Cursive writing - thoughts?

[Cortina]

Is this taught these days? By cursive writing I mean the writing with the loopy bs (not sure how to describe) that the older generation seem to have been routinely taught.

I personally write as Vicky Pollard might () and hoped that my children might be taught this old fashioned system?

Cortina just tthere is a simple test to emphasis this 1 write your name down whilst looking at the wall 10p says you find that easy now stare at the wall again and write the word constabulary you should fing this more difficult as your hand has from memory learnt to write your name but the word constabulary is a compleartly different phonomina as it is a n unfamiliar word and should be hard to write.

Interesting stuff. Rustybear are you in an independent school? How did you actually learn? It must have been difficult to 'unlearn' your old style. I have a book aimed at kids, wondering if I do the exercises if I could learn?

I actually think - and probably a snob about it so I apologise - that it can make you look more educated and intelligent.

I sat in on a meeting and the lady next to me wrote in the rounded writing I had as a youngster with round circles to dot the letter i etc. In a way this is worse than a unreadable scrawl (at least you can say you are creative or academic - that's what I've been saying for years anyway)!

No, we're a state junior school (7-11)
I think it was probably easier for me to learn because I wasn't ever taught a particular style at school when I was young - though we were supposed to do joined-up writing - so I didn't have much to 'unlearn' My handwriting was awful in primary school and I had to do lots of practice, but it was mostly 'exercises' (I remember doing a lot of things like joined up 8s and muttering 'up-round-down-round as I did them.)

I did it the same way as the children did, with guide lines & practised each letter over & over & I got fairly good at it, but I don't really get much practice - I'm the IT manager & I'm always on the computer anyway, so I just type everything.

My Dad, who will be 100 next April, was taught copperplate at school & still manages to write beautifully.

Is copperplate the same as cursive writing? Or is cursive just a generic word for loopy joined up writing?

I am interested in family history and see so many beautifully written letters in this style of writing. Many believe their ancestor must have been highly educated (especially as grammatically perfect etc) but more often than not they'd left school at 14!

cursive just means joined-up but many people use it to mean the sort of loopy joined-up that our parents' generation learned

To Pointy - does that actually have a name?

I'm not sure of the official definition, but the style my dad was taught has thick and thin strokes,like this. It's done by pressing harder or not so hard, rather than by using an angled nib (think it's the downstrokes that are thick & up strokes thin)
Our cursive style at school is the same thickness all through, and it's a more upright style like this

I was taught Marion Richardson writing & writing patterns HERE

Those are the patterns I did mrz! That top one is the 'up-round-down-round' thing I did endlessly at home (though it looks a bit more complicated - perhaps my teacher simplified it for me!)
And my sister's writing is exactly like that. I never actually grasped that it was supposed to be a 'style' though, which may explain why my writing was always crap....

I like the Marion Richardson style. I once had a serious crush on a real Essex geezer (his defintion not mine) 'Bad' grammar when you spoke to him.

I still have his Marion Richardson beautifully written letters! His vocab and grammar were outstanding. Practise rather than Practice (where appropriate), semi-colons etc. He used 'thus' in sentences which he wouldn't have done when talking.

It made a great and lasting impression on me.

Rustybear I like the traditional cursive (first link) best but imagine it would be harder for a child to grasp?

I was taught this style in Canada.

ggirl - that's the most common North American style, isn't it? My American grandmother wrote like that, and letters I get from US cousins are the same. I love it.

yes ,I never realised how different the b's, s,and z's are from other scripts

I learned cursive writing very similar to ggirl's when I was in year 4.

My writing now is basically joined up but not as curly. Capital letters especially I don't do in the cursive way - I remember F and T were quite odd looking and Q was like a floppy 2.

DS is in year 1 and I can see they are preparing to join their letters up - not sure when they do start doing it though. May ask at parents' evening.

I was taught Marion Richardson (end of 70s) and my dd is also being taught Marion Richardson from beginning.

My daughter is at school in France and they learn it. I am having to learn again as help her to learn. ALthough I always used to think that all French people have this beautiful handwriting as a result of being taught. However, various notes from mothers later & am disavowed of this opinion.

We did something like ggirl's 35 years ago - DCs' school teach a different script, more like normal letters but joined. They start in year 2 and apparently by the end of the year most children are joining at least some of their writing. Not sure it matters at all but it does make it quicker to write.

Our 6 year old is learning cursive writing in year 2, gradually, learning to join just a few letters at first, eg u and n, I was taught this way.

My eldest daughter, now 23 was taught cursive from reception and I thought it was a bit of a pain at first as she has 'a' followed by 'u' in her first name and would do one curve too few as between the a and the u there appeared to already be a u to her way of thinking. But once taught correctly, she kept it up all the way through school and still writes beautifully in cursive script and is excellent at spelling. Her handwriting lessons were spelling lessons too apparently.

Her big brother didnt do cursive from reception, but started cursive in y3 and his writing was fairly appalling at school. Its legible but not neat now, but it has never held him back, he did well in exams, went to uni and now has a successful career.

So although its really nice that one of the two has lovely handwriting, it doesnt seem to matter in the world of work.

Both DSs learned it from Reception. They then went to a school that only taught it in Yr3. In effect the Yr 3 children had learned a form of writing they had to unlearn after 3 years and start again while DS1 just carried on. Sadly they made him sit at the back of the class reading a book while others learned to write letters in cursive form for a whole year.

ggirl - me too! in Quebec.

I was constantly harangued at school over my (admittedly rubbish) handwriting. The teachers would say that what I wrote was excellent but that the way I wrote it that was terrible, as if that was the most important factor.

I used to love being creative and writing stories, poems etc but they totally made me lose my confidence by picking on my handwriting all the time, and holding it up to the class as an example of how not to do it.

And seriously, when do most of us ever write anything anymore that is not for our own personal use? The odd birthday card maybe? So is it really worth teaching joined-up writing in this digital age?

My writing now is not pretty but it is legible, in my job I teach adults using mostly a flipchart and pens too and have never had any complaints.

DS has been taught cursive from reception (well, 'pre-cursive' in reception, in that they put the tails on ready for joining up). His school seem to put an inordinate amount of emphasis on it and I have to admit his writing went through a stage where is looked awful as a result, but now (Y3) I am beginning to see the point as he finds spelling / sentences easier as his words 'flow' - it sounds non-sensical but it seems to work, for DS at least.

I should add that at my (tree-hugging montessori) primary school there was a sudden panic at the realisation that whilst we were all busy expressing ourselves through our handwriting the result was not sufficiently legible to get us through entrance tests for senior schools, and we all had a crash course in italic writing, which is still what my writing roughly resembles now.

I was taught very curly handwriting where everything was joined and very "flowing" y, g, etc all had loops and so did h, b, d etc. My children's school seem to teach less "flowing" handwriting. The capitals are not joined for example and whilst I have no proof I do think that my style of writing allows you to write quicker and somehow spell things more automatically as I was taught never to take my pen of the paper until I had completed the full word.