On the Loss of Cursive
There is beauty in things that are the foundation of other things.
When I was little, say four or five, I used to make my Mom write out things in cursive on little cards for me. I’d tell her what to write, then sit next to her at the coffee table in our den and watch her fingers and pen make the loops of cursive words, in neat lines with round letters. My mother has excellent penmanship. On the other hand, my father’s handwriting started out graceful and thin, but more spindly the older he got. Soon he switched to making block letters — in all caps. By the time the Parkinson’s had taken over, he was unable to write at all.
I’m of the age that cursive is the writing language I learned in. In elementary school, we were given cursive to practice, with the classic two lines with a middle dotted line to help us form our letters. I struggled to keep my letters in the lines. They seemed wild — like they wanted to go all over the place. They certainly didn’t want to be joined.
Cursive writing or longhand script comes from the age of quills. Quills are sharpened tubes made from the feathers of large birds like goose, swans, crows, eagles, owls, hawks, and turkeys. Interestingly, British writers often used feathers from the left wing of a bird because the curves were better for right-handed writers. Thomas Jefferson…
