Amen!

It's about time...

Query: is everyone who is so happy about this change in the way we write English also happy about coming changes like the slow (but inevitable, I think) acceptance of text message-style grammar and spelling?

I can't think of a more irrelevant skill in today's world than learning two ways to handwrite the same thing, when most writing will be electronic in the future.

At a time when new ways to communicate are invented seemingly every few months, I won't shed tears over an obsolete, archaic and irrelevant form of communication.

Kos' (correct, I think) arguments against cursive apply equally well to what we grew up learning as proper grammar. Why learn two different ways to spell words, one of which you'll never use?

The whole point of grammar and spelling is to make sure that you can consistently get your message across to others. Text message grammar and spelling is perfectly readable to people my age; we haven't done it since birth, but all us in our mid-20s "get" it. And people who are under 20 and everyone who follows them will never know anything different...

u 1 2 argue? i r sure u lose.

On the other hand, Joshua Marshall identifies a good reason to keep learning cursive: historical research.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010310.php.

Marshall found that 17th- and 18th-century English cursive was hard to decipher. I had enough trouble with 19th-century U.S. government documents in my studies.

Grammar is still important in being able to articulate thoughts precisely. My grammar skills were fair-to-middling until I became a legislative drafter. Those skills improved quite a bit as I had to work on codifying the intent of the legislator who made a particular bill request.

As grammatical skills deteriorate, it becomes more difficult to express ourselves fully. Most of the time, that's not terribly important, but sometimes it is very, very important. I'm reminded of Newspeak in Orwell's 1984. Part of the plan behind Newspeak was to reduce vocabulary to the bare minimum. In doing so, it would become difficult to communicate thoughts about independence, liberty, and whatnot.

The particular mechanics of producing the expression don't seem terribly important to me. As long as the wine is still good, we shouldn't get terribly worked up about advances in bottle manufacture.

I think historical research is a notably bad reason to teach kids cursive in elementary school. Latin and ancient Greek would be useful for historical research, but we don't make kids to learn those - nor do we make them learn any number of other skills that would be useful.

People who want to research older American documents will go the extra mile to learn cursive, just as people who want to study ancient Greece learn ancient Greek.

As grammatical skills deteriorate...

This is my point: I don't think there's necessarily any deterioration going on here; it's just changing. I fully agree that we need a full and functional system of grammar in order to ensure that we can fully express ourselves (even disregarding more Orwellian concerns, clear communication is important for many other reasons). However, I don't think that spelling "are" as "r" makes things any less clear.

(Although I would agree that plenty of people on, say, Myspace use atrocious grammar by any standard, I would like to distinguish between people who don't know how to write and people who are the vanguard in a new regime of writing style.)

I think it is likely that we will see "abbreviated" spellings gain more acceptance for informal communication, but standard spelling will remain the norm for formal writing.

Regarding cursive, it is quicker than writing in print letters, so unless you learn shorthand (or develop your own personal version of shorthand) it's the best way to take notes by hand. It's also a very elegant way to write, so I doubt we'll see it fade away completely any time soon. But I'd agree that classroom time could be better spent getting students to write legibly in print letters.

Cursive is still useful to me because it's much faster for note-taking. As for the the text-messaging abbreviations, I personally abhor them. However, they remind me of the origins of "OK." Basically, OK stemmed from a phoenitic spelling of "All Clear." It seems very strange now, but it was once fashionable to write something to the effect of "Ol Kleer" instead of "All Clear." Eventually, people abbreviated that OK, shoiwing that these abbreviated spellings are nothing new in the history of the english language.

Cursive, faster? That's not my experience at all. I'm a lefty, though, so that may have something to do with it.

Obviously it depends a great deal on which writing style you have more practice with, but since you don't have to pick up your pen(cil) as often and the strokes are more fluent, I think cursive is an inherently more efficient method of writing.

Cursive itself is not inherently efficient - look at the number of capital letters that don't connect, the pick-up and put-down to make many letters, etc - it's just more efficient that straight block printing. However, most people who "print" use all the speed tricks of cursive.

I never lift my pen off the page when I am writing a word (unless it has two or more "t"s in it, in which case I find it fun and aesthetically pleasing to cross them with one large line; see, e.g., "statement"). I would imagine that this is rather common. Also, I would imagine that most people are limited more by the speed at which they think than the speed at which they write - this is particularly true of good typists, but I would lay heavy odds on this being true of most people in most situations.

(And yes, I know that's not proof of anything, but it's at least a talking point.)

I never lift my pen off the page when I am writing a word

Really? So all the letters in your words are connected? That must look more like cursive than typical print lettering.

I should send you a sample. It's rather recognizably print lettering - "s" looks like "s," "m" has two humps and "n" has but one, and no ridiculous Palmer-method loops are anywhere to be found.

If you wanted to say that my handwriting was messy, well, then I may be guilty as charged, although I don't generally hear any complaints about it; I only write very sloppily when I'm taking down a grocery list or something that only I will read anyway. But to call my writing cursive? No way; it's clearly print AND it's far more efficient.

I suppose I could scan a sample if you were particularly interested. *shrugs*

Nick,

I'm not being argumentative here--I'm genuinely curious. For instance, the print "s" typically starts at the upper right and ends at the lower left--opposite from the direction in which the word is going. Do you write your "s" in the opposite direction? (Perhaps you could scan a sample and post it on your blog some time.)

Maybe we should start teaching kids to write in "Bleschive" instead of cursive. ;-)

I am not sure when it happened but some where along the way I developed my own style. I was never taught this, yet, it just works for me. When I write, half of the word itself is cursive and the rest of it is in print. Some times it is the first few letters one way and the rest the otherway. When I realized I was doing this I looked at others and found a few people who do the same thing. It may not be write, but it works for me. And lately people have been complaining about my writing less and less.