CNN Article: Handwriting on the Decline

[Bruce Wayne]

Not for me. I still write my grandma letters in cursive.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/tech/web/impact-technology-handwriting/index.html?c=tech

 

[sheeplady]

Anybody who thinks that handwriting has gone extinct has never had to write something quickly without an electronic gadget. Printing is slow and painful if you need to write quickly.

 

[R.G. White]

It kind of worries me. I write almost religiously in a journal, and a big part of why I do it for my descendants. I'm a big diary/journal fanatic. I find them fascinating, and I'd like to provide something for the future generations of my family of what my life is like, what type of thoughts I think, who I am, etc., etc. I'm certainly not anybody special, but I'll be a part of history one day just like everybody else. If one of my ancestors had a journal lying around, I'd devour it in a day!
But does it even matter? I doubt they'll be able to read my handwriting... it'll probably look like another language to them.

 

[Tomasso]

I doubt they'll be able to read my handwriting... it'll probably look like another language to them.

Ha, I've struggled at times to read my own handwriting.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

One of the reasons I think we dropped the obsessive teaching of those very carefully formed letters in the UK was because most people are crap at it, and never become good at it. This is un-necessarily demoralising for a child.

I've never met anyone with handwriting I couldn't read after a fashion. My worst experience was trying to convince American undergraduates to PRINT their name at the top of an exam paper, so that we could read it. Most of them would use their signature (a sign of extreme pretension), not caring that we had to alphabetise the papers, and that a poorly formed stylised upper case "D" looks just like a poorly formed upper case "G", etc.

Far more worrying is the lack of understanding of the construction of a sentence, let alone a paragraph. This is the stuff that's important (both to the communicator and to the person being addressed), not how neat a kid's writing is.

 

[Shangas]

Writing is very important to me. I write cursive, and legibility is a big deal to me.

I went to the local welfare office last week for an appointment, and I handed in a medical form filled in, signed and stamped by my doctor. I handed the document to the assessor or whatever, and apologised for my physician's shocking handwriting. I hoped that he would be able to read it.

He took one look at the chicken-scrawl, and said: "It's actually not bad. I've seen much worse".

I was dumbfounded. The whole document was filled out in something barely resembling a language written in the Roman alphabet. How that guy managed to read it is a mystery to me.

 

[Ghost Rider]

I've often wondered whether handwriting would eventually be another lost skill, like map reading or remembering telephone numbers, although with my illegible writing, it's probably a good thing

 

[GHT]

One of the reasons I think we dropped the obsessive teaching of those very carefully formed letters in the UK was because most people are crap at it, and never become good at it. This is un-necessarily demoralising for a child.

Curious that, the school that I went to, in East London, taught italic script, as a way of improving everyone's handwriting. We were taught that the loops in cursive handwriting over complicated things and that learning to write using simple vee shapes was not only easier, it also had an aesthetic that was pleasing to the eye.
Now I don't, for one minute, think that my own handwriting, is copperplate. But, I would like to think it's legible, and different enough to draw attention, the reason being comes clear if you read the letter.

 

[earl]

Not for me. I still write my grandma letters in cursive.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/26/tech/web/impact-technology-handwriting/index.html?c=tech

My hand-writing is a bit hard to read. But, now that you mention it, can't remember the last time I sent a letter. Greeting cards, sure. No wonder USPS is in financial trouble. Earl

 

[Baron Kurtz]

[2 posts up] The good thing about a computer-generated letter is the punctuation filter …

 

[Stanley Doble]

They can't do simple math either. Without a pocket calculator most people under 50 are lost.

200 years ago most people were uneducated. Then came universal education, concentrating on the core skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Now we have come full circle with many adults no smarter than their great great great grandparents, except that they wasted 10 years or more in school.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One huge reason for the decline of handwriting is simply the obsolescence of the common dip pen. When you learned to write with a steel nib and an inkwell, learning carefulness and precision was an essential part of learning to write: you had to think about getting the right amount of ink from each dip, you had to be careful with your strokes to keep the pen from blotting, and you had to watch your movements to avoid smearing the ink before it dried. All this contributed to an attention to detail that was part and parcel of the writing process for the generations that learned this way, and they remained a part of their subconscious approach to writing even when using a ball point pen.

People who learned to write after the inkwells went away didn't learn that precision. It didn't matter what they did with their hands or their wrists because the ball point was very very forgiving. That promoted a slackness in approach to penmanship that would be carried forward no matter what instrument they used.

 

[HudsonHawk]

They can't do simple math either. Without a pocket calculator most people under 50 are lost.

200 years ago most people were uneducated. Then came universal education, concentrating on the core skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.

Now we have come full circle with many adults no smarter than their great great great grandparents, except that they wasted 10 years or more in school.

I think that's grossly overstating it. Most people today know a lot more math than their grandparents did, at least the concepts, which is far more important than memorizing things like "times tables".

And there's nothing wrong with using a calculator for complicated functions, or even simple ones for that matter. I'm sure there were people 100 years ago who complained about the "kids these days" who couldn't do simple calculus without the help of a slide rule.

 

[Stanley Doble]

Next time you are in a store, if the total comes to $7.39 try handing the clerk a $10 bill, a quarter, a dime and 4 pennies and see what happens.

50 years ago there was a cartoon strip in Mad magazine satirizing the American obsession with comfort and labor saving devices. They offered their prediction of where this trend would lead in 50 years time. It showed overweight Americans with enormous butts riding around on electric 4 wheel scooters while skinny Chinese laughed at them and ran rings around them.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Next time you are in a store, if the total comes to $7.39 try handing the clerk a $10 bill, a quarter, a dime and 4 pennies and see what happens.

I know exactly what will happen...the clerk will hand me back three $1 bills. If you're trying to argue that the average American can't subtract 7 from 10, you're really barking up the wrong tree. There are plenty of legitimate concerns about the "kids these days". The inability to do simple arithmetic isn't one of them.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Exactly. The reason the cashier/clerk puts all the numbers through the till is simple. The exact amount due is rung up, the exact amount remitted is rung up, and the exact change is given back. Then no-one can argue, and the cashier/clerk has done their job properly.

I was in a store recently where a customer got extremely het-up because the clerk/cashier needed to scan the item he wanted to buy before he could pay for it. He literally just wanted to hand over the cash, with no record of what had been sold. The customer had no idea of stock control or security or any of the other reasons he cashier simply can't accept his statement of "it costs a pound - just take the pound" …[huh]

 

[LizzieMaine]

People get impatient at our box office when we have to go thru the enter-cash-tendered-and-wait-for-the-total process, but it's invaluable in figuring out shortages or overages at the end of the night -- I can track every single cent that passes thru our till and know who, if anyone, is making mistakes. But I'm proud to say our kids don't make mistakes. They might not be able to do math without a calculator, but our tills are spot-on every single night.

I can't do math even *with* a calculator. It's a blind spot.

 

[fashion frank]

Forgive me if I'm wrong here but what I'm getting here or the gist thereof is that EVEN though we have more
tech. gadgets today than ever ,computers ,cellphones and the list goes on ,but the problem as I see it is that all of this
crap is dumbing everyone down and more so with the young people .

Why I pine for the good old days is for example , before cellphones , if someone called your house and you were not home "oh well " they just called you when you were there , no big deal, but also no text me , no instant measage , no tweet you etc etc I liked the fact that you could in fact be " detached " if you wanted to be but now my own cellphone will keep
making noises till I look at it just to find someone was trying to reach me and the content of what their message was, was in reality nothing ,but they had to " reach out and touch me " regardless.

I like to read the newspaper , guess what they are now the size of a church bulletin and most of them are going out of
business because of all this crap.

All this "I have to have it instantly " stuff is what is wrong with the world today no patience for anything anymore
" I wanted it yesterday right now " is what is the norm now.

I guess what I trying to get at is that I miss the slower pace of life, like when I was growing up and I blame all of this
"progress " on all of this new fangled gadettry that imho has screwed things up.

In closing though its kinda funny that I'm typing ( not writing ) this on a computer to all of you all over the world, so it's
ironic in and of itself although I would gladly give it all up in a heartbeat?

All the Best , Fashion Frank

 

[HudsonHawk]

Forgive me if I'm wrong here but what I'm getting here or the gist thereof is that EVEN though we have more
tech. gadgets today than ever ,computers ,cellphones and the list goes on ,but the problem as I see it is that all of this
crap is dumbing everyone down and more so with the young people .

Why I pine for the good old days is for example , before cellphones , if someone called your house and you were not home "oh well " they just called you when you were there , no big deal, but also no text me , no instant measage , no tweet you etc etc I liked the fact that you could in fact be " detached " if you wanted to be but now my own cellphone will keep
making noises till I look at it just to find someone was trying to reach me and the content of what their message was, was in reality nothing ,but they had to " reach out and touch me " regardless.

I like to read the newspaper , guess what they are now the size of a church bulletin and most of them are going out of
business because of all this crap.

All this "I have to have it instantly " stuff is what is wrong with the world today no patience for anything anymore
" I wanted it yesterday right now " is what is the norm now.

I guess what I trying to get at is that I miss the slower pace of life, like when I was growing up and I blame all of this
"progress " on all of this new fangled gadettry that imho has screwed things up.

In closing though its kinda funny that I'm typing ( not writing ) this on a computer to all of you all over the world, so it's
ironic in and of itself although I would gladly give it all up in a heartbeat?

All the Best , Fashion Frank

The gadgetry has certainly bred impatience. And again, there's lots to point out with the young folks...in business, in social settings, in work ethic, etc. but I don't think they're dumb. Far from it.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

Are you suggesting that kids today are smarter than we were when we were their age? I remain unconvinced.