Let's try and get 1,000,000 replies to this post

It sounds like a bad idea.

But the steady disappearance of cursive handwriting from schools in America and now in Finland is deeply controversial. One consequence is that even supposedly literate pupils are often unable to read documents that are handwritten.

When George Zimmerman was placed on trial in Florida in 2013 for shooting the black teenager Trayvon Martin, a key witness was Trayvon's 19-year-old friend, Rachel Jeantel.

Her school no longer troubled its pupils with traditional writing skills. In court, Ms Jeantel was forced to admit her inability to read a handwritten document that was passed to her by a lawyer.

In addition, experts believe that learning cursive handwriting helps young children to memorise letters, learn the alphabet and develop their hand-eye-brain coordination. This exercise in digital precision may also help to bring out the skills of those who have the talent to be surgeons or artists.

Dropping cursive handwriting would also require the abandonment of traditional handwritten exams. In America, exam scripts have often been replaced by multiple choice tests.
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Hm, note how it always says "cursive" handwriting. I was taught there are two types of handwriting in school: writing (i.e. writing cursive) and printing (i.e. writing disjointed letters). There is no mention of the latter being abandoned anywhere.
 
Indeed, Perun. But if you're not asked to write anything, you're hardly likely to be able to write in block letters (or however you want to term non-cursive handwriting) either.
 
We were taught general writing in infant school, but only expected to learn a particular cursive style from upper junior school. (The style we did was Simple Modern Hand). I do wonder if there's been some mistranslation somewhere.

Incidentally, since I learned to write in shorthand, I struggle to write in any other form.
 
I write in block letters with Italic and straight varying from time to time. I am quite good at cursive writing but I very rarely use it.
 
When I write, it's all in non-cursive as well. Speaking of not having to write anything, when my dad signed the lease for our new house, it was all done online. Even his signature was already online and all he had to do was click a bunch of things. I guess with so much stuff being digital, maybe there's no point in teaching it in schools.
 
Hopefully changing my anti-depressant tomorrow, 20mg citalopram has been causing me a lot of instability recently.

On an unrelated note, I've been finding myself messing with some songs in Audacity and increasing the pitch by a note. For some reason, most of them sound a fair amount better.

Here's an example of WTWWB:
 
RTC said:
On an unrelated note, I've been finding myself messing with some songs in Audacity and increasing the pitch by a note. For some reason, most of them sound a fair amount better.
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So you're raising it by a half step? Like if that song was originally in E, it's now in F?

It's interesting, that's for sure. Bruce sounds ten years younger. Not sure I like it, but it's neat.
 
Night Prowler said:
I sign stuff in cyrillic cursive, for everything else I use latin block letters.
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Sorry to offend you and Flash (and perhaps many others) but writing only in block letters looks (and is a bit) stupid. :nuts2: Surely the difference between upper and lower case is a functional difference. Also writing purely non-cursively, I find that odd.
 
Interestingly, the Wikipedia article includes this passage:

"Block letters may also be used as a synonym of block capitals, which means writing in all capital letters or in large and small capital letters, imitating the style of typeset capital letters. This is not a necessary implication, however: in at least one court case involving patents, trademarks and registration of designs, the term "block letters" was found to include both upper and lower case.[1]"
 
Ok, major blunder from my side. My whole life I have misinterpreted the term block letters. :facepalm:
Probably because when I used them, I never did it wrong. Someone probably explained it wrong to me as a kid and in various occasions that I used them (not many, only in some forms) I used capitals (which can also be block letters).
My apologies to Flash and Night Prowler and others.

I meant: Only writing in capitals.
 
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