How old is cursive

The workbooks are top-bound, making them equally accessible for left-handed or right-handed writers, and include instructions on posture for either approach. The innovative methodology of the New American Cursive curriculum is accompanied and reinforced by time-tested values. With inspiring historical quotes and—also versions available with passages of scripture, students are encouraged to cultivate a world-view as strong as their writing abilities.

Learning cursive also gives students a clearer understanding of how letters are formed, which will improve their print writing as well. Being comfortable with cursive writing will guarantee students will be confident when writing and signing legal documentation. A cursive signature is most commonly required to endorse legal documents, accompanied by a printed version of their name too. Writing and signing checks is another reason for learning cursive.

Cursive writing has historically been the standard style when writing authorized checks for payment. Students with learning disabilities, specifically dyslexia, can have a very hard time with writing in print because many of the letters look similar, particularly b and d. Cursive letters, however, look very different from print letters. This gives dyslexic students another option — an option that can decrease their dyslexic tendencies and make them more confident in their abilities.

More and more school districts are cutting art from their budgets. This can be detrimental to the full development of students. However, cursive writing could be considered an art form all its own. It is one more way for students to develop the side of their brain that is not developed by basic reading and writing skills. The cursive writing we recognize today started developing in Europe the 16 th century.

Connecting letters with loops and tails seemed to grow increasingly more uniform across languages as education became more available to the citizens of those nations. Instruction was made more simply by the invention of textbooks printed using a special copper plate. Students could trace the preprinted letters with their quill pens. The resulting form of writing was simply referred to as copperplate.

Copperplate served as both a simple, functional script and as something that could be made to look fancy for special ceremonial papers. As literacy was far from universal, and the need for legible handwriting was great, copperplate writing was considered something of an art form to be seriously studied. Reading and writing was no small task in the 17 th , 18 th and 19 th centuries. Penmanship was critical. The many forms of cursive writing in the centuries to follow evolved out of copperplate.

Around , a man named Platt Rogers Spencer believed it was important to make handwriting a true art form unlike those attempts that preceded him. A master craftsman in the art of handwriting Mr.

Spencer developed his own variation of cursive that required dedicated training and skill to master its swirls and embellishments. The Spencerian method became the official writing style of government and corporate documents from around to Whole schools and textbooks were developed to teach this writing style around the country. As elegant and beautiful as Spencerian script was, it was also time consuming and difficult to master.