BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | The slow death of handwriting: "Christmas cards, shopping lists and what else? The occasions in which we write by hand are fewer and fewer, says Neil Hallows. So is the ancient art form of handwriting dying out?
A century from now, our handwriting may only be legible to experts.
For some, that is already the case. But writer Kitty Burns Florey says the art of handwriting is declining so fast that ordinary, joined-up script may become as hard to read as a medieval manuscript.
'When your great-great-grandchildren find that letter of yours in the attic, they'll have to take it to a specialist, an old guy at the library who would decipher the strange symbols for them,' says Ms Florey, author of the newly-published Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting."
This book has been mentioned before, as has the death of cursive writing. But, hey, we have to keep current.
3 comments:
In Texas some of the blame can be traced to the state tests the kids have to pass in 3rd grade in order to pass. This is the grade students normally learn cursive, but it's more important for them to pass the reading and math test. Cursive is pushed to the back burner along with science and social studies.
I heard about this while listening to A WAY WITH WORDS, the radio show - podcast on public radio. Apparently most students now use printing, often all upper case, when doing classroom tests or essays.
I guess this explains why so many people have terrible handwriting, and that's too bad, as I'm one of those who think a person's character is reflected in handwriting.
Also, I guess this spells the end of the Big Chief tablet with those lines spaced an inch apart that we wrote in when we learned our letters.
Ah, the Big Chief. And those big black pencils. Those were the days.
Post a Comment