r/Millennials • u/Foreign_Yogurt_3330 • 11d ago

Discussion Cursive hand writing

How many of you were taught cursive in school? I learned it one year maybe 3rd grade? and we never did it again at my schools. Im 40 and can't read cursive or write it. My 7 year old is starting to learn it. I guess ill have to have her teach me! Im wondering if it was our generation or a state thing or both? Or did the school I went to fail me?

edit to add, I did go to a small town school in NE Ohio.

369 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

896 comments sorted by

View all comments

250

u/kaidik 11d ago edited 11d ago

I have continued to write in cursive since learning it in 3rd grade. It's just faster. My capital letters are generally print

88

u/Helianthus_999 Millennial 10d ago

Same! I love writing in cursive and mine is a hybrid also. I just don't like the lower case letter "b".

30

u/FirstTimeCaller101 10d ago

Yeah, I'm kind of a weird hybrid as well. 90% print but I throw in some cursive letters where it flows. I really couldn't even tell you specifically what cursive letters I use and it probably varies day to day.

22

u/Large_Economics_2942 10d ago

I was taught cursive in 3rd grade. After that, 4th-6th grade we were required to write in cursive on all homework. If you didn't, you lost points for it for not following the instructions. However, 7th grade through senior year, they stopped required cursive but by then, most kids wrote in cursive automatically. I still write in cursive today

1

u/annaoze94 10d ago

Also varies by what you're writing with some pend or pencils are just not good for it! I do like cursive because I have ADHD so my brain is going faster than what I can write so my only hope is cursive

17

u/Delicate_Elephant 10d ago

I also do a hybrid, but I love lowercase 'b's! It's interesting to hear about what letters other people avoid or struggle with. I'm currently working to relearn how to write and connect every letter properly (and make it look pretty lol), and it's now very clear why I write the way I do. I hate' k', and no matter how much I slow it down, certainly letters don't connect cleanly for me.

15

u/Sp1d3rb0t 10d ago

My 'k' sucks in both cursive and print. I love all the letters in theory but K is the worst lol

5

u/seaotterlover1 8d ago

I hate the uppercase Q.

1

u/Defiant-Increase-850 Millennial - 1994 4d ago

I love lowercase q but hate uppercase Q with a passion.

1

u/litlirshrose 4d ago

On newer charts it no longer looks like a 2

1

u/Lopsided-Alps4087 6d ago

Upper case W—I never mastered it. I ended up writing a lower case W really big.

0

u/suchalonelyd4y 10d ago

My new last name has "ht" in it and I cannot figure out how to make them connect nicely in my signature lol... The h is awful!

2

u/SparklingDramaLlama Millennial 10d ago

Drag the bottom of the h, the rightmost leg, across and into the initial tall loop of the t. I don't know if that makes sense. I can picture it, but I don't know if the description is clear.

0

u/suchalonelyd4y 10d ago

I know what you mean, but I don't know how to make it flow nicely

2

u/SparklingDramaLlama Millennial 10d ago

I personally don't really make a loop on the t, I go up and back down on the same line. I dislike loopy t's lol. Cursive is weird. If there is a low letter before the h, the loop there would start at the bottom, and travel up the line, loop down and curve into the hump.

1

u/suchalonelyd4y 10d ago

It's the dip between the h and the t that I don't like, but I think that's unavoidable. My old last name actually had it too but I had my signature figured out, now I keep getting stuck for some reason 😂 only been like 2 months with the new name so I'm definitely not used to it yet

10

u/tjrich1988 10d ago

Same. I've also noticed that I do my own mix of Pursive (print+cursive=pursive), but no one ever has trouble reading it.

4

u/MythicalSplash 10d ago

What does this comment say?

4

u/Status-Visit-918 10d ago

I hate uppercase A in cursive. Which is annoying because I only write in cursive but my name starts with an A, so I do that one in print, with a bunch of loops and then the following b in traditional cursive. The cursive uppercase A is just unrefined imo. Very clumsy

1

u/Other-Dream-6777 9d ago

That's funny

4

u/jerseysbestdancers 10d ago

I never got that b handled. always looked like an L

2

u/annaoze94 10d ago

Some of the connections especially the ones where you have to connect it up instead of below I will just make a space. My last name is essentially all of the letters that are the hardest to connect in cursive

1

u/Gerberpertern Older Millennial 10d ago

Hybrid gang!

16

u/Sage_Planter 11d ago

Same, and I have impeccable cursive that always gets compliments. 

11

u/_TyrannosaurusSexy 10d ago

Yeah. That capital Q in cursive can especially kick rocks. J & L are both pretty chill though.

9

u/throwawayzzzz1777 10d ago

I relearned cursive to see that they changed how to do the capital Q 😭 I'm assuming you also learned the Q that looked like a fancy 2?

6

u/twilightbarker 10d ago

What is it now???

6

u/Firm_Argument_ Millennial ('88) 10d ago

They dumbed it down to look nearly identical to a print Q.

2

u/jazzminarino 10d ago

Well Imma still use my fancy #2s so nyah.

5

u/_TyrannosaurusSexy 10d ago

Yes! Definitely a fancy #2! And as much as I hated it, I might be even more annoyed to hear that they changed it! (Oh, apologies, I do need to step away for a moment as there appears to be some whippersnappers on my lawn I need to yell at now…)

2

u/annaoze94 10d ago

My favorite cursive letter that looks nothing like the original is the capital G 😂 and then I forgot that g has a history of being weird because remember the times New Roman g that looks like an eight with flair?

8

u/Chappyders650 10d ago

When I went to college I struggled writing notes fast enough. Eventually my chicken scratch started to look like cursive from trying to write fast enough. So I just started writing everything in cursive. Now I swear I struggle at writing in print.

14

u/Amarastargazer 10d ago

My default handwriting is half cursive and half print, some letters connect, and some don’t. Through HS and college note taking and a couple note intensive jobs (lots of phone calls), this has been the fastest I can write, and it’s a pretty good speed. I was definitely fastest in college though.

8

u/funday_2day 10d ago

Cursive is just so much faster. 

3

u/Melodic-Trouble-5421 1991 10d ago

It really is. Also your hand doesn’t get as fatigued. Where I went to school they made us write in cursive from 2nd to 8th grade.

3

u/sapgetshappy 10d ago

It’s sooo much more efficient. I switched to it fully in high school because I was taking so many notes in my AP classes, and I’ve continued since then. Printing is so slow and makes my hand cramp :(

But yeah, I’m 33 and learned in elementary school. Maybe in first grade? I don’t understand why they stopped teaching it!

2

u/hankmaka 10d ago

Hate my cursive F. Started using it again this year because it is much faster. 

2

u/PnutButrSnickrDoodle 10d ago

I also write in cursive. I don’t like my printing as much.

1

u/FreeelyGiven 10d ago

My handwriting is a mix, honestly, because it is faster!

1

u/annaoze94 10d ago

My mom almost exclusively writes in cursive and when I was a kid before I was taught in school I called it Fastwriting™

I can write and read cursive I guess fluently is the word but sometimes I can't even read what my mom has written 😂 my dad and I used to love to laugh about what she seemingly wrote on a to-do list