Talk:Cursive

Picture

I added the first picture, an example of a cursive alphabet, if you don't like it please comment here.

The Subject is wrongly defined; you confuse ligature

Ligature is joining letters so you can write by hand without lifting pen from page in middle of words. Cursive has to do with a style, curvy instead of block. As a rule Greek texts are printed in cursive, but no ligature is used. Old Greek manuscripts were written in uncial, like all capital letters in a block type of style. Then latter medieval manuscripts used what looks more like lower case, a more curvy style. Yes, people in recent year are calling ligature cursive, but this nomenclature is unfortunate, for what is meant is joining letters, which to be sure are curvy cursive, but the point is the ligature. (PeacePeace (talk) 23:54, 15 June 2017 (UTC))

"The Eastern Mysteries" as a source

The article states that "During the Middle Ages, the flowing, connected cursive script of the Arabic language inspired Western Christian scholars to develop similar cursive scripts for Latin.", the source for this is a book called "The Eastern Mysteries: An Encyclopedic Guide to the Sacred Languages of the Magickal Systems of the World" by David Allen Hulse. I'm not acquainted with his work, but he doesn't seem to be an authority on ancient writing systems but rather of the 'magickal' systems he claims that they're part of. If this claim is true, which it very well might be for all I know, there should be a better source to back it up. --Kaminix (talk) 03:00, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

Ballpoint pen hypothesis

The reference used to support this hypothesis for the cause of declining interest in cursive handwriting is speculative and a derivative work, not a primary source. It does not provide evidence for this hypothesis other than post hoc ergo propter hoc, a logical fallacy. Unless better evidence can be provided, this hypothesis should be deleted. --Zeamays (talk) 00:56, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

"Decline of English cursive in the United States" -- Not Neutral

The tone of this section is negative and generally seems meant to reinforce the notion that American society is being degraded. Even the highlights about some states preferring keyboard proficiency is drowned out by bias and negativity. The same for "Conservation efforts and cognitive benefits." Could someone please rewrite these sections? They should be focused not just on the US, but on worldwide English cursive usage -- which is obviously not limited to "Western Europe." The majority of the information in these sections is from the WaPo article. We can do a lot better.

These sections are filled with negative phrasing, and here are a few examples: Decline of English cursive (decline is negative), new technology that caused the decline (a moral theme about the evils of technology), a cheap price (a moral judgement), perceived lack of necessity (implies lack of knowledge), school teachers lacking formal training (implies teachers lack valuable training), only 12 percent of teachers (implies 12 percent is too low), despite the decline (implies the decline is bad), being reintroduced (implies movement in a positive direction while nothing probably changed in reality), already mandated cursive (why already? implies this is naturally expected), researchers set out (implies researchers collectively had this as a goal), etc.

Other Points:
Who cares about "the largest teachers' union in Fairfax County"?
The "Pam Mueller study" is about writing notes on paper, not about cursive writing. This is misleading.
The "Laura Dinehart study" is about neater handwriting, but the WaPo source doesn't say it was cursive handwriting. Also misleading.
The dyslexia PBS article is hardly scientific, but it seems like there may be benefits for dyslexic students. However, the article is inconsistent, and some of the references are to handwriting ("when the hands are involved, it’s a stronger association") or "sky writing." So they may be talking less about cursive and more about a therapy similar to writing, and it's unlikely that these dyslexic students would write anything of length since they are in therapy for such basic issues with reading and writing letters. After therapy, I expect they would follow the same trends as everyone else.

For those not aware of US politics, it's not surprising that some states would be against federal education guidelines (Common Core), which is why they would try to mandate outdated educational practices. This is purely political posturing, and it's very unlikely to set a trend.

188.239.0.177 (talk) 13:11, 18 November 2018 (UTC)

Everyone, I'm inviting comment here before making changes. If there are any objections to the points above, please state them now.

188.239.0.177 (talk) 21:54, 19 November 2018 (UTC)