Is Cursive Writing a Dying Art?

This is a recurring topic around our household. Allow me to begin by stating my position that hand writing is a valuable skill that has been elevated to a form of art simply because so many individuals cannot write legible cursive. Careful practice is required to develop an effortless, smoothly flowing, easily interpretable, cursive writing style.

Does cursive writing hold some intrinsic value that would cause grievous injury to our well-being or ability to be productive if we lost the ability to use it? The short answer is no. Very few people write cursively in these days of computers and text messaging to pretend otherwise. And this alone is the reason the question even comes up.

More and more school systems are opting out of teaching it, in favor of spending more time on technology. We need to spend a great deal more effort on learning technology if we are to rise above the path to servitude that our government seems bent on forcing us into, but that’s a story for another time.

The only overwhelming reason remaining for the continued teaching of penmanship is the requirement for a cursive signature on legal documents. I have no doubt that there will soon be a method to validate an electronic signature so that even that reason will no longer be valid.

Hand writing evokes a ‘personal feel’ that the typed word never possibly could, and those individuals who place a value on that aspect of hand writing are the ones who will keep cursive writing alive. It is very similar to how some people favor the heft and feel of a hard bound book over an e-book. But, people used to say that online media sources will never replace the familiar feel of newspapers.

My wife and I both use cursive for all types of correspondence not involving the computer. We hand write notes to each other, we choose to write birthday greetings, anniversary wishes, etc in blank cards rather than choosing some clichéd Hallmark pre-printed message. Print is rarely used by either of us. Although I can think of only two instances I use print - one is when making a shopping list, another is when I am writing in my journal, I willl use a printed word as a sort of ‘tag’ to indicate an important idea or a place I may need to refer back to, but I generally find it tedious.

I write over a thousand words a day, often times more, in my journal, which I use as a writer’s notebook. I choose to write in this manner rather than the computer as it has proven priceless for my creative output.

To free your creative self, suggests Janet Burroway in her popular textbook Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft, you must give yourself permission to fail. "The best place for permission is a private place," she adds, "and for that reason a writer's journal is an essential, likely to be the source of originality, ideas, experimentation, and growth."

I realize this can be done just as well on a computer but the computer is cold and doesn’t offer the same intimacy of hand writing.

Neither my wife nor myself text anyone. We both have very strong feelings that texting is part of an ongoing, although loosely informal, ‘conspiracy’ to dumb down Americans. I base this on the atrocious downward spiral of our ability to spell in this country. I have noticed over the course of time that the percentage of spelling mistakes has been steadily increasing since the advent of the personal computer and has simply skyrocketed since the realm of texting has erupted onto the scene. And I don’t even want to discuss the dismal state of our grammar.

If it could be proven that cursive writing held a direct link to improving spelling and grammar I would advocate keeping it until my dying breath. For those people who have horrible penmanship, the computer and texting – and built in spell checker - has been a godsend, for themselves and for others who try to decipher what they have written. Personally, I believe hand writing is an excellent exercise for dexterity.

I cannot honestly say that cursive writing makes anyone more intelligent than does the exclusive use of the typed word, and ideas can still be communicated without cursive writing, but those flowing curves and fancy loops of cursive writing do have the ability to convey warmth and sexiness that no typed word ever will.