On “real” writing and other old ways of doing things.

 I overheard my daughter talking to her 8 year-old about “joined-up” writing, encouraging her to get used to writing that way. Then, just the other day, I came across this, I don’t remember where: 

"Have you ever wondered why children are no longer taught to write in cursive?"

And no, it is not by chance that they tend to use it less and less.

Writing in cursive means translating thoughts into words; it forces you to not take your hand off the paper.

A stimulating effort, which allows you to associate ideas, link them and put them in relation.

Not by chance does the word cursive come from the Latin "currere", which runs, which flows, because thought is winged, it runs, it flies.

Of course, cursive has no place in today's world, a world that does everything possible to slow down the development of thought, to fill it.

I think cursive was born in Italy and then spread throughout the world.

Why?

Because it was compact, elegant, clear writing.

But ours is a society that no longer has time for elegance, for beauty, for complexity; we have synthetics but not clarity, speed but not efficiency, information but not knowledge!

In general, we know too much and too little because we are no longer (generally speaking) able to put things into relation.

Most people can no longer think.

This is why we should go back to writing in cursive, especially at school. Because this is not just about recovering a writing style, but about giving breath to our thoughts again.

Everything that makes us live, that feeds the soul, that sustains the spirit, is connected to breathing.

Without breath, as the ancient Greeks said, there is no thought. And without thoughts there is no life.”

Okay! I had numerous students over the years who never wrote in cursive but always printed. Some of them, indeed many of them, also held their pens all wrong, but that’s another issue. It’s almost as thought there was a time when it was felt that you shouldn’t correct children’s physical way of writing for fear of impeding their creativity. I rather get the impression that children in primary schools nowadays are taught how to write - the physical aspect - although creativity may be somewhat restricted by the need to be aware of the names of parts of speech. 

When I was at school we called it “real” writing, which seemed to mark a stage in your progress towards adulthood. And styles of writing can often indicate the approximate age of the writer, and sometimes their nationality. My grandmother’s writing was quite different from my mother’s, which in turn was quite different from mine. But my younger sister’s writing is very similar to mine, probably reflecting our having been taught by the same people in our early years. In my youth I had penfriends from various countries and they all had distinctive writing styles.

Nowadays I get the impression that people don’t write much. Well, personally I do write stuff. Sometimes ideas can be clarified by picking up a pen or pencil and making notes. But I certainly don’t write letters. I don’t write letters any longer. We all send messages and emails. IT and mobile phones have a lot to answer for. 

And yet I remember the pleasure of receiving a letter, a proper handwritten letter - somehow much more pleasing than a word-processed affair, such as the round robins that some people insist on putting in their Christmas cards. In my family though we are still a bit obsessed with keeping notebooks and making handwritten lists. Well, at any rate, this applies the female side of the family; we all love a good stationery store and were quite heartbroken when the Paperchase chain closed its big shop in the centre of Manchester! The Hobbycraft store almost fits the bill but it’s not the same!

Since I seem to be going on about old ideas and ways of doing things, here’s a little oddity I found, a possible solution to the rough sleeping problem:

“London Victorian Poverty. Four penny coffins were common during the late Victorian era. Men would be offered a tarpaulin as a blanket, if sleeping like this wasn’t hard enough. If you only had two pennies, you would sit on a bench where a rope would keep you from falling when and if you fell asleep. It was known as a two-penny hangover, the word hangover become associated with alcohol in the past century. It first appeared in the English vocabulary in the 19th century as an expression for describing unfinished business from meetings, but it was not until 1904 that the word began to crop up in reference to alcohol, Based on research, the claim that the word “hangover” refers to the practice of sleeping over a rope is FALSE. In reality, the alcohol-related meaning of the term is an offshoot of its earlier meaning to refer to unfinished business or the aftereffects of other events.”

Isn’t language interesting?

Life goes on. Stay safe and well everyone.