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Comment by MajorSauce | Hacker News Reader

If only... I recently had to take a standardized business knowledge test and I had to write a disclaimer (eg: "I hereby certify that...") in CURSIVE.

When I asked if we really had to write in 19th century writing, she replied that this was the "writing of the business world".

No words.

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Historically, block letters were taught to young children first because they were seen as less difficult to form, and therefore writing by someone with little fine motor control would be somewhat legible. Cursive was how adults wrote. In that sense, she was correct.

That said, "the writing of the business world" today is Times New Roman (or maybe Helvetica Neue). It replaced the Palmer Method of Business Writing[1], which is quite distinct from the the cursive that is taught in schools today (Zaner-Bloser[2] or D'Nealian[3]).

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method

2: http://content.yudu.com/web/y5b2/0A3vbrb/16Grade6Student/htm...

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Nealian

As someone who was forced to learn Palmer style in school, I must say I always hated the capital Q. I don't know if I just couldn't get it right, or I never really saw it as legible, but it annoyed me that it looked too much like a 2. I went back to block letters in college and never thought much of penmanship.

Until college, when I learned a bit of LaTeX and became fascinated with fonts. Still hate that Q though. Thank goodness for computers.

IMHO cursive script is optimised for writability, but not readability. If asked to use it, I'd probably say "I can try if you really insist, but you're unlikely to be able to read it" --- instead, I'll use my "personal font" which looks like either Futura or Courier depending on what I'm writing, and which others have commented quite positively on the legibility of.

I learned Palmerian cursive back when that was what was taught in elementary schools, and used it for everything (exams, essays, note-taking, letter-writing) through college and graduate school. By the end of that time, my cursive had become completely illegible to anyone but myself.

I later re-taught myself to write an italic cursive, which frequently gets complimented when people see it.

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