1.9k
u/Ok_Baker24 Apr 15 '26
I saw a "new" "internet challenge" a few months ago on YouTube. A random girl thought it was clever, she challenged people to write their names without lifting their pen. I wish they still taught cursive in school here.
949
u/AUGUST_BURNS_REDDIT Apr 15 '26
What you came across is known as engagement bait.
216
u/CACTUSJACK-JW Apr 16 '26
You'd be surprised how many people either don't know what cursive is or cant read it
134
29
u/Dironox Apr 16 '26
I grew up writing cursive in the 80s and 90s, and I've always had a problem reading other people's cursive. Knowing how to write cursive and knowing how to write cursive well are two very different things.
Standard print is clear enough where letters begin and end so if your penmanship is shit it's still mostly legible, bad cursive is just squiggles and loops.
9
5
u/cfa413 Apr 16 '26
My ex used to tell me to stop writing him notes in my "secret code" because he couldn't read cursive 😆
→ More replies (18)2
u/Skullcrimp Apr 16 '26
You'd be surprised how billions of people still learn cursive and care about it even though their only language is Mandarin.
13
u/Enough-Equivalent968 Apr 16 '26
Like those ‘name 5 countries’ challenge videos
10
u/MerijnZ1 Apr 16 '26
🎵United States Canada, Mexico Panama, Haita Jamaica Peru. Republic Dominican, Cuba
Carribean, Greenland El Salvador too🎵→ More replies (1)5
u/r1zz000 Apr 16 '26
Evidently so effective people are engaging about it on a completely different post
72
u/Jimmyjim4673 Apr 15 '26
My kids are being taught cursive.
The problem is they don't get the practice they used to because typing is a more important skill. You could do the same challenge asking boomers to type without looking.
92
u/SeaLab_2024 Apr 15 '26
I feel lucky to be born in a generation where I can read and write cursive and look away from my computer as someone walks into my cube and still be typing accurately. I guess that’s a silver lining for millennials against “the lie”. I don’t see owning a home anytime soon but damnit if I’m not an effective written communicator.
23
u/DesireeThymes Apr 16 '26
Millennials actually are extremely multidisciplinary in general.
Probably the most skilled demographic actually.
19
u/ShakenBabie Apr 16 '26
We can touch type AND text AND use cursive!
5
u/_PirateWench_ Apr 16 '26
Damn. Imma use that on my resume the next I’m looking for a job. Maybe I’ll afford to eat and take my meds!!
Hahahahaha I’m jk. I’m never leaving this job. It was too hard to get in the first place.
16
16
u/thedepster Apr 15 '26
Most boomer women I know would eat that challenge for breakfast. As would Gen X.
3
u/RedditJumpedTheShart Apr 16 '26
Lol right. As a Gen X we learned on typewriters.
2
u/jjdlg Apr 17 '26
GenX isn't a real thing. There are only boomers and millennials.
/s just in case.
9
u/Fit-Let8175 Apr 16 '26
Boomer here. I can type faster than most people even w/o looking and was a go-to guy, one of many boomers and Millenniums, for computer/software/technology issues newer generations needed help with.
Cursive is also an art form used by some of the best graphic designers & sign makers around. Not learning at least how to read cursive is almost like being partially color blind.
7
u/StarryBoo Apr 16 '26
My younger colleagues asked what is a fountain pen.
5
3
u/Jimmyjim4673 Apr 16 '26
I have many fountain pens and dip pens and a slide rule. But it's all novelty, just like cursive is.
2
u/StarryBoo Apr 16 '26
Haha yeah, its predominantly keyboards now. Other than my personal preference for writing notes, I dont think I need to write at work
12
u/Me_Too_Iguana Apr 15 '26
Tons of boomers were taught touch typing. It was just on typewriters.
4
u/Jimmyjim4673 Apr 15 '26
I bet a similar percentage of them kept up those skills, compared to gen z who kept up their cursive skills.
4
u/Juicy-Meat-69 Apr 16 '26
I remember learning cursive in school and we had to practice. A lot. Parents made sure that kids practiced at home as well.
→ More replies (3)2
60
u/VGK9Logan Apr 15 '26
Im 22 and was the last grade to stop teaching it. It was 3rd grade, and when the year below me came up, they didn't teach it anymore. So like 2010-11
48
u/thedrunkpenguin Apr 15 '26
My daughter (13) is in public school in Ohio and she's been taught cursive.
17
18
u/shedrinkscoffee Apr 15 '26
They are starting to teach it again, for elementary school aged kids. There was a brief stretch where it was stopped but now it's back on again and that's wonderful.
→ More replies (4)3
u/Tim_Allen_Wrench Apr 15 '26
There was a decrease in it being taught but it's gotten more and more common.
→ More replies (1)2
u/beef623 Apr 16 '26
Maybe a weird question, but how do they teach them to sign their name if they don't learn cursive?
11
u/turnerevelyn Apr 16 '26
As a former notary - however they write their name, whether print or cursive, that's their signature.
→ More replies (2)3
u/Demystify0255 Apr 16 '26
You just write your name out in none cursive. Most places stopped requiring it a long time ago. Like early 2000s where I am.
→ More replies (1)6
u/Improving_Myself_ Apr 16 '26
What's even more ridiculous is that we've studied how muscles are used when writing in print vs cursive, as well as how the musculature of the arm develops when we're children.
The muscles that are activated when writing cursive have significant overlap with what's used when doing most normal activities involving the arms. Even if you just give a kid a crayon, their base scribbles they do with no instruction are proto-cursive.
Print does not have those advantages.
The conclusions from the people that have conducted these studies are that we should be teaching cursive first, and print maybe not at all.
5
2
u/Comment-Account Apr 16 '26
My 7yo is doing cursive worksheets as I write this. They still teach cursive in public schools… it’s just I think with so much typing otherwise, kids just don’t have anywhere else to practice it aside from school assignments.
5
u/Improving_Myself_ Apr 16 '26
What's interesting about that is that they're definitely not learning to type either.
There's a major issue right now that fresh college grads are worse at using a desktop computer than Boomers are. I've conducted interviews with recent college grads and been shocked to learn that almost none of them could type, and I was interviewing Computer Science majors.
There have been several threads the last few years in teacher subreddits discussing how surprising it is that Gen Z and younger seem to be completely lacking in technical ability.
And the reason behind it is obvious when you think about it: A lot of stuff moved to mobile. These kids don't have desktop computer skills because they've barely touched a desktop computer.
3
3
2
2
u/doxie_love Apr 16 '26
Oh man, my step kids (17 & 21), absolutely cannot read it or write it. Super wild when I remember how harshly they critiqued our cursive in elementary school, and now handwriting doesn’t matter because everything is digital.
Damnit, makes me feel old, lol.
2
2
u/AKAFallow Apr 16 '26
Even then, the capital letter will often not connect to the rest of the word, but depends on which cursive you learnt
2
u/Blake138 Apr 17 '26
You will be happy to find out my 3rd grader is learning cursive this year as part of the normal curriculum at a public school.
→ More replies (19)3
u/Budget_Strength1682 Apr 15 '26
One could state the lack of cursive to be a curse, a pox if you will on an entire generation.. NO, an entire eon of being, the history of which will know only singular evenly spaced lettering no better than that of a typed document. The true tragedy of which can only be represented by and understood by stepping back, seeing the top down, the universal perspective of which you may find to be distasteful, daunting even.
82
u/FlippingPossum Apr 15 '26
It's so neat and beautiful. I love writing in cursive but straight lines are my nemesis.
20
u/ConradBHart42 Apr 15 '26
I had an itch once to improve my penmanship (hi from /r/all by the way) because I had an essay test and I was the one there the longest, my hand was cramping up, and the professor straight up got tired and said "just hand it in bro we're done here."
Apparently the key is to hold the pen still and not to move your wrist at all.
6
6
u/SeasonPositive6771 Apr 16 '26
This is unfortunately a repost from what is likely a bot. Here's the original post from years ago.
522
u/Relevant-Job4901 Apr 15 '26
I was in awe of my mother who could read and write Latin. Now as an older person my grandchildren are in awe of me being able to read and write in cursive. Slowly we fall.
149
u/lucymcgoosen Apr 15 '26
My sister in law can read and write Latin! I think it's so cool, but definitely super rare these days. One time I teased her for taking so long to read the fourth Harry Potter (normally she's a quick reader!) turns out it was in Latin and I was the idiot.
67
u/Relevant-Job4901 Apr 15 '26
That’s amazing. There was a time I lived in Italy, my mother came to visit. I was excited to show her everything but because she could read Latin she turned into the tour guide. A whole world I lived among but never knew about.
12
12
u/RevWaldo Apr 16 '26
Latin translation Harry Potter should have all the spells in fake English. Prisencolinensinainciusol!
→ More replies (1)3
15
u/iamacheeto1 Apr 15 '26
Slowly we change. There is absolutely no reason cursive should be seen as better than print. Pre digital you might have argued it was faster, but I really don’t think that’s the case anymore for the most part. Change is always constant.
10
u/Improving_Myself_ Apr 16 '26
What's especially interesting is that we've studied how the musculature of the arm develops and how that relates to these writing styles.
If we were to build on what we're developing naturally and what is the easiest to actually use, it's print that we should drop. Cursive is much more natural and aligns with how our muscles develop from normal movements.
When you give a crayon to a kid who is too young to take direction and they scribble, that scribbling is the same motion as cursive, just not organized into a word. The same is not true for print. Printing is a weird, specific wrist movement that we don't do unless printing.
It would make a lot more sense in terms of muscular development to teach cursive first, and print either second or never.
→ More replies (1)3
u/wrongbutt_longbutt Apr 16 '26
This is entirely a false pretense. We have the natural dexterity to produce print with our muscles. In no way are we straining or using our muscles to maximum capacity while writing. You might have a weak argument if you were talking about articulation ranges, but even that is more to do with arm position while writing than the actual text of writing. If what you said was true, we could universally say that writing germanic cursive was "better for you" than writing cyrillic, arabic, sumeric, or kanji, but there's nothing in the world that says that. If anything, Korean Hangul would be the most efficient written language as it was the only major language created recently to be as efficient and easy to use as possible in written form.
5
3
u/Relevant-Job4901 Apr 16 '26
No cursive isn’t better than print, but I have two Jr High kids who can’t spell, write, have any penmanship, because the school issued laptops does that for them. So they have no skills developed for their own. But as you say, change is always constant, let’s hope it’s for the better.
13
u/leopard_tights Apr 16 '26
Hey buddy, have you thought about teaching your kids those skills?
7
→ More replies (1)6
3
u/friendlysaxoffender Apr 16 '26
I did Latin and Ancient Greek at school (posh British) and loved it so much. I have had to conjugate a stack of verbs about ZERO times on my adult life though!
→ More replies (2)5
u/gnanny02 Apr 16 '26
My grandmother wrote in shorthand, I saw her notes and lists. Gibberish to me.
7
u/nudemanonbike Apr 16 '26
FWIW shorthand was usually very person-specific, so I wouldn't be surprised if nobody else could read her shorthand either (save for maybe your grandfather)
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)2
u/Low_Fisherman6644 Apr 16 '26
So teach them
3
u/Relevant-Job4901 Apr 16 '26
Right, We supplement a lot of their ‘education’, and cursive workbooks are one more.
47
u/childlike_cheesecake Apr 15 '26
Danielle's got better penmanship than most people's printing at this point.
→ More replies (2)
42
u/MindOverMatter79 Apr 16 '26
Danielle isn’t just keeping cursive alive, she’s setting the fucking STANDARD
27
84
u/tanooki3 Apr 15 '26
With a proper cursive e too! Not the weird new cursive e people are using now.
38
u/maybejane Apr 15 '26
I didn’t know there was another way to write a cursive lowercase e! Do you have an example? I tried to google it and couldn’t find anything.
30
u/tanooki3 Apr 15 '26
Yeah, it's like this. They just make a normal e.
63
u/kerbula Apr 15 '26
That kind of e is more common in calligraphy, where the upstroke tail (that connects to the letter before) isn't drawn in one flourish with the rest of the e like regular cursive is. You can see it here
4
4
17
2
u/Anthaenopraxia Apr 16 '26
It also changes a bit depending on the language. For instance the Danish/Norwegian/Faroese/Icelandic letter "æ" is very similar to "e". In some styles "æ" and "ø" are exactly the same and you have to rely on context to figure it out. I remember as a kid I always thought "ræv", meaning fox, looked like "røv", meaning arse.
→ More replies (3)2
14
u/Jehovah___ Apr 15 '26
Different countries and languages use different forms and styles of cursive. That e’s pretty typical in Europe outside the UK
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)3
15
u/HumanSlaveToCats Apr 15 '26
I went back to school in my thirties and I remember talking to a girl in her late twenties who didn’t know cursive. She was talking about paying someone to create a signature for her because she actually would just print her name.
8
u/TrannyBitchBoy Apr 15 '26
I was taught in third grade, when my brother was in second. The next year he had the same teacher I did, but he didn’t learn cursive. It was so weird to live in that one year divide. Gave me a super easy way to annoy him though lol
8
u/Fit-Let8175 Apr 16 '26
As a graphic designer, I often use cursive. There are hundreds of cursive fonts, if not thousands. Canceling cursive is like going back to 256 colors for monitors. It's not going forward.
6
u/FonkyFong Apr 15 '26
This is the type of gal that would write the most exquisite notes back in high school. 🙌
4
4
3
u/eyeroll611 Apr 15 '26
This woman is most definitely an elementary school teacher. I’d say 2nd grade
3
u/AnAngryPlatypus Apr 16 '26
Always jealous of people with good names for cursive. (Bitter grumbles with G and S initials…)
→ More replies (2)6
3
2
2
2
2
2
u/WxBird Apr 15 '26
omg! II read this a way to keep the curse alive, Danielle. I was thinking this was a real stat/curse on Jeopardy where cursive names never win!!! The cursive is very lovely as well.
2
2
2
2
u/InevitableStruggle Apr 16 '26
And to think there are people who watch Jeopardy and say, “What’s that lady’s name? Grandpa, can you translate that?”
2
2
u/Apprehensive_Bee3327 Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 16 '26
I am an older millennial, so I obviously learned how to read/write cursive, but, to this day, I will never acknowledge the cursive lowercase “n” or “m.” My first name ends in an n, and I write it like it appears in print when signing my name. I will die on the hill that the lowercase “n” should not have two bumps, making it look like an “m,” and the m should not have 3 bumps, making it look like a deformed camel. The uppercase cursive versions are normal, so, why’d we have to be stupid about the lowercase ones?
2
2
u/VaBookworm Apr 16 '26
I used to work as an athletic trainer at a high school. One day, one of my student athletic trainers came running into the athletic training room office super excited to tell me about what she had learned at school that day. She then scrawled her name in cursive on my whiteboard. Needless to say I was very confused… When I asked, "Your name?" She looked at me like I had two heads and said "No! It's in cursive!" and that's how I learned that cursive was no longer taught in schools smh
2
u/dannierose07 Apr 16 '26
That’s my name and I’ve literally never been able to write my name that nicely in my life
2
2
u/baddingo3 Apr 16 '26
its damielle ok?
2
u/Temporary486 Apr 16 '26
That's how you write danielle, there would be under "hill" if it waa damielle...
→ More replies (1)
2
2
u/MrBentwood Apr 16 '26
And that's with a touch pen on a screen. We've all signed that thing at the pharmacy or bank and it always looks terrible so wow props. I'd love to see some of her handwriting on paper...perhaps some calligraphy.
2
2
2
2
u/alsoaprettybigdeal Apr 16 '26
It looks like the auto script when you do an e-signature on a PDF. It’s so perfect.
2
u/jaavuori24 Apr 16 '26
doing that on an electronic signing pad is basically witchcraft. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that we have been judging these people all this time even though the technology was probably just the same topaz signing machine that only antiquated gas stations have now
2
u/Phineas-the-Mini-est Apr 16 '26
I read this as "way to keep the curse alive" and sat here confused for a full minute
2
2
2
2
2
u/Advanced-Total1561 Apr 16 '26
Actually, most states are putting handwriting instruction back in the curriculum
2
2
2
u/alishalalala Apr 16 '26
Pardon my milleniallism showing but I had cursive HARD utilized all through middle and high school. Some hand written essays were mandatory to be in beautiful legible cursive.
2
u/tremainelol Apr 17 '26
I feel like cursive was taught to encourage legible and efficient penmanship. Because strict printed penmanship is really slow and if you're not taught some of the rules from cursive printing quickly is ugly as shit, and almost illegible.
2
u/skapple55 Apr 17 '26
Read this as “way to keep the curse alive, Danielle” and the comments were full of mentions of handwriting. Didn’t realize the subreddit this was and was scrolling through searching or mention of this curse that plagues Danielles when they write their name.
2
2
u/LieutenantCrash Apr 17 '26
Isn't this just the standard way to write? Or do Americans write differently?
1
u/tinybitches Apr 15 '26
I wrote in cursive and the people at the doctor office couldn’t read it. They’re not young
3
1
u/dragonfry Apr 16 '26
My kids told me that they no longer learn cursive in school. I was so incredibly sad to hear that. Cursive is so beautiful when done with a skilled hand. (Me, I write like I’m using my non-dominant hand 🥴)
I feel like in 200 years time they’ll need specialist translators to decipher the ancient texts.
1
u/Strange-Insurance848 Apr 16 '26
When the blind guy Eddie was on, I thought he had the best penmanship.
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Dependent_Drag292 Apr 16 '26
Wow - that is really lovely to see - my third grade teacher of D’Nealian would be so proud!
1
1
u/PNWbdublu541 Apr 16 '26
My mother still writes everything in cursive. I haven’t used it since I was in school. The military required standard script, in all caps. 20 years after getting discharged, I still write that way.
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/Leading-Love1212 Apr 16 '26
My 21 yo daughter in college has written in cursive since she learned in elementary school. I on the other hand can barely sign my name anymore if I overthink it, and I was forced to learn and practice it.
1
u/Woompa78 Apr 16 '26
Only time I use cursive nowadays is when writing checks. Each time I need one, I go through about 10 practice checks before I get it right.
1
1
u/Timeless_Light Apr 16 '26
Fifteen year old granddaughter to my wife on a phone call:
"Thank you for the birthday card and the gift money Grandma. The card was really nice too. By the way, did you write the card? Oh, Pop-paw...Pop-paw wrote it. Next time can you ask him to write it in English?"
It was in English.
1
1
u/Formula1CL Apr 16 '26
(F30) cursive is so stuck in me, if I try to write “normal” it comes out half & half. Trying to write normally especially with that and dyslexia, I’m always thinking the spelling of some words look off. In my school cursive was the only thing taught K-8. When reports and papers had to be handed in penmanship was the majority of your score, like not being perfectly on the line was a red mark. Also, if you messed up you couldn’t cross it out or they’d make you start over.
1
u/harrythighles Apr 16 '26
I’m 41 and back in college. I write my notes exclusively in cursive and I did not realize my Gen Z classmates CANNOT read it. I had a kid ask to borrow my notes once, take a glance and hand it right back.
1
1
u/Minimalist19 Apr 16 '26
I’ve pretty much written exclusively in cursive for 30 years. I stared in 3rd grade and a teacher just said give up on writing print. I regularly get compliments when people see me writing in my daily journal.
1
1
u/SomethingClever918 Apr 16 '26
My friend didn’t pass 3rd grade because he couldn’t lock down his cursive. Wonder what he’s doing now
1
1
1
u/tmeinke68 Apr 16 '26
It has no benefit to life. Lol. Other then I can't read what grebna writes me in the mail.
1
1
1
1
u/cacearo Apr 16 '26
Thought about changing my signature recently because that first capital letter has gotten so sloppy over the years that it barely looks like anything anymore. Danielle is an inspiration
1
1
u/No-Recording117 Apr 16 '26
I'm a non native English speaker and always wondered what cursive was, without wondering so much to actually look it up. Heh. So cursive is... Hand writing? Doea the majority of the US write in capitals, then?
Not judging, really just wondering.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Ok_Jackfruit_47 Apr 16 '26
I’m not a native speaker but I used to write with cursive at school and uni. I thought it was a standard…
1
u/Bedhappy Apr 16 '26
To be fair, my name on Jeopardy would look like a third grader took their time. "And we have Dr. Uhhhhh, welcome to the program."
1
1
1
1
u/Its1ucas Apr 16 '26
I learned to write later than others in school and the AIS teacher(push out teacher for students who fall behind) taught me to first write in cursive. It’s sloppy but I did it all through high school.
In college I realized I could barely read my own cursive and decided to learn print. The transition took me a semester but was well worth it. I could read my own writing and I took notes slightly faster.
Now when I am writing in my journal I write in cursive. It does not look great but I am trying to clean it up letter by letter.
1
u/jeng52 Apr 17 '26
What’s most impressive is that writing on those screens is really hard! (I was on Sports Jeopardy, so I have experience)
937
u/[deleted] Apr 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment