• Fallenwout@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Can someone explain why one cannot read cursive? It is just a tilted (sometimes fancy) font, what’s so hard about it?

    Edit: After being made aware by a fellow lemmy’er and googling it, it seems I confused cursive with italics, English is not my first language. Though I learned cursive at school when I was 6 without realizing it is called cursive in English. It was part of the basic curriculum at that time, didn’t know this wasn’t a thing in other countries.

    • LesserAbe@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 year ago

      There are some wonky letters, like capital G, S where if you never learned you wouldn’t know what you’re looking at.

    • TealTallMachine@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      1 year ago

      As someone who didn’t learn English as a first language, cursive is like another language to me. I don’t recognize half of the letters, and i never encountered it enough to properly learn it or have an incentive to learn it.

      • Fallenwout@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        [Serious]Can you read when you tilt a page 30° to the left? Or is it more about the font type than the font angle?

          • Fallenwout@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            Your are correct, I looked up the difference.

            Seems though I learned cursive at school when I was 6 without realizing it is called cursive in English (English is not my first language) . Didn’t know this wasn’t a thing in other countries.

            I downvoted myself :D

    • Stez@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s not though like why the fuck is s a triangle that’s the only thing I know about it and can’t read it

      • Fallenwout@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        It is not a triangle, it is a slash with a hook like /J but combined. You never lift your pen of the paper to write a word. Dots and dashes are added after the word is finished.

      • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        I think at one point a cursive S was “draw an S without lifting your pen from one letter to another” so it comes out looking a bit like an 8. Then the top loop got smaller and smaller, until the one guy who codified the cursive alphabet just didn’t put the top loop on at all.

        This same guy for some reason decided capital Q should look like a 2.

        If I were in charge of the curriculum, students would get an introduction to cursive and an afternoon playing with it, basically so they can recognize it as a “font” and read it. Then let them continue to print or more likely type their work.

    • zerofk@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I was similarly confused when I first learned about this. We were never taught to write in “print”, so handwriting - cursive - was the norm.