> Where is cursive writing going? Do any of you still use cursive? Everyone now is taught cursive mandatorily, but do you think that soon it will become an elective, like Spanish or Art class?
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> I almost never write cursive anymore. These days, cursive is quaint and hardly used, because of computers.

The smarty reply that came to mind was, "I write in italics." But no, I actually do write in cursive, although it's *slightly* more stilted on certain letters than the cursive writing we are taught in school. The reason has nothing to do with computers but rather my education. For the American equivalent of 5th and 6th grade, I went to a British school in a small town outside of London, and the way they taught script writing was quite different from ours -- more of the letters looked like their printed counterparts, and there were breaks before and after certain letters, which, to my mind, sort of defeated the point of writing in script in the first place.

This is an interesting issue you raise. I never really noticed the disuse of cursive so much as the disuse of handwriting in general. If one IS writing, it seems only sensible to write in cursive, as it's much faster than printing. But, yeah, if kids today aren't getting taught cursive, they aren't going to write in it.

I wonder if it would be interesting to expand the scope of the issue, too. Ever look at handwriting from 100 or more years ago? The signatures on the Declaration of Independence look beautiful, especially that of the infamous John Hancock. Who here even knows what a "paraph" is? Not me, before researching information for the Glossary of Linguistics and Rhetoric on the "Fun With Words" feature, which is where you will find the definition. (Curiously, it's neither a term of linguistics OR rhetoric, but no matter.)

Is cursive writing itself a degenerative product of calligraphy? And did the printing press bring about that change, just as the proliferation of computers may yet bring about the degeneration of cursive into straight printing?

Interesting food for thought, Jezz.