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Comment by anamexis | Hacker News Reader

The point, which the author discusses at length, seems to be that different letter pairs match up in different ways, which needs to be accounted for.

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I'm wondering if cursive has been taught differently over the last few decades -- I was taught in the 70s, and at that time the instruction was that letters always start and end at the same point. That instruction clearly does not match up to the article or some comments, but rather than quibbling over which of us is correct, I'm more curious how the teaching may have changed over the years?

In the 90s, I learned D'Nealian cursive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian

Yes, there are lots of different styles of cursive that have been taught at various times and places over the last 100 years

there's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencerian_script and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaner-Bloser_(teaching_script) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Method and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian

probably more.

For an extra data point, I was taught in 1995.

Zaner-Bloser looks the closest to what I was taught, but is not a perfect match.

I think I suffer from ‘what I was taught is correct’ syndrome. Of course multiple ways can be correct, but it certainly does address the ‘not matching up’ point

No they don’t. At least in my cursive writing. Line from end of last letter to beginning of next letter is always correct, since you don’t take your pen off the paper. That’s not different between the code and the reality.

If your letters look wrong it’s because you are starting them in the wrong place. Or because you take your pen off the paper. Letters either end in the bottom right or top right, and begin in the upper left. A straight line should always be correct.

The issue with the a that looks like an e is because the author is trying to start writing her a on the left side of the character.

Obviously the letters connect, but where a given letter ends depends on the following letter, and where a given letter starts depends on the previous letter.

For example, in standard American cursive, b, o, v, and w have a top exit stroke, whereas the rest of the lowercase letters finish on the writing line. Combine this with the letter a, which has a top entry stroke, so the oa will join at the top, whereas ea will join from bottom to top.

I don’t see how this matters? They’re splines right? Just quickly writing those down I see a very minor variation in how they connect, but ultimately that variance’d be hardly noticable.

Regardless, the end of the o or e, to the beginning of a is still a straight line.

The article gives explicit examples of where just connecting them with a straight line does not look right, and is noticeable.

Absolutely, and that’s how I can see that it has more to do with the form of the letter than the fact that joining without adjustment is impossible.

Anyhow, I doubt we’re going to convince each other here. Since the tool is right there I might just give it a try.

At this point I'm not sure what we're disagreeing about :)

Interesting. In the 90s in Germany I learned that for some letters you lift the pen, even though the result will look connected, e.g. "ac" would lift after the a, draw the c leftwards, touching the end of the a and then swing around to the next letter, kinda like this, but leaving no gap between the letters: /C

Also, t would be disconnected with itself, being written like /| followed by a - overlapping the |

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