May 31, 2018

Geoff Nunberg: Has Cursive Reached The End Of The Line?

From Fresh Air, on National Public Radio

So Longhand: Has Cursive Reached The End Of The Line?

By Geoff Nunberg

Is longhand doomed? People were predicting that as early as 1938, when The New York Times warned that writing by hand would soon be swallowed by the universal typewriter. Eighty years later, people are saying that it will soon be supplanted by the typewriter's souped-up digital offspring.

Yet handwriting is on a tear right now. Five or six years ago, I'd walk into my Berkeley classroom and see rows of undergraduates peering over the lids of their laptops. Now most of them are writing in notebooks....

In an age when most of our handwriting is just for our own eyes, why would we insist that everyone write the same way? ... There are so many nice ways to write; why not give students a free hand in the matter?

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Geoff Nunberg (@GeoffNunberg) is a linguist who teaches at the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley.

Last updated:

June 5, 2018