we won’t be getting such an announcement for cursive, because writing is not regulated as radio is; morse the pity!

I never could manage any semblance of a pretty handwriting so I had to settle for a utilitarian style. In my late teens however I realized that I had an aptitude and interest in calligraphy, particualrly letters written large. Later I practiced Hebrew calligraphy. This apparant contradiction has something to do with speed. Handwriting was invented to speed up the writing process as compared to block lettering. The calligraphy I enjoyed was block lettering.

In any case I am a professional writer now. My fear that writing on a word precessor instead of a legal pad would somehow crimp my creativity turned out to be a supersition. In fact the editing capability, and, more dramatically, the spell check feature (rememeber the dyslexia) of word processing has made creative writing easier without crimping inspiration. Where the new process of writing really had a dramatic effect is when I returned to school to get an advanced degree. Computer word processing helped to vastly improve my paper writing. Of course all those years as a writer helped me to learn to organize my thoughts and to find apt expression of them. But this is one person who will not miss the typewriter.

All this remains true in longform writing. But I cannot imagine writing poetry on a computer. I need the pen in my hand and to touch it to paper to write poetry at all. Certainly this has to do with the rhythm, sound and image of poetry and the intergration of all these features somewhere in the brain that is just incompatible, at least for me, with the keyboard.

I am one who has experienced the pleasure of an exchange of letters with other human beings, the epistolary relationship ib both friendship and romance. This practice, this art is all but vanished. In a certain nostalgia, I would say that we are less fully human for its absence. There was a self discovery and deepening of bonds in the epistolary realationship not to speak of the attention to and development of language.

But are relationships any worse now that the epistolarly realtionship has gone by the wayside like buggy rides into the country or the parlor discussion? I think not. Certaianly less romantic. But think how tortured those nineteenth century lovers were, at least in those French, Russain and English romanrtic novels we love. Perhaps in the accelerated, to-the-point, utilitarian e-mailing and text messaging friends and acquaintances get to the point. And lovers get real, have the opportunity to work things out.

Can we hope for the best of both worlds, rapid and far reaching communication online but when we get together we can enjoy the art of verbal communication – sort of the template for ROS? Or have we just become speeded up and numbed out to our respective humanity?

To my main point… To look at cursive you look fist to penmanship:

I am a collector of antique inkwells and I have enjoyed all the aspects associated with early handwriting. To really understand why cursive was and is no more, you only need to look as far as early writing tools. In order to write a word with a dip-pen with a flat nib, it was essential to keep the pen in motion on the paper or there would be bleeds. Diping a pen for each letter was counter-productive and prone to spills, so linked letters proved beneficial. In the Victorian age, the quality of penmanship and stationary was actually a benchmark of status.

During the 20s the dip pen got an upgrade; the Reservoir Pen. However, like it’s predicessor, it functioned the same way. sending a flowing fluid down a nib with the same written results. Yet, As an earlier commenter has mentioned, it was the U.S.Post Office that ultimately quashed penmanship. It was their demand for a better transportable smudge free, and self-contained writing tool that spawned the Ball Point Pen. No longer did you have to keep the point on the paper, nor worry about drips to write. At this time the Art Deco and Empire style block letters, used in advertising, were influencing everything. People were now emulating the look, and writing in this block form.

Another note about Cursive… the shape of the nib of the dip-pen held at the correct angle allowed for variation in line weight, adding a certain panache to a well penned letter. The ball point pen can only make a that drab uniform weight line.

On a final note… at least Polly isn’t getting her pig tails dipped in the inkwell any more!

Somewhere around the 15th century in Spain, before the arrival of printed books, the script known as “Gothic” fell out of fashion, replaced by “Roman” calligraphy. Within a generation almost no one remained who could understand Gothic writing, and books using it became wastepaper (or -parchment). Few had been transcribed into the new hand. The few Gothic pages that survive were most likely saved by being used in book bindings or because something written on the other side of the sheet was considered worth keeping.

I wonder if the old-timers of that time lamented the passing of their art and the ability to read their books.

There’s a lot to the graphologist’s comments about cursive, rhythmic brain function, and ADD. If the rhythm of this show isn’t enough to demonstrate it, there’s the work my fiance, a classical musician, does using rhythm and movement as a form of therapy with childeren with developmental disabilities. The idea that learning to function in rhythm builds the ability to remember and predict and is foundational to all human function is an idea I see play out daily — and this is something we learn through our interactions with the world.

I’ve listened to your program with fascination and would have liked to call in but could find no phone number.
A few points I would contribute:
Cursive (ie “running” hand was the wonderful Italian Renaissance invention, sloping so it could be written with more speed than Columba’s breathtaking Uncial.
The best calligraphy is “invisible” in the sense that nothing about it gets in the way of reading the text…

There’s lots more that I will keep for another time. If people wish they can see my books at stonestreetpress.com

Thank you. Your show is the best thing (one of the few best things on radio, and Christopher is wonderful.)

Thanks,
Immigrant

So here are my thoughts that I was just aching to call in to share.

I agree with the panelists who say that cursive is changing, not dying. The medium that it’s leaving is the one that is apparently most beloved by those on the show: the letter. Technology is in the process of completely supplanting the written word in communications between individuals. This is because people always want to have a sense deep closeness when they converse with other people, and it take a great deal of discipline, much greater than I think the average person possesses, to understand that low latency between responses and a direct connection to another person’s raw feed of thought is not intimacy. It’s simply instant. Actual intimacy comes from communications that are sincere, not uncensored. However I doubt that truth, except possibly in some distant future, will drive people to ask “how r u?” any less.

Not all hope is lost though, because there are still two major arenas where technology will never supply anything greater than what handwriting already provides. The first is in face-to-face collaboration. While Powerpoint and graph chart posters are a part of most business meetings, white boards and scratch pads are integral to so many more. This is because they offer true instant gratificaiton. There are no rules, no shortcut keys, no menu options to memorize. There is only your mind, their attention and the white board.

The other area is in communication to yourself. I won’t speak so absolutely on this one, but for myself I find it impossible to properly organize my thoughts in the rigid demands of a piece of software. Even when the software was written for thought organization, including a program I wrote for myself to do exactly this, it still cannot possibly hope to represent every product of my imagination in a way more intuitive than how I would commit it to paper.

It is this last thought that I want to use to refute the position of the gentleman who associated ADD and lack of hand-writing. Allow me to myself forward as anecdotal eveidence to the contrary. I was diagnosed as having ADHD (not only can I not concentrate, I’m apparently excited about it) at the very start of what will eventually be called an epidemic. However from before that diagnosis to this very day, I organize my thoughts best, to the benefit of my professional and personal endeavors, when I write them down. I have two three by four foot white boards in my home office to prove it.

Writing is not going away, because it is still the best technology for any number of tasks. The real question in regards to cursive is will people accept this and enjoy and take pride in their writing, or will they regard it as a chore. Until tonight’s radio program I was solidly a matter of the latter camp, but now I’m considering finding a handwriting coach to help me change my perspective.

On the other hand, you may be on to someting.

Grins,

RW

Now the notes that I get, either with the hearts for dots on an ‘i’ are nearly illegible. But they’ve never been great, have they?

Grins,

RW