This is a post inspired by a conversation I had with a friend, who lamented that he hadn't had enough time to write everything he wanted during a test. He chalked it up to not knowing how to write quickly with cursive, and vowed to learn how to write better. I gave him some advice, and then tried out a quick experiment with my advice, and some extra thoughts.
Sample Text
I told my friend Patrick today, that if he wanted to improve his cursive writing, that he should focus on a few aspects
- Write slowly
- Write fluidly
- Write larger than usual
And of course, daily practice :)
With this text, I tried writing out four times with four different pens
I also kept my paper at a hard 45 degree angle, to facilitate drawing the pen to the right and upwards, which is much easier anatomically I find.
So we begin the experiment
As you can see, I also need some work with my own advice.))
Sometimes I would focus on fluidity, and screw up on going slowly to build better stroke habits.
But I did stick to writing the same size, so that was a plus.)
Para a vida e para a aprendizagem,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Do you think writing in cursive is faster than "normal" handwriting? To me, cursive handwriting is harder to read and takes longer to write. Personally, I neither write block letters nor cursive but a mixture of both. As always, a very interesting topic to discuss 😃
Hey Linda, it is definitely faster to write in cursive, as you don't have to keep lifting up and putting down your pen between letters, but between words, so for me it keep up with my thoughts a little bit better. I would also personally challenge that cursive is harder to read, as there's two things that contribute to this. 1) bad cursive is predominant, and bad cursive is always hard to read lol. 2) We as societies have much more exposure to print letters, so we do not practice reading cursive as much. There are also different types of cursive that are either geared towards writing quickly, or to being more legible. In the US here, when i was in 3rd and 4th grade, we learned a style of "Palmer" cursive that's very loopy and lends itself to writing quickly, but can easily be sloppy. I've been looking more into Spencerian cursive, as it's a bit more even and straight, so it's pretty easy to read, and plus, Cyrillic cursive also use Spencerian cursive for their letters, so win win :))
Also as a final point, bad print writing skills are also predominant and that also doesn't lend itself to legibility.)
I agree that in general, bad handwriting is hard to read. 😅 My experience was that cursive contributed to the messiness in people's handwriting. I'm going to look into the differences between Palmer and Spencerian 😊