Most of the people I know do this. Myself, I have never ever written with joined letters except when required to in school.
I consider it a leftover from the era of fountain pens (which are terrible UX for me as a left-handed writing LTR languages).
Even my signature is based on separate letters (tho blurred together as sigs usually do).
Can I ask what age-group you/they are? And it sounds like you had to write joined-up at school. Why would you stop? Isn't it so much faster?
I went to a snooty high school where fountain pens were compulsory (this was the 80s, not the 50s!). But writing was taught joined-up from pencils in infant school, from when you knew your whole alphabet. It never occurred to me to not join. It would have looked like a very small child's writing. Interesting though that has changed.
My wife is a grade school teacher, and disagrees, but I totally think that teaching handwriting is a waste of time. I wasn't anywhere near as fast writing as typing. I would have been much more productive with a laptop in school.
Anyway. I'm rambling now. Thanks for the response! I stand corrected.
That was some 33 years ago but I have an 8yr old now and that part of the curriculum is basically the same.
Both then and now kids only need use pencils for this, thankfully :)
For myself, written joined up is more effort and slower than just individual letters. I don't know if that's due to less practice in it, or due to left handed needing to push the pen(cil) more when writing in that style.
I'm way faster touch typing (tho not on a screen keyboard!). If it were up to me, kids today would learn the easiest handwriting method (I believe that's individual letters) and typing, instead of two ways of writing.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts! Always interesting to find how somr things I take for granted are done/seem elsewhere!