this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Nonsense

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funny, silly, whatevs.

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[–] The_Picard_Maneuver 40 points 1 month ago (2 children)

If you do a lot of writing by hand, cursive is a lifesaver.

[–] spankmonkey 46 points 1 month ago (13 children)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Only if you suck at cursive. Depending on how much effort I put in, both my cursive and print writing can look nice, but writing cursive causes mess stress over time. If I'm just jotting a quick note it doesn't matter and both look like ass, but if I'm taking notes for lecture or in a D&D campaign or something like that, where I'm writing a bunch over an hour or more, I see a huge drop off in quality after a bit of time when writing print.

[–] Duamerthrax 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My mother sucks at cursive then. I have to constantly call her when I do her shopping. If it was for personal notes, it wouldn't matter, but if you're communicating with other people, it's terrible.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Some people just have terrible hand writing, cursive or not

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[–] spankmonkey 8 points 1 month ago

Only if you suck at cursive.

I do, because despite all the work I put into it the letters all blur together. I forget a hump or two whem writing something like communication in cursive, and no amount of practice made a difference.

I can generally read poorly written cursive more easily than well done cusrive because I recognize which letters tend to be skewed. My father in laws lwriting was easier for me to read as his arthritis got worse!

But printed letters are always easier to read, which is why nobody uses cursive fonts when they type something up.

[–] thejoker954 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Meh, my handwriting sucks either way...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Mine is that of a child. It’s embarrassing.

[–] corroded 6 points 1 month ago

I can read my own cursive just fine, and it's way easier to write than printing each letter individually.

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[–] Droggelbecher 9 points 1 month ago

It's the only thing that keeps my chronic tendinitis from making me unable to write altogether

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I switched schools for high school after being in a British private school since the first grade. I was shocked at seeing anyone write in block print for the first time. Up until then I genuinely thought that cursive was the only way to hand-write and that block was reserved for little kids just learning to write.

EDIT: That school even had a calligraphy class that taught us how to write with a fountain pen. I have no idea what world they were preparing us for.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I learned cursive in Canada after living in the UK for a while. When I went back to the UK and went to Sheffield everyone was like, "he knows how to do the joint up writing!" I can't remember the exact year but we were going to start preparing for our GCSEs. Then I left again and went back to Canada.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I am American but I spent my childhood in the Caribbean. My mom wanted to make sure I had a good education so she enrolled me in a private school started and run by a posh British couple to educate the children of the expats stationed there back when agricultural exports were big business (1950's??). I think they taught us they way they were taught as children in their preppy schools at the turn of the century.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Older Millennial here.

I had to learn cursive, memorize the times table, and know the capital of every god damn state. I had to remember the order of planets. I had to memorize polygon names up to 20 and roman numeral math.

There's so many things I learned that I don't use on a day to day. Things I can pull out of my brain but if you made me apply it, I'll struggle for a bit, and scribble the answer on a piece of paper.

The one time the skills came in handy was when I was crushing a escape room.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I mean, broadly speaking there's no utility to knowing the planets or their order. There's no reason to know all the organs in the human body or the capital cities of all the states or the names of a hundred different dinosaurs or the events surrounding WW2.

But some of this stuff is just... fun to know. It gives you a knowledge base that lets you have an intelligent conversation with your peers and answers some broad existential questions about the world around you. And some of it is so foundational to your understanding of reality that - if you leave the teaching to the wrong people - you get some very ugly knock-on effects.

The guy who doesn't know what roman numerals are is much easier to sucker into a Facebook conspiracy theory when he starts seeing them show up in a conversation between Sovereign Citizens. Knowing times-tables is helpful for that base-line mental math that keeps you from getting scammed by a shady contractor or embarrassed when you try and calculate a tip at a restaurant. Knowing your planets at least blunts some of the absurd "Iranian Drone Mothership Harasses Innocent East Coast Dipshits" headlines CNN has been spewing.

And ffs, people still write things down. Cursive is a faster way to write than print. The whole reason people keep coming back to eInk and other free-hand computer tools stems from the fact that a pen remains mightier than a keyboard in a host of cases.

These are all still important educational touchstones, even if you're not going back to them every minute of every day.

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[–] LotrOrc 5 points 1 month ago

God forbid you learn basic skills and knowledge

Why does every bit of knowledge have to be monetized?

Aren't you ever curious about things and want to learn them?

Imagine being an adult now and not being able to do basic math. Wouldn't that be embarrassing?

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Imagine not using the faster, cooler way of writing

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago
[–] spankmonkey 10 points 1 month ago

I don't have to imagine.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I guess it's a good thing he wrote it in print. Nobody would've been able to read it otherwise.

[–] Decomaeker 15 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Kinda makes me wonder why he didn't write that sign in cursive. Kind of a missed oppertunity to accually use it

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

But then no one would be able to tell what it says

[–] Decomaeker 4 points 1 month ago

fair, but it would look nice i guess

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The hell are you talking about? It's the perfect secret code to keep anything hidden from younger generations. It's like how manual transmission is the best car security system there is.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago (9 children)

I have lovely cursive handwriting and I'm proud of it

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (5 children)

Gen x? No, millennials ~~were the last Gen to learn cursive~~ learned cursive too

[–] Zirconium 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Gen Z here, learned cursive in elementary

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't think one has to be the last to learn a thing in order to be able to realize how pointless learning it was.

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[–] leadore 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't care if anyone learns cursive or not, but I have to say it's a bit painful to watch people taking twice as long to laboriously print stuff out and TBH I've had just as much trouble deciphering some people's printing as I have someone's cursive.

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[–] renzev 12 points 1 month ago (3 children)

This take is honestly bewildering to me. What do you mean "for no reason"? You learn it to write quickly and legibly. What other option is there? Writing in block letters like a kindergartener?? inb4 "bUt eVeRyThInG iS dIgItAl nOw". I'm a programmer, about as digital as you can get, and even I whip out the pen and paper for mindmapping and notetaking.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I work in construction. To communicate on site we need to do a lot of quick ugly drawings and writing notes on site in places way too dirty to use a computer. We do it by hand, and of course we write in cursive. I am also extremely bewildered by this post and it comments.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (8 children)

I'm a millennial. I was also taught cursive for absolutely no reason.

First of all, why? It's supposed to be easier/quicker to write things down using cursive but honestly, I can't understand people's chicken scratch cursive anyways, so it's basically meaningless. You might as well give someone a list of scribbles and just have them call you later for what it should say.

That's basically it. Signatures, sure, maybe, but bluntly, who gives a damn?

Fuck cursive.

[–] SpruceBringsteen 9 points 1 month ago

Just practice drawing this single letter while I get over my wine hangover for the next 40 minutes. Heaven forbid someone gets bored and acts out.

[–] Wizard_Pope 7 points 1 month ago

I can barely read my own cursive if I try to write fast

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[–] pyre 10 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm appalled by the absolute state of these comments. I expected more from what felt like largely a leftist space. more than yearning for ignorance. there's no space where knowledge is sacred anymore I guess.

good capitalist boy. bark. sit. work your ass off. never learn anything that doesn't give you immediate practical results, you understand? you're only to learn things that produce and/or consume. you're not to enjoy knowledge for the sake of it or anything that might spark creativity. we have AI for creative endeavors. you do the work. don't wonder. don't be curious. don't even think about thinking. does it make money? does it spend money? no? then stop and get fucking back to work.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (14 children)

School as we know it was designed to produce workers, and cursive was a part of that. They taught us cursive because they thought we would need it for work.

cursive != calligraphy

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Or maybe cursive just sucks and needs to go away, while all the rest of us choose to value knowledge by learning things that are worth learning.

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[–] Sam_Bass 9 points 1 month ago

I learned cursive to pro actively fuck with the people that didn't

[–] vatlark 8 points 1 month ago

Yeah but what life event causes some people to forever write in all capital letters?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Signing mortgages....so ueah, absolutely nothing.

[–] SchmidtGenetics 9 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Do you actually think it matters what is written? All they want is proof that you signed, draw a penis for all they care.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

I believe the youngest an Xer can be is lower forties. He sorta looks younger than that.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (3 children)

As soon as my school said cursive was no longer mandatory, I immediately stopped using it. Garbage, pure garbage. I've had a job that involved coming into contact with a lot of papers where people are still choosing to write in cursive, and it is consistently the most unreadable spaghetti I have had the misfortune to look at.

By all means find ways to transcribe old works written in cursive - into print, but stop trying to revive this shitty writing style, it deserves to die.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I do use cursive at work, but only to read wicked old documents. And lemme tell you 1800s court document cursive is not the same as what I was taught in school. Similar, but there are places it will trip you up.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I don't see why anyone would be upset about learning that.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Where did he find the motivation?

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