Something’s missing! Early in the 20th century and before, American children were taught whole arm movement. They sat upright, moved their arms from the joint where arm meets shoulder. To be specific, it is the glenohumeral joint that is between the humerus (large bone of arm) and the glenoid fossa of the scapula (shoulder blade). Their hands and fingers were stationary, with only the tips, the distal phalanges of their ring and little fingers touching the desk or paper.

Try it. The posture allows one to easily join letters from the left side of a page until one runs out of paper. it’s easiest when standing at a whiteboard. To my knowledge this posture is no longer taught.

Now, we write with movement that is in our fingers and hands, with the ulnar side of the hand riding along on the writing surface. This makes joining every lowercase letter in words difficult. The result is the contorted postures we see in those images where writing is slow and fluency is lost.

Solution! Use the italic method for basic and cursive. Letter formations fit natural hand/finger movement. Good fine motor skills can develop for legibility at age-appropriate speed.

Of all that has been written about whether or not cursive should continue to be taught, this one article stands out: http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/cursive-handwriting-philip-ball/. Philip Ball makes no “factual” reference to research that proves cursive is beneficial to the workings of our brains. Such references, often made, are misquotes. In actuality, the only thing that has been determined is that writing by hand, regardless of method, improves cognition.

A picture is worth 1,000 words, so here’s why it’s a bad idea to teach two methods. Please look carefully at the little arrows. They show all the movement changes that a child must learn. As an initial guide just a few letters are colored orange. You are encouraged to look for other differences. In essence, children must unlearn stroke sequence, direction, and letter shapes that have been implanted in their earliest years, and then learn another alphabet, all for the one physical skill of handwriting.

The two alphabets are generic. You may know some variants of shape and formation. One program teaches the cursive as upright; another teaches a slanted basic alphabet, but the child still must learn new shapes and movements.

If older students and adults revert to what they first learned, and write a hybrid print script, is it not a natural result?

Here is a solution, the italic method. The youngest child learns the basic italic alphabet. With no changes of stroke direction and shape, the basic letters become cursive italic. Most joins simply drift up or over to a following letter. Learning this skill is simplified. As one’s individual style develops, modification will occur.

I am a self-taught italic handwriting instructor. I still work with italic because I believe in the success of the method. When I first started to teach I became aware of a test of shapes for admission of young children to the school. I did not understand. Nearly 40 years later I still do not understand, and I certainly do not understand the correlation of shapes to handwriting. I teach lowercase first because we need them more often than uppercase, and the simple shapes conform to natural movements of hands and fingers. Letters are implanted in motor memory for writing and reading.

Uppercase letters do not comply well with the easy, flowing movement of italic lowercase letters. At first children need just a few that allow them to write their names properly. When lowercase letters are developing well, teach all of the uppercase with words so children learn the reason for uppercase, and they practice the lowercase at the same time.

Now I am beginning to understand why the circles, squares, etc. were thought necessary. Back in the early 20th century  educators decided to start children with manuscript instead of the looped, Palmer like cursive. It looked easier. They must have said, “Hey guys, we gotta teach ‘em  shapes so they can write our new ball & stick alphabet.” Think of it! Teach drawing only until these babes are old enough to write like grown-ups.

Now two separate, different alphabets are being taught…or not.

As one who has taught an italic based method for nearly forty years, and believe I have been successful with it, when I read the chapter, “Preparing the Boys for Death: The Invention of Italic,” I wondered how Hensher had come to such negative bias. He used adjectives like “posh” and “elitist” in describing italic. Then I realized he was presenting valid reasons why the method has not been as successful in education as it should be.

Rosemary Sassoon’s Handwriting of the Twentieth Century illustrates the my-way-or-the-highway attitudes of many who developed handwriting programs.

Another chapter is devoted to Marion Richardson whose work Hensher praises. It was Sassoon who introduced me to Richardson’s work, an exceptional master of handwriting instruction. She spoke to me abut Richardson’s belief that students should not stick to a model, but rather let their own personal hand evolve. I try to heed this belief, and to put fun and pleasure into instruction.

Marion Richardson’s model, except for zed, is far closer to italic than the copperplate derivatives, as Hensher acknowledges, “…slightly italic quality….”

If italic became too ornamental among some practitioners, it was a degeneration of a basically simple, legible and rapid method. In fact it can be easily taught to beginning writers, but not with a broad edged tool, a some have done. A crayon or pencil will do, and lots of playful handwriting related activities.

Hensher states that, “Italic is performed with an italic nib,…” Not necessarily. The basic letter formations are the same whether written with a pencil, a ballpoint or italic pen.

I think he does a disservice when he writes about Tom Gourdie whose Simple Modern Hand was just that. It can lead to a rapid, legible hand. He was not a hoity-toity elitist. His fault was that he wanted his students to emulate his model as closely as possible, rather than being free to develop an individual hand. I am grateful for his teaching. He showed me how to hold a pen with relaxed fingers—comfort and fluency when writing for hours, and a diminished carbuncle (a misnomer that is sometimes used to describe the bump that develops on the third finger from a death grip on a pen). What I learned from Gourdie is about the same as the quote Hensher attributes to Richardson, “…only easy movements of the hand….”

Probably personal, but an italic pen slows my writing; I worry too much about how it looks and lose the real purpose, what I am trying to recount. Give me a monoline tool. In my opinion the “italic obsessives,” Henshers words, who insist on the thick and thin marks made by the chisel edged nib of an italic pen detract from good, practical italic instruction.

So I wonder why Hensher devoted a chapter to his search in London stores for an italic pen.

I received your book Fix It Write about a month ago and have been practising (UK spelling) ever since. Having worked physically hard most of my life I found my handwriting had become increasingly poor. To the extent that i seldom would write ‘long-hand’ at all due to the scrawling mess I left on the page. Over years i had developed muscles for laying blocks and stirring cement, not holding a pen delicately. What with the arrival of the Internet I found it increasingly redundant to write letters, most communication now is via email etc.

A couple of years ago i damaged the nerves in both my arms resulting in a minor tremble in both hands. This meant that even printing the text by hand became difficult for me. During the past month of practising I have noticed that the trembling in my hands has stopped. I am able to hold my hands quite still now. I’ve still a way to go, but there is a dramatic improvement in my handwriting to the extent that I now get excited at the chance of writing again.

Best Wishes,

Bruce Austen.”

The graphics that accompany the article implies a bias that cursive belongs to our past, but the fact is that the media just picks stock photos to insert.

Of course the reference is to the conventional cursive, the one with loops for joining. Italic cursive has yet to make headlines. More on that sometime!

Handwriting is less likely to become obsolete. It may not be used as much as in the past, but the advantage to children’s cognition is proven, and they will be acquiring a skill that will express their own individuality in communication to the highest degree.

Also the word “cursive” is multi interpretable.

In Dutch printers’ terms “cursief” means: “slanted font”, what in English is called “Italic font”.

So cursive and Italic have overlapping, maybe identical meanings.

The difference between fully connected and partly connected handwriting is minute when you realize the worldwide trend towards teaching methods like: “Children, now you produce the letters with your pen just like the letters you see in the books”. No need to offer any handwriting lessons.

We need somehow to shake up the educational world by stressing the need that every skill like golf, piano playing, basket ball, and handwriting needs learned. Only then the question arises: handprint or cursive? When cursive, will it be partly connected or fully connected.

Handprint is like producing the normal font: Times normal,

or even worse caps only: TIMES NORMAL.

Cursive handwriting is like producing the Italic font: Times italic.

Do you see the little ligatures at the end of most Italic (cursive) letters? That could be the core meaning of “cursive”. These are the shapes you would make with a quill.

In this grand scheme the difference between fully connected, one-stroke words and partly connected letters becomes only a point AFTER it has been established that handwriting does not come naturally but needs learned.

The position that handwriting is a much needed, to-be-learned skill will be weakened if we start making a distinction between fully and partly connected handwriting. If we do not get a common denominator that for some students partly connected is better and for other students fully connected is better, we will shy away any adminstrator who wants to steer towards something beyond handprint. If there is no common sense, it will indeed be a can of worms for the administrators, which will paralize any handwriting method that ventures beyond handprint, no matter whether it is partly or completely connected. I hope I could explain my point well.

So we need to focus on why and how do we learn handwriting other than handprint.”

http://www.monticello.org/site/blog-and-community/posts/good-bad-and-ugly-look-penmanship

In Handwriting in America, Tamara Plakins Thornton notes that there was a hierarchy in handwriting amongst early Americans, and these men were at the top!