Recently I’ve been practising writing in a way that I never mastered: cursive script, or “joined-up writing” as my school teachers called it.
Most of my life, when not using shorthand for journalism, I have printed my handwriting one letter at a time.
It’s very readable, if I may say so, and because I do it a lot I can write quite fast.
But surely not as fast as cursive, a style of writing that keeps the pen sliding over the paper instead of lifting and dropping the tip all the time?
I gave up on cursive as a child, concluded it would never work for me because I’m left-handed and couldn’t seem to avoid leaving a trail of smudged ink and angry teachers.
But I’ve been inspired by Neal Stephenson (Writing by hand is good for your brain). Stephenson is a lefty too, and has written oodles of very long books using, he says, cursive script.
And why not? After all, shorthand is joined-up, so it must be possible for me.
Since reading Stephenson’s post I’ve been attempting cursive script for a couple of weeks now, approximately 30 minutes a day. I enjoy it, but it’s still not particularly legible.
I decided to photograph a short part and see what my iPhone makes of it with the scanning thingy.
How my iPhone reads it:
“the time is ve for my 1s murs Artist Pages, but im canying on berauss its actly just a great pleasure to write by hand, letting the pen stids over the paper.”
What I think it says:
“the time is up for my 15 mins Artist Pages, but I’m carrying on because it’s actually just a great pleasure to write by hand, letting the pen slide over the paper.”