... an illegible horizontal scrawl for when I can barely keep up in class, or a pretty hybrid script/cursive for addressing invitations.

 

[Jadzia]

We were taught joined up writing at primary school, but we didn't have to use it in our regular work. I never did like it.

When I do handwriting I try to get it down as quick as possible, while still trying to keep it legible. If I'm writing for myself, I'll often make shortcuts with letters and deliberately not finish words that are obvious to me, and just put a line to represent the word.

With some words I have my own shorthand way of representing them, like 'of' I'll represent with a glyph like c/ -- something that takes half as many hand movements.

I don't make much effort to make my writing pretty, just as long as the person who it's intended for can easily understand it, that's all that matters. People tell me I have easy to read writing.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

Is it true what they say about doctors having a pathological inability to write clearly?

Only the very best ones.

 

[indranee]

I always write in cursive. was brought up to do that. Print writing is what kids do!

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

This is an excerpt from the first draft of my January fanfic writing contest entry, "The Nature of the Beast," describing how humanity was genetically altered in an AU where the Dominion won the war.

(The final version is posted here in the fanfic forum.)

You can see a bit of printing in there...for some reason, I always print italicized stuff, when I write cursive, and do italicized stuff in cursive when I print. (I know, I know, you're supposed to underline it, but whatever.)

I'm curious to know, guys--how readable IS it, really?

 

[ThankQ]

I mostly print, but some will sometimes connect letters if it is obvious to do so.

I've also developed shortcuts. Letters like lower case "b d p" are all made without an abrupt stop and change of direction. For example, a lowercase "d" I write like a "j", I just continue the motion until I've closed the circle part of the "d". The "b" is just a backward version of that, and "p" is an upside down version.

 

[K'Ehleyr]

Oh! It came out crooked and pink! *titter ye not*

 

[Commander Rabbit]

I'm 59. I write mostly in cursive, unless I'm trying to write a particularly neat list or filling in blanks on a form or something like that. I don't get complaints about legibility.