Every star has his Achilles Heel

[Rosey]

Cursive writing is a joke nowadays

So is capitalization and speaking and thinking in complete sentences.

The invention of writing robbed us of our memory -- projection of thought into the past.  The invention of keypads is robbing us of contemplation -- projection of thought into the future.  What's left is thought that exists solely in the present.

The purpose of language is communication. Cursive writing is style over substance. Arguably, capitalization and complete sentences are, too, which is why people use less and less of them over time, at least in casual conversation.

We've also lost a lot of tenses/conjugations and decelensions over the millennia since the bad old days of early ancient Latin, but looking around I don't really think it has resulted in the end of civilization.

Chill out, old man. ;-)  The world really isn't going to hell the closer you get to a walker.

My cat has no use for writing, either.

And yet research suggests people are actually getting smarter at the same time language is becoming simpler. I suspect there is no causation here, just that the two are largely orthogonal.

[RichH]

Most people I know stopped writing in cursive when they were no longer required to use it. I recall asking a teacher sometime in middle school whether I could just print; they said "sure", and quickly I dropped cursive entirely. Cursive writing is retarded.

I find my style defaults to a print-cursive hybrid. In specific cases, I find I can simply write faster using cursive. If it's a note for my own use, I'll use cursive more predominantly.  If legibility matters, or I know that others will be reading, chances are greater I'll use a printed style.  By my own experience, I write printed words more slowly, which means, quite literally, that printed handwriting is "retarded" for me.  :-}

[KeithK]

Most people I know stopped writing in cursive when they were no longer required to use it. I recall asking a teacher sometime in middle school whether I could just print; they said "sure", and quickly I dropped cursive entirely. Cursive writing is retarded.

I find my style defaults to a print-cursive hybrid. In specific cases, I find I can simply write faster using cursive. If it's a note for my own use, I'll use cursive more predominantly.  If legibility matters, or I know that others will be reading, chances are greater I'll use a printed style.  By my own experience, I write printed words more slowly, which means, quite literally, that printed handwriting is "retarded" for me.  :-}

The point of cursive is speed.  The tradeoff is legibility. Printed text is pretty much as a rule more legibile than cursive.  To what degree cursive is less legible or faster th printing depends on the skill of the person using it and sometimes the skill of the person reading it.

I find cursive very difficult to read and my crusive writing is either almost illegible or rally, really slow to write. I consider it a fairly useless skill and made that decision in the early 80's before I ever used a word processor.

[billhoward]

And yet research suggests people are actually getting smarter at the same time language is becoming simpler. I suspect there is no causation here, just that the two are largely orthogonal.

Give or take our diversion into CB radio shortly after platform shoes. A one-two punch with more wallop than Pannell to Mock.

[jtwcornell91]

We recently had a month of assorted job candidate talks here, and I was tempted to give extra points to anyone whose slides were done in beamer.