How were you taught to join up letters at school?

24 comments

1. So you just don’t join when the alternative is using a loop? We do use loops when learning Cyrillic cursive I think, but it’s been so long since I wrote any cursive, and I never learned to write cursive Latin. Also, which alphabet is that, with the ÿ?

2. I kinda learnt it the same way as the above, especially regarding the joining of gs and ys, with minimal differences, and have never met anyone who did it differently.

3. Yes, learning cursive was mandatory in the 2000s when I was in school.

   I had already gotten my grandfather to teach me, because I taught his handwriting was awesome and beautiful. But he didn’t make the letters exactly as they were in the practice book, so I was forced to ‘learn’ cursive again the ‘right’ way.

4. We were thaugh to writte on a “seyes” ligned paper, using french cursive (joined letters). A teacher once told me my fountain pen should always touch the paper, and I should only “raise” it for accents and change of words.

5. I wasn’t. I was in that gap generation, where it was still assumed that handwriting would be a main means of writing stuff down. But by the time we would shift from individual letters to being taught cursive, computers and early smartphones had become more common, and my teachers kinda just gave up, and left it at “if it is kinda legible, then it’s fine”. That lack of being taught cursive also means that I have a very hard time reading it. I personally jumped on board with the tech and ignored the handwriting, so my handwriting (with individual letters), while *mostly* legible to others, is not exactly a sight to behold (my history teacher in 9th grade gave me a writing book for 1st graders as a joke christmas present). I did get kinda jealous at some of the other girls in my high school class, because they had absolutely gorgeous handwriting, but I had already given up at that point and embraced my pc. So, I never found much motivation to improve, because the utility of improving would be minimal

   I don’t believe that cursive is required to be taught anymore.

6. [Like this](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&sa=X&sca_esv=7fa2a2e655f9857d&hl=es-es&udm=2&q=caligrafia+rubio+pdf&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAFvEKpKcmJOZXpSYlpmoUFSalJmvUJCSBgCfvv2sFwAAAA&source=univ&ved=2ahUKEwimysKcp-aMAxXxR6QEHTVlOgwQrNwCegQIERAA&biw=393&bih=741&dpr=3#vhid=ISsvXNh-UTeGPM&vssid=mosaic) pretty sure but only when you were learning how to write later on anyone could write however you wanted, cursive was not mandatory

7. Top one! The bottom one looks very cursed to me lol

8. When I learned to write it was in cursive and if I were to look at my schoolwork from primary school it would look like the top line. At some point I stopped writing that way and joining my letters, and I think that made me a lot slower when writing by hand.

9. Greek had “abolished” joined up writing two generations before I learnt how to write. Good handwriting looks like [this](https://static.mama365.gr/media/inlinepics/grammata/stroggyla.jpg) in Greek, this is what a teacher would reward and encourage. Letters are as distinct as possible.

   Of course, people later in life come up with their own writing style and it can be quite idiosyncratic nowadays, since often your handwriting is only ever seen by you. As far as I know, my handwriting, while not consistently joined up, is full of ligatures that are non-standard and likely unique to me.

10. You’re UK teacher was wrong – you were writing cursive correctly. That’s not to say that cursive isn’t a dying art, but there’s still a *correct* way to do it.

11. Top one for me, mostly. I think the z was different, and I don’t recall how x was written.

12. Finland stopped teaching cursive I guess about 10-15 years ago and now kids struggle with the whole concept – for my generation it still comes naturally, it was drilled very thoroughly into us back in the 70’s and 80’s. I kind of like it and think they should have a couple of courses during the school years to at least introduce the concept and practice it a little bit. Some researchers even say that it’s good for hand-eye coordination etc.

13. I was taught via the educational methods of ritual humiliation as the bitter old teachers took their divorces out on any innocent left-handed 7 year olds

    Cursive was and is (I believe) taught extensively but to perhaps limited value. I’ve certainly never struggled without mastering it

14. When we were learning cursive there were definitely loops, so more similar to your top one. But we didn’t write in cursive all the time, we basically only used it during the cursive lessons we had, so there was no letter joining when we were writing “normally” so to speak.

15. I was taught cursive in school in the early 1980s in Germany, exactly like in your example. Of course over years my writing changed, but my letters are still mainly connected.

    I understand that styles change over time, when we were young we found our grandparents’ writing in Sütterlin or Kurrent weird, which is was hard to impossible to read for us.

    THAT SAID I am still puzzled that nowadays especially US and UK handwriting is just PRINT. Those are all single characters, mainly like a simple Windows font sans serif. There is no individual character to it, and I find it hard to get into a flow when after each letter you have to lift your pen and write a new individual character.

    If my handwriting is old fashioned, why did they not come up with a new form of flowing, connected handwriting? The idea of hand writing a long text (e.g. 20 page exams we did in university) in PRINT seems rather exhausting to me.

    But maybe I‘m just old… 🙂

16. I learned British cursive, closest to the top one, in a British school. I’ve also heard it refered to as Copperplate font.

17. I remember in third grade we had some kind of grammar book with assignments, we could spend some time practicing cursive writing when done with said assignments. But that was basically just to kill time while waiting for other students to catch up, we were never required to learn it. I guess it looked something like this.

    https://dez1v4fbcawql.cloudfront.net/metadata/978/916/220/9789162206925.jpg

    I should add that handwriting is not really assessed by teachers here as long as its legible.

18. Early 2000s Hungary – we were taught cursive too, exactly like you. I think this is whats supposed to be used in year 1-8, but my cursive handwriting was illegible by year 6 due to always rushing it and probably just general anxiety (we had to write essays and papers in 45 or 90 minutes as tests, not just at home) so i was allowed to switch to writing however i liked (which, i admit, is a cursed mixture of cursive and print) as long as its legible. 

    *Fun fact: my mom writes in a very pretty, slightly embellished all-caps print. Like i have read her recipe notebook, her shopping lists, crossword puzzles, notes she takes while on the phone – it is always in upper case. I’m pretty sure her cursive would be just as ruined as mine.*

19. *Sigh*, cursive, my old foe.

    I learned American cursive in my Canadian elementary school. It’s called the D’Nealian script. When I write neatly in cursive, I have “girl handwriting”.

    https://www.howjoyful.com/lettering-cursive/

    As a teacher myself now, I have to teach a cursive style that was developed by a book publisher (as far as I can tell). *Some* stuff looks more Dutch, *some* stuff looks more French.

    https://app.uitgeverijzwijsen.be/upload/product/image/9789055358625.jpg

    The kids in my class don’t know any better than to just follow the method, but for me, it’s a pain in the neck to constantly have to mind your handwriting. My first shock was writing the word “spinach” in Dutch (spinazie). The “z” is completely different, and my class at the time collectively went, “Héééé? Meester, what letter is *that*???”

    I have to be careful with my upper-case H, lower-case f, both Z’s, upper-case G, and upper-case L.

20. I wasn’t.

    My mum was tired of reading me books aloud, so she decided to teach me read before I went to school. It worked. Only then she tried to teach me write, but not like one’s supposed to learn it at school, so my handwriting looks kind of like printed, with each letter written separately. And then for certain reason (not sickness – my dad was a mariner and took us for a cruise) I skipped majority of first class, being schooled by mum in meanwhile (she was teacher by education, albeit never worked in the field), and when I continued the education, nobody really cared I never learned handwritten cursive 😀

21. [This is how](https://ujegyensuly.hu/uploads/ckeditor_bendek_andi_szovegkozi_5c485c6fdabd4.jpg) most people write by hand. I don’t recall any teachers being anal about connecting letters, more about staying within the lines and being readable.

22. The loops is the correct way to do it, seems to me, definitely loops on g, y and f. I still write like this. I wasn’t taught the loops on k but it comes out with a loop half the time anyway. [This](https://www.juniorowo.pl/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/IMG_0509.jpg) is what kids are taught at school – I fjnd it very clear and easy to read, though obviously nobody ends up writing like this in the end.

23. Learned it the same way but stopped using it at all at uni and since then it’s just block letters all the way. I can’t even do the connected writing any more.

24. Officialy no loops but loops aren’t punished. [Here](https://imgur.com/a/c0CNdry) is quick version of Finnish cursive.