My cursive is very neat and legible (although the older I get the less neat it becomes). As far as signatures being legible, I always remember what Arnold Palmer said about why he took so much pride in his signature: "What's the point of signing something if the person can't read it or later can't even remember who it was".

Another product of a 1950's Catholic education still bearing the knuckle dents in my head to prove it.

The Palmer Method, complete with the above blackboard examples. Every grade had their own special paper. As you progressed through the grades the lines on the paper got closer ruled. The nuns ran their own bookstore where you had to buy supplies. Step up and ask for a pack of 6th grade paper and a uniform shirt with a clip on bow tie.

Just the other day I had a college kid, who we work with, kick back a work order with the comment "I don't do cursive". I thought he was being a wise guy until his partner leaned in and whispered to me "he can't tell time either."

As sad as this is....
When my youngest was in 3rd grade she was failing in reading. Very unusual because my other kids were all reading when they got out of Kindergarten or just into the 1st grade.

We are sitting at the kitchen table "helping" her do her reading homework and I'm telling her to "just sound it out" and she is looking at me like I'm from the moon. Tears streaming down her face and she looks up at me. God, my heart was breaking....Was there something wrong with her?

After a short parent/teacher conference I learned something that I still can't believe.....SIGHT READING. Those words she had been bringing home were NOT her spelling words. They were her SIGHT WORDS.

How long do you think it took me to buy a "Hooked On Phonics" program and begin to teach her how to read?

Their theory was that we only use about 250 words in the average adult vocabulary. They were teaching kids to recognize those words and forget the rest I guess. Recognize them by sight, not by the sounds of the letters.
It took all of the reserve I could muster to not get led out of that meeting in handcuffs.

I’m a 1980’s Catholic school kid. We started learning cursive, with the Palmer Method, in the second grade. The cards with the cursive letters were over the chalk board. In third grade our teacher, Sister Alice Regina IHM made sure everyone one of us earned a penmanship certificate. I’m not sure what would’ve happened to a kid who didn’t earn the certificate, but I knew I didn’t want to find out.

I still use cursive, and it’s actually pretty legible (thanks Sister Alice). When I’m on the phone I often do the Palmer method practice as a doodle. It’s a sad commentary that with as much time as kids spend (waste) in school they can’t learn to read and write. Never mind cursive, I’ve got people at work who can’t print legibly.

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My school was built in 1889 and the desks also had inkwells, although we used bottles of ink in my era. The inkwells were probably for dipping pens, since the school pre-dated the fountain pen era. It's still in use as a public school (PS 11 in the Bronx), but I would hope they've updated the desks. The lever filler fountain pen you remember was probably an Esterbrook. They were standard-issue in my day at $1.00 each with interchangeable nibs. If you want to try using your old Sheaffer pen, try calling Fountain Pen Hospital in New York City. They have bottled ink and cartridges from all over the world. They will also give you a lecture on keeping your pen clean and running.

My wife teaches and had mentioned "sight words" from time to time. I had no clue what she meant. As for the reduced vocabulary theory, somebody from France must have come up with that. The French language is notably short of words compared with English or even German. English is full of synonyms, but in France you have to use the exact word.

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Release the Kraken

Yes, I remember the cursive alphabet above the chalkboard!

And we not only learned penmanship, we learned the correct way to hold a pen or pencil. The way I see people holding their writing utensil (especially younger folks) is just mind-boggling.

My grandmother (my mom's mom) left me her postcard collection, and one thing I don't recall seeing too much of is a printed message. Way back when everyone knew how to write, some quite beautifully. Quite ironically, this grandmother always typed her letters to me. My other grandma knew how to write very well, and her handwriting was as good as it gets.

I couldn't believe what I was hearing during that conference.
Almost like I'm expecting Allen Funt to pop in and yell Candid Camera.

Later on as my kids progressed through High School I became acquainted with course content modification. This process was started with a get together of some professionals from the school, counselors and some other window dressing. This meeting was called an ARD Meeting.

I took this to mean that if my son was having difficulty in a required course we could discuss ways, like tutoring etc to help. How naive was I? None of this was about getting my son help with his math. It was all about preserving their precious test scores for funding and ranking.

My son was given a nod and a wink on math. Instead of going to math class he got to learn how to run a zero radius lawn mower.....Nice trick huh? That's how I found out about it. My son came home bragging about mowing the football field while his classmates struggled and studied to pass math.

I went up to the school to complain and was shown the case they built to justify what they did. I went past the cafeteria where there were several more kids working....yep.

Any time a child's difficulty threatened the school's test scores they had a solution to remove the struggling student from the testing pool. An idea that sounds good on the surface but was abused in the application. So many parents were asleep at the switch and didn't catch it.

When I confronted school administrators about their abuse it was not a nice meeting. I must have been a communist or worse. Only after being threatened with exposure did my son get to go back into math class with an assigned tutor. Several other parents tried to coat tail our move but got stonewalling instead.

I'm not a professional educator and I'm also not a weatherman.....but I did recognize the wind being blown up my pant leg.

Maybe just old and set in my ways. My dad called it muley. Stubborn like a mule. Today the knowledge of the world is right here on the same phone that I'm pecking out this message on. Why go to school at all? All the time I wasted learning my times tables and decimal equivalents. Today I wish I had that time back.

I attended Catholic grade schools in the 50's. The nuns strenuously taught cursive handwriting which I had an unbroken stretch of D's. I think the could not bring themselves to give the F I deserved. My handwriting never improved and as age wears on me has gotten much worse.
As relates to surveyors. In the 80's while working as a biologist I had the pleasure to work with a surveyor of the highest skill. Mr. Jim Hammonds. He had retired from the Corps of Engineers and went to work for the agency I worked for. In the early days of my working with him before the electronic days arrived Jim used the old style plotting table where the surveyor mapped and made notes on paper. I was amazed that he could draw and write upside down and very legibly. He told me he developed those skills to save time from walking around the table so he did not have to leave his transit. He told me that in his early career surveying the dams on the White River in Arkansas he had to learn to work fast, accurate and smart to get the job done. He succeeded

I started 1st grade 57 so yeah, I also remember the cursive chart above the chalkboard. I don't actually remember inkwells at desks but I do remember fountain pens. I do remember the ones with the little lever to slurp up ink. But I mainly remember the cartridge pens. I also remember in High School when ball point pens became ubiquitous although the cartridge pens were still to be found. The ballpoints were around before that but not common. Of course the slide rules were still common at that time along with pocket savers.

My penmanship was always ugly, still is. But it's always been legible. My wife has prettier writing but I can't always read it and it's gotten worse.

I went through years of printing reports until computers. Spent many hours hand writing (printing) reports with a spotlight turned up pointing at a white paper rubber banned to the turned down visor. A real sitting duck doing that.

We actually used a word processor, (a electric typewriter with a little memory) at our sub-station, when we could, before computers became common. The word processor used a type ball that worked on carbon paper and later NCR paper forms. Then we went to a computer with Word Perfect, which I liked and a dot matrix printer. The dot matrix worked on our NCR paper forms. However, most reports were still hand printed in the car. Going into the office to do reports was a luxury usually not available.

Eventually mounted laptops showed up in all the cars and that improved legibility of reports. You're still a sitting duck while parked in shadows with your face stuck in a computer screen while typing.

I still wrote some simple reports out in cursive that obviously weren't going anywhere, other than perhaps insurance companies. At the time I was the one approving my reports so I could get away with it.

I'm involved in a prison ministry where we do a long weekend twice a year. We (volunteers) each hand write individual letters to all of the candidates (inmates), 42 this time. So no, the letters aren't real long. But it does keep me in cursive practice but my writing is still ugly, legible but ugly.

Very interesting reading. I learned to type because I wrote VERY badly. Ran across some of my old blue books and was surprised both how well I wrote and how erudite I was 50+ years ago. Both long gone....at least on the subject matter of my major.

Ink pens in schools?????? Not in my neck of the woods. Content/practices of current schools.....I'd get banned.

Post #46 reminds me of a tale from Religion class in college. It seems most of the folks who actually did the copying couldn't read. They just did their best to copy the forms of the original. Seems the output was greater when the copyists didn't get lost in the glories of Scripture.

I also remember the big, long placard above the board -went from one end to the other, as I recall. I also seem to recall not paying much attention to it.

I think I could have gotten along OK using cursive all my life, even though it would have been slow. Printed letters always seemed easier, and therefore faster to write -so that is what I've been using for a long time.

Regards,
Andy

I also remember that board display. Unlike you, I never had, what I call good, cursive handwriting. I spent years on the job printing everything and that is what I still use.

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"In God We Trust"

Cursive writing and analog clocks have no more use in today's world than using a linotype press for your office copier.

As I worked my way through school one of my gigs was a maintenance man in a high rise office building.

I'd take the elevator (complete with an operator) up to the 23rd. floor. The door would glide open to the steno pool of a large insurance company. You could just smell the estrogen in the air. About 50 beautiful women sitting at electric typewriters. It sounded like machine gun fire.

In my first real job I was assigned a Confidential Secretary. She handled all correspondence for 5 or 6 other guys. I took typing in my senior year and it's a good thing because at the end of my career I was doing my own "work". One old hand told me that those computers had one lever......"lever alone". I made the numerous cuts, he didn't survive the first one.

One day you wake up and notice all of the things that have faded into the past. Things that are no longer with us. Cursive writing and analog clocks are just.....well, never mind.

This has been very illuminating. That cursive alphabet placard from Walmart looks interesting. I'll have to mention that at the next surveyors meeting that I go to.

Sir,

I guess that your world differs somewhat from mine. I regularly have to sign official documents of one kind or another, from one authority or another. I still have never seen one that accepted printed letters as a signature. A number require both a printed name and a signature. Granted, that's generally the only time I use cursive lettering, but it nevertheless still constitutes a "use".

I use analog clocks most of the time, since my aging eyesight is no longer clear enough to make out the digits on an average size clock beyond 8-10' or so, which often is the shortest distance in my house between the clock and what I'm working on; and what I'm working on often requires the removal of my watch to keep from damaging it(auto maintenance and repair, and other garage work), generally. I use digital clocks when they are close and handy, of course.

Hope this provides a bit of perspective.

Regards,
Andy

I asked my wife and in this state at least your signature can be in what ever form you chose, in fact it doesn't even need any legible 'letters" cursive or printed. I have placed my scrawl on quite a few legal documents, You may be able to figure out the J it starts with and guess as couple others.

We closed our Christian school about four years ago or so, but we were still teaching and requiring cursive handwriting up to the end. I think many schools in the AACS still do as well, and it was still part of the BJU Press Curriculum last I looked. The idea is that cursive handwriting is a brain train issue, NOT a communication technology issue. I really don't have a replacement for it. You could try calligraphy, but that writing process is too slow and the elementary kids cannot do it, unless you use it the way the Japanese and Chinese use brush calligraphy in their schools. They still do that?

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One's signature is whatever one uses to signs one's name, be it cursive, block, or a simple "X". A simple X would be far more readable than the smeared scribble that is my cursive signature.

At one time my cursive signature was pretty decent. The I had to "sign" multiple times the logbook of each student after each class. after each class I scribbled faster and faster until now it's jsut a mess with no two appearing the same.

The Black's Law Dictionary (4th Edition) states in its entry for signature that "whatever mark, symbol, or device one may choose to employ as representative of himself is sufficient". It directs to the entry for sign, which likewise speaks in terms of "any mark, as upon a document, in token of knowledge, approval, acceptance or obligation". Accordingly, your signature qualifies as mark or symbol that fits these purposes.

Your history of signing other legally binding documents that way further reinforces the authenticity of your signature.

In other words there is ZERO need for a cursive signature. Just make your make however YOU chose

I suppose they can make you print your name under your mark what ever it is

I was told I had to sign my full name on my naturalization certificate, so it's not my signature.

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Release the Kraken

I like analog clocks. All my watches, and all the clocks in my house, are analog, except built-in clocks in kitchen appliance timers.

And I have analog clock apps for my iPad and iPhone.

And I think it interesting that digital speedometers in cars lasted only a couple of years, if that, back in the 1970s, if memory serves.

The feds can make you jump though what ever hoops they want, when you want something from them. But, signing your name legibly isn't necessarily your "signature". The just wanted your full name.

Any of these represent my signature and the one in the middle works at the bank and the county courthouse and on 4473s

Last year some time while at a family gathering, the subject of cursive writing came up. We had family members in the discussion from 7 to 88 years old. It was quite interesting. Of course the younger members knew nothing of cursive writing, and when shown what it looked like, couldn’t read much of it. It got me to thinking, and I used to have nice penmanship. But, in this day and time, I rarely write anything anymore except my signature. I decided from that point forward, that whenever I wrote something, it would be in cursive. Mainly it consists of greeting cards for some occasion or other. I found it pretty easy to remember except the letter “Z”, both uppercase and lowercase. I enjoy writing it, but it is definitely much slower for me. I haven’t had anyone tell me that they couldn’t read it or that they didn’t like it, but that may be a respect thing. I even looked online to see if there was a cursive font that I could use on places like this. I did find some but never decided to try them. Maybe, us older folks, should change to cursive fonts. It would be our own secret code!

I always felt sorry for my brother who was left handed. He had excellent penmanship, but because he was left handed, many of his papers would have smeared places on them where he drug his hand through the wet ink after writing, especially in his calligraphy class.
Larry

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Miss Buddies crsides & fat tom

Calligraphy is an art form. My JR HS shop teacher practiced it using special pens and every year he gave each of his students a small piece of poster board with their name on it. The letters going wide then narrow as they swooped and swirled to forming your name were wonderful.

Made my signature look like it was chiseled out of stone by a gorilla

The Constitution of the United States, and The Declaration of Independence are written in cursive. A top dollar watch is NOT DIGITAL. Let us not forget where we came from.

I'm pretty sure the cursive position could get some traction if we were to frame it as environmentally friendly and gender neutral.......then there is the sundial

When's the last time anyone here read a book, an article, an owner's manual,
a menu, a blog, a text, subtitles, a ballot, a billboard, a mattress tag, a warning label or a cereal box written in longhand?

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Hmmm. So that explains the "artist formerly known as 'Prince'."


And of course.....

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Pack light and cinch tight.

My dad was a Rolex?

I was taught cursuve in high schooli , kept up all through my navy hitch. For about the next 40 off years all entries had to be in cursive. As the bext few years ny habd writing declined so bad I could get a job writing prescriptions....But one can usually figure out what they say anyway, Now at 77 I just print. I have severe arthritius in both hands ans even plays hell when messing with the dials on my lathe, Frank

Before I retired I was reading deeds written in longhand all the time.

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