TODAY, IN THE AGE of near-universal computer access in the United States, 42 states have stopped teaching cursive in favor of keyboard proficiency. (Massachusetts is one of the few holdouts.) The United States Postal Service teeters on the brink of bankruptcy for want of handwritten letters. That the importance of handwriting has diminished should surprise no one, but British novelist Philip Hensher’s ardent defense of it might.


sounds_sound:

    I write my books by hand. I thought I was virtually alone in this, but there are all sorts of writers that continue writing their books by hand.

Hensher knows a lot of handwriters still, so what are we talking about here? Schools haven't stopped teaching handwriting, they've stopped teaching cursive. As long as humans continue to pass on the opposable thumb gene, we'll be using it take hold of instruments with which to write. Don't everyone go out and stock up on paper. And not that the evolution of writing isn't interesting, because it is. I just think the water is a bit muddy in this article.

EDIT: Or maybe I'm missing something. I googled 'handwriting' and what I see are pages of cursive. Am I to understand that handwriting is the same as cursive? When I print something by hand, isn't that also handwriting? I always thought the term handwriting encompassed both print and cursive writing styles. Am I going crazy?


posted 4130 days ago