How The Ballpoint Pen Killed Cursive Writing

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Excellent link ( or should I say article) Mal. Much to ponder as well all are getting older. Times are changing, as your signature line acknowledges.:rolleyes:
 
An interesting read, Mal. My handwriting has always been terrible, but I've always had an affinity for decent pens....decent by ballpoint standards, at least. For the last couple of decades, the only writing I do is writing checks for bills and taking simple notes at work. Bought my first fountain pen about 2 years ago after stumbling onto a couple Brian Goulet videos on YouTube. I've purchased a few more fountain pens since then and actually finished turning my first kitless fountain pen last weekend. To me, a fountain pen makes even mundane writing chores much more enjoyable. It's a deliberate process to choose an ink, clean and fill the pen, and wait for the ink to dry. It makes me look for reasons to write just to use up ink samples and try something new. Of course, my writing is still barely legible, but I'm working to improve it. I plan to actually write a couple of letters to family this year, just to intentionally get away from email and text.
 
I had beautiful handwriting. However, before computers, and as an accountant, I had to put tiny letters and numbers in green ledger paper. - printing was best for squeezing the characters in the tight boxes. Fours years ago when I started this hobby, I got interested in learning to write cursive again. I brought a bunch of practice books on Spencerian cursive writing - now 95% of the time I write in script. My son, 27, and others tell me that they can't read my writing (which is very nice, but cursive). I apologize and tell them that that is how I was taught to write in school. Three years later, most can interpret my writing. Writing is my form of communication, and it is how I wish to communicate. I will accept the consequences of someone misunderstanding me or not being able to communicate with me altogether, but I am not stopping how I wish to communicate; I enjoy cursive writing too much - thanks to the skills I acquired here.
 
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TonyL said:
I had beautiful handwriting. However, before computers, and as an accountant, I had to put tiny letters and numbers in green ledger paper. Fours years ago when I started this, I got interested in learning to write cursive again. I brought a bunch of practice books on Spencerian cursive writing - now 95% of the time. I write in script. My son, 27, and others tell me that they can't read my writing (which is very nice, but cursive). I apologize and tell them that that is how I was taught to write in school. Three years later, most can interpret my writing. Writing is a form of communication, and it is how I wish to communicate. I will accept the consequences of someone misunderstanding me or not being able to communicate with me altogether, but I am not stop how I wish to communicate I enjoy cursive writing too much - thanks to the skills I acquired here.
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Tony, I was hoping you would respond to this thread. I remember you indicating you were exploring relearning cursive several years ago. Would you have some links for accessible sources for practice pages?
 
I remember the move from pencils in our school system to fountain pens in the 7th grade ('60). Highly recommended but not required for most written reports; math and planning still used pencils. I don't remember when I started using ballpoint pens but it sure seems like 66 or 67 in college.
 
Just about everyone I've talked with on this subject that went to school outside the US had to have a fountain pen in school for learning penmanship. Even the guys in their early 30s.

However, after years of Genealogy research, I wish those early census takers had printed instead of writing in cursive. Same at the Court Houses for other records. I hope the get them all digitized before our generation passes and no one can even read them.


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I can remember when ballpoints came to our town (won't tell the year !!) and they were absolutely banned from use in the school I was at. That must have been just around the Grade 3 era ... we started using a stick pen that year ... you know the kind ... ink wells and the fun of dipping girls pigtails (braids) in them !!
 
leehljp said:
I remember the move from pencils in our school system to fountain pens in the 7th grade ('60). Highly recommended but not required for most written reports; math and planning still used pencils. I don't remember when I started using ballpoint pens but it sure seems like 66 or 67 in college.
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I remember we were required to use a fountain pen in my high school... a ballpoint pen would get a paper down graded even if it was a perfect grade. Only our senior English theme paper was allowed to be typed, but if you didn't type - not all seniors did in 1960, it was considered a "girls" course, then the paper had to be written with a fountain pen. I think I was in the navy before I started using a ball point.



As for hand writing legibility, after the ink dries, sometime I can't read my own notes.
 
Well, thank you for sending me down the rabbit hole Mal!
I've just learned about the Palmer, Spencerian, Zaner-Bloser, and D'nealian methods of writing. Now I need to use this new found knowledge for good and not evil.
Cheers!
 
Very interesting article. Reminds me a lot of kids now days that can't do math without a calculator. Like many, the pencil was the standard during grade school. Ball point pens weren't even a must to have during high school as it was impossible to erase any errors, especially in math class. It wasn't until I went in the Navy that pens became a reality in writing letters home etc. As for cursive, I flip flop back and forth between print. As the article pointed out, I use cursive in journals and my own writing but print when someone else needs to read it. It wasn't until my University days at USF that computers were the norm. Everything had to be printed out on the old dot matrix printers that took forever.
 
Tony, I was hoping you would respond to this thread. I remember you
indicating you were exploring relearning cursive several years ago. Would you
have some links for accessible sources for practice pages?
Click to expand...

I had many of them bookmarked, but not any more. A simple Google search will allow one to download plenty of practice sheets. The workbooks that I ordered from Amazon are very good (gets into connecting the letters to each other). I also brought a Udemy course (video ) for $9.99: https://www.udemy.com/improve-your-handwriting-improve-your-life/learn/v4/overview. There are dozens of them out there as well as lots of free-stuff. For all intents and purposes, I am not on FB much. But I was just accepted to a Cursive Camp FB group - but I think it is more for children.

I bought this with workbooks: https://www.amazon.com/Spencerian-Penmanship-Theory-Rogers-Spencer/dp/088062082X
 
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I started as a draftsman at 14 years old. Legible block printing was drilled into me early. I had to fill 18" x 30" sheets with practice lettering and pass before I could start drawing.


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You're welcome, Joel !!!

And .... Welcome to IAP !!

If you write a short introduction about yourself (just a couple sentences or so) you will be entered into the newcomer's monthly prize drawing ... I think that is still happening. There is a forum called "Introductions" and you can find it by clicking on "Forums" in the blue bar at the top of this page.
 
Thumbs up for Zaner-Bloser. I work for Highlights the parent company. Have always thought this was ironic given I flunked penmanship in grades school.
 
If you didn't do so on the first read, go through it again and click on the links--some really interesting stuff in several of them.

Also, keep an eye out at who is attending pen shows that are near you. Michael Sull was Ronald Reagan's calligrapher for a period of time and is an exhibitor and speaker at a number of the larger shows. He usually gives some sort of presentation which is well worth seeing. In addition he is a strong advocate for getting cursive back into school curricula.

Bill
 
To write cursive good requires continuous practice. Sloppy handwriting is acquired because we get in a hurry, and at some point in time it becomes our "norm" for our own style of handwriting.

Like Tony I spent a lifetime juggling numbers, the written words were almost non existent. But after awhile it became the printed form, because my printing was more legible than my cursive writing.

The ballpoint? I was an USAF brat, we moved and we moved often, I went through 11 school systems before I graduated high school. The era of the ballpoint was still new, in some place it was accepted, others tolerated and some might require a trip to the principal's office. I still have the Parker and Waterman pens that I got while I was growing up, I can't say the same for any ballpoint.
 
Many (>60) years ago, my grandmother gave me a 'copybook' that had been started in 1877 by Charles Prior in Manchester, England. This was a simple cardboard-bound composition book, not much different from the books that you can purchase today for a couple of bucks in the stationery department at Target. Prior used this book to practice his handwriting, a sample of which is shown in the attachment. Some will recognize the poem written by Longfellow in 1841.

The fountain pen was invented in the first half of the nineteenth century, but the information I have read suggests that the dip pen continued to be the more popular writing instrument until well into the 20th century. Prior recorded his address on the first page of the copybook, and according to Google earth, today that address is a relatively modest 'terrace' (ie, a row house) - it's modern in the sense that there are satellite TV dishes on the roof, but the basic building could easily date to the 19th century. The address is a very short distance away from the University of Manchester which leads me to suspect that Prior was a student.

The ink used in the copybook shows modest 'bleedthrough' - which probably says more about the paper than it does the ink. The paper is pretty fragile, but the fact that the ink does not appear to have faded at all suggests that it is iron gall (which is typically blue-black, but ages to brown).

History aside, this book has always been an inspiration to me to try to have better handwriting. I don't begin to measure up to the standard set by Prior, but I try.

I am the product of a public school system, and while I was taught cursive in the early grades in elementary school, that emphasis didn't last very long. I'm now an ORG (old retired guy), but during my professional career I worked with a number of people whose handwriting was particularly nice. My sense is that most of those folks came up through parochial school systems where handwriting style and quality was promoted more seriously.

Finally, Donny mentioned drafting - I agree that skill in hand lettering was critical in that field, but even in that situation there were notable differences. Of course it's all done by computer now, but up through the first half of the twentieth century, the mark of a truly skill draftsman was beautiful lettering.
 

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