THE OFFICIAL BLOG OF THE SBS DIVA

Ha, You may have seen some newsgroup posts from me. Yes attention to detail is important. I never could speel and nor will I ever be a good speller. Is that important? Maybe for some things. I would rather see 10 posts from you where I can poke fun at you for mispelling a word or two than see 9 posts from you. ;) As long as it is legible (sp?). Maybe if you are going for that job interview or are trying to impress that new client/customer that would be the area where you need to ensure you have correct spelling.

I still do a pretty decent job of spelling as that was one of my stronger areas in school. It's the grammar and punctuation I get in trouble with. Probably the biggest thing I hate is when I make a typo or I find I left a word out of a sentence as I was thinking to far ahead, AFTER I've hit the POST or SEND buttons. My writing and printing had really nosedived for the longest time. At one point on the few occassions that I actually had to do something like sign a check I'd find myself visualizing in my brain the keys so I could remember what the letter looked like to write it out. However, all that changed when I got my TabletPC. I'm finding that my penmanship is improving and I'm slowly getting back to something more than a scribble. Heck, you can even read my signature on the Credit Card screens at checkouts these days ;-)

My spelling has always been - and remains - excellent (and most mistakes are obvious typos), and I could quite easily live without a spellchecker. But when it comes to IM, for some reason I slip very easily into a different style, where capitalization is notoriously absent, words are shorter, and punctuation only occurs if it's within the sentence and not at the very end. I tend to write my text message normally using predictive text, but then shortern "you" to "u" etc. in order to make it fit within 160 characters (even though I'm not that bothered about the number of text messages I send, but it's the principle). My biggest concern is that my bad habits will eventually slip into everything else I type, but it hasn't happened yet (and I've been using text and IM for many years, I can even remember when ICQ wasn't bloated).

As a handwriting specialist, I propose that we stop worshiping that "cursive" stuff.

For one thing:

Good handwriting does *not* equal “writing in cursive.”

According to a 1998 paper in the Journal of Educational Research (citation below), the fastest and most legible handwriters ignore about half of what makes cursive “cursive.”

Specifically:

The fastest handwriters (and especially the fastest LEGIBLE handwriters) …

/a/ join only some letters, not all of them — using only the easiest joins, skipping the rest —

and

/b/ use some cursive and some printed letter-shapes. In other words, where printed and cursive letters seriously “disagree” in shape (capitals and many lower-case letters), the highest-speed highest-legibility handwriters tend to use the printed form and not bother with the cursive version.

The same research also shows that cursive writers don’t write any faster than print-writers of equal legibility: the betwixt-and-between print/cursive hybridizers beat out both the "printers" and the "cursivists," in legibility and even in speed.

CITATION:

Graham, S., Berninger, V., & Weintraub, N. (1998). The relationship between handwriting style and speed and quality. Journal of Educational Research, volume 91, issue number 5, (May/June 1998), pages 290-297.

In my opinion and experience:

the woes and failures of handwriting instruction come in *very* large part from teachers damnation-bent on equating "good handwriting" with "doing it in cursive" ... which, at best, comes in second-best. (See the above-cited research.)

Even signatures don't legally require cursive. (Yes, your elementary school teachers lied to you about that one, too ... or, more likely, they knew no better, because *their* elementary school teachers had lied to *them*!)

    Oh, don't take my word for it — ask your attorney, and/or visit the legal citations on "signature" (from Federal law and from a legal dictionary considered authoritative) on the FAQ page of my handwriting web-site, Handwriting Repair, reachable at http://learn.to/handwrite and www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

Kate Gladstone

Director, World Handwriting Contest

CEO, Handwriting Repair

http://learn.to/handwrite

and www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

handwritingrepair@gmail.com - telephone 518/482-6763

325 South Manning Boulevard

Albany, New York 12208-1731 USA