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Comment by echion | Hacker News Reader

Seems to ignore the fact that picking up and putting down the writing point is actually harder for small children than just sliding the writing implement along the paper. Also consider the popularity of "Swype"-style keyboards, since continuous sliding a finger across a surface is, for many, easier than discrete screen presses.

Sources: personal experience and anecdotes from teachers of 4-6 yr olds (an age range not given the most, if any, time in the article).

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I can remember the pain and hand fatigue that cursive writing gave me for around 5-6 years in school until I said fuck it, I’ll write letters convenient way, not “right way”. Teachers could do nothing with it, and I simply wrote letters as you can see in books, but with few shortcuts. All readers say it reads more clear on average than, well, average cursive.

We wrote with “fountain” pens back then, if it makes any difference.

> I can remember the pain and hand fatigue that cursive writing gave me

I remember the pain too, having written a lot, and in cursive, in school; I'm not saying it's easier to write a lot, just that I've heard and anecdotally observed that very young kids have motor skills that seem better suited to the continuous movement of joined-up letters.

I didn't "ignore" that, it directly refuted it. The article sites studies that claim cursive takes far more fine motor skills than non-cursive and was harder to teach to younger children.

Which studies? "Fine motor" appears exactly once in the article:

> And every time I hear of a young child turned off writing because he lacks the fine motor skills needed to master cursive [...] I see [confirmation bias].

...as if that’s a bad thing. I think just about any surgeon would disagree with that assertion.

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