Cursive in the modern day and age is used by very few as the primary writing style, which is surprising and not at the same time. The people of my generation, generation Z, mostly lack cursive as a skill. Now, most of us know how to write our name for signatures and all that fun stuff. But mostly, we do not write in cursive. Why is this? Well, I remember being taught that cursive was faster than print writing and that you should always sign your signature in cursive. I actually didn’t know how to do print writing for the first few grades of school, I knew it was a thing but I didn’t know it was an option. All the stuff in my classes was written in cursive, it was the only thing I was really allowed to write for the longest time. I do remember struggling to figure it out, like writing it wasn’t bad. It felt like it took way to long to write a single word though. Please remember, that I am remembering back to when I was a kid, if I had practiced it later on I am sure that I would have been able to probably understand it and write it way better. To continue the story, I remember it taking longer and that I broke more pencil lead learning to write it. I was in private school through second grade, so this might just have been a private school thing. When I got to third grade in public school, everyone knew how to write in print and I did not. Then they started teaching everyone else how to write in cursive because of a change for what they had to teach us. Then I found I had an advantage because I already knew cursive. But I had to learn print, my print hand writing can be very nice. Most of the time it looks like chicken scratch. When I first started learning print I was having a hard time transitioning from cursive to print, I remember not really knowing how to write in print and looking up fonts on my computer. I learned how to write in Times New Roman font, and it has stuck with me ever since. Now my print hand writing looks awful most of the time, because its really a mixture of print and cursive. However I can write my print hand writing faster than cursive hand writing. I think that with the advent of new technology and with the emphasis on speed my generation has gotten accustomed to writing in print rather than cursive. Earlier I stated that I was taught cursive because it was “faster” and then I just refereed to print as faster. What is going on? With my generation we have become so accustomed to print that it is the default writing method for most, they don’t know cursive so therefore print is faster. In most instances, it is faster because the individuals in generation Z have grown accustomed to writing chicken scratch as fast as possible without caring the readability. And if you don’t write it traditionally, it is in print on the computers we use as it is easier to read. Most people don’t even know how to read cursive anymore. I don’t, and I used to know how to write it! It’s crazy the world we live in, cursive is becoming less and less dominant. Vox did a wonderful piece talking about cursive.

Thanks for entertaining my thoughts. Please read more of my other ideas! Sorry for ending so abruptly, but I have run out of things to say hahahah!

-Ben