The Lost Art of Penmanship

Associate Editor Peter Schineller, S.J., considers the ramifications of a keyboard culture.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• cursive
• penmanship
• writing
• longhand
• america magazine

[MrEdlei]

I'm 25 and a PhD student, I also write exclusively with fountain pens and draft everything I write. I have a kindle too!

I think there is a good degree of sensationalism in what you are saying. You are arguing that cursive letter forms are so far removed from printed text that they cannot be universally understood. I would argue that some digital fonts are harder to read than cursive.

All of this while average literacy levels are rising, people are more likely to read in future.

[thedork01]

Cursive became unnecessary when the ball point pen became prominent.

[1ManuelAlejandro99]

Hmmm... this man is saying something so real, in time we'll lose a part of ourselves, or better said, a part of our humanity; writing it's more instintive than pushing buttons.

[ninja29mv]

dude that makes me sad its like people who can't read analogue clocks its like really?.........

[0HK4N]

So you can't just "rub it out", you have to pour some white gunk on the paper! and that is not nearly as attractive. what other alternative is there? doing it once in pencil and redoing it in pen? That's almost twice the time! And like I said, go look at any physics book, all the crazy symbols are there. If scanning them would have been better they would have done it don't you think?

But that's just my opinion, if you're happy writing everything by hand by all means go for it.

[0HK4N]

irrational,unnecessary? Open your eyes, the only handwriting you see on a day to day basis is your own. I never said anything about the prolems, I normally do those by hand. I was talking about my projects as an engineer. I wouldn't dare to hand in a project written by hand because there's normally an abundance of graphs,long ecuations and possible errors. If you ever have to do something of the sort you will understand how irrational it would be to write that all out besides it has to be in pen

[0HK4N]

@BetaCircuit Well, Im studying to become an engineer, and I can assure you that all those characters are present on your computer even though they're not on your keyboard, for that you can get a virtual keyboard with all those symbols right on your screen. All of my books seem to have no problem with it.

Scanners are nice but it still doesn't solve the problem, if you want to touch up something you have to REDO it, on a computer you can re-arrange, erase, copy etc. easy as pie

[rhonan]

I'm a network engineer. I do almost no written communication that involves a pen in my professional life, other than to sign a document, or fill in my time card. Everything else is electronic. Still, I keep a vintage Esterbrook dip-less pen on my desk, with some Noodler's 5 O'Clock Shaddow ink in it, to sign said documents and fill out my time card. If I'm jotting notes in a meeting, it's with one of my vintage fountain pens.

[antmayfield]

@0HK4N

Not trying to hate but you are over-using commas in the first paragraph.

[0HK4N]

I mean, every once in a while I find someone who has trouble reading my non-cursive handwriting, but that doesn't mean that they don't know how to read.

(That also doesn't mean that my handwriting is sloppy, I value having an esthetic font)

=P