HANDWRITING MATTERS: DOES CURSIVE MATTER?

by Kate Gladstone In a world of smartphones and cybertext, handwriting remains in use for teaching, learning, and communicating in school, at work, and elsewhere. Even those who never write by hand must read others' writing: teachers' corrections, employers' quick notes, the Declaration of Independence, and everything in between. (Did you know that over 50% of people under 35 can't read cursive? This gure reects the typical population. Among people with neurological conditions, including learning disabilities and autism spectrum conditions, the gure is signicantly higher: approaching 100% in some populations.) Inability to read cursive can seriously impact relationships with family members, teachers, employers, and others.

Fortunately, learning to read cursive is not the same as learning how to write it. In fact, research shows that the fastest and most legible handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some letters, not all of them: making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree. Awareness and systematic use of this fact the best-kept secret of effective handwriting can help make handwriting a learnable and functional skill for the child, teen, or adult who is at risk for handwriting issues or who is already experiencing them.

 Reading cursive still matters this can be taught directly, systematically and explicitly, even if the student is not writing in cursive or is unable to write by hand at all.

What about signatures? You or your child's elementary school teacher may have been told that cursive possessed some special legal "magic." In actuality, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over those written in any other way. Legally, your signature is whatever you habitually use as your signature. (Don't take our word for this: talk to any attorney.)

Kate Gladstone is the founder and CEO of Handwriting Repair: a handwriting instruction and remediation enterprise, serving those with and without disabilities since 1996. Kate developed Handwriting Repair as she self-remediated her (then) dysfunctionally slow and illegible handwriting, which was affected by (then-undiagnosed) Asperger's Syndrome.

Kate can be reached directly at handwritingrepair@gmail.com or 518-482-6763 (landline) / 518-928-8101 (mobile) or through her website at http://www.handwritingrepair.info or http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com