The things you drop on your way up the ladder, so you can move faster, you forget you’ll need them when you go back [down]. — Bette Davis in “All About Eve”
Return of the mud
My shift away from using cursive writing for personal correspondence came on gradually. My first entries in my farm journal, 20-plus years ago, were in script, but my handwriting transitioned quite quickly to printing. Perhaps the fact that many of those early entries were lists contributed to that change, but the shift, for me and others, had been coming on for years. A heavy reliance in school and work first on typewriters, then on word processors, and, finally, on the newly emerged personal computer — all accelerated the changeover, one I must admit I did and do welcome.
Many years ago I worked in a regional library that was the repository for collections of manuscripts and papers. The core focus of the collection was on genealogical and historical research. An ability to read cursive was an essential skill for both me and any visiting scholar.
The patterns of writing in script have morphed many times, and one of handwriting’s attractions is that flexibility in style. Cursive allowed room to be creative within a constrained teachable framework. As a research librarian, I became skilled in determining when a document was written (within a couple of decades) based on the writer’s technique in shaping letters. There were even guidebooks to help in deciphering. The shape of the letter Q, for instance, has altered many times over the years. The version I was taught as a child (shaped like the number 2) no one uses today; it fell out of favor in the 1990s, having been replaced by a variation of the printed uppercase letter.
Here at the farm, as we sent out our Christmas cards this week, I found myself printing my meager greetings. In reflection, I wonder if the cultural shift away from sending letters, typed or handwritten, has larger ramifications for our ability to communicate with one other. From a practical standpoint, my own poor handwriting has only degraded further with disuse, leaving me reluctant to handwrite much of anything.
Certainly, not teaching cursive in our schools is creating a people who can’t read cursive. A person’s inability to read family letters, to gain understanding of one’s own history, will certainly diminish a sense of place within a community and culture. In turn, that may leave us vulnerable, as Epictetus said, to giving over our minds to anyone who might want to influence them.
Considering that the handwritten letter, whether in cursive or printing, is now almost as archaic as the horse and buggy, how does our reliance on quicker forms of communication, email or texting or emojis, change how we relate to one other? It has already become rare for me to receive an email from friend or family that is longer than one paragraph, and increasingly, most emails I send receive only a one- or two-word response or none at all. This, of course, is not simply because society gave up writing in cursive. There are many broad changes brought on by our embrace of new technologies that are still being revealed.
Yet, like with so many of such embracings, we have given little thought to their impact. Has the immediacy of digital communications been delivered in a Trojan horse, a community-fracturing trap from which we would struggle to escape? Aside from benefiting cultural literacy and history, taking time to handwrite a letter (or even type) might yet be another tool to overcome our modern alienation. The slower, more thoughtful process of communicating might just have the added benefit of allowing us to think before we “speak.”
I don’t know. I do know that sometimes I wake up and feel as if there is a juggernaut of change bearing down, that we are too willing as a people to jettison the past and all that is associated with it. True, after writing in a miserable scrawl for most of my life, I rejoiced at being able to type my letters on a computer. But if I had to pin down the source of my discomfort, I would say that it is with the immediacy of contemporary communication. I want more, not less, time for reflection. And I want to discover those letters falling out of books.
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Reading this weekend: The Loved One (E. Waugh)
“broad changes brought on by our embrace of new technologies … are still being revealed ….” I’ve been looking at media theory — strictly as a dilettante — for some years now. There are aspects of deep culture being washed away with surprising alacrity as we adopt new communication tools. But it’s not always a net gain. Both oral and text cultures are people of the word. We have become people of the screen, which is to say, the image, which is a fundamentally different way of relating to the world. Sure, they exist side-by-side, but the mere presence of text doesn’t mask the fact that large segments of the population would rather simply “watch the movie” than read the book. As you say, the impacts of this transition are still being revealed and may take quite some time to manifest fully and then be recognized and described by academics and theorists.
I think these “revealed preferences”, like your example of watching a movie versus reading the book, are quickly reshaping our culture. The ease of ordering online, using a drive-through teller (or online banking), tele-health, all contribute to our increasing unease with being around other people. The pandemic helped accelerate that process, with governmental help. Where it ends, I can only surmise.
Cheers,
Your essay brought to mind two immediate thoughts: 1. You can’t determine the “tone” someone intends in a response with todays texts and emails and it is easy to misconstrue intentions. 2. One of the things I admire about the Amish is that they attempt to determine what is good technology and what is negative technology in regard to maintaining family and community. They don’t simply stand aside and let the new technology bowl their society over. How Marxist of them! LOL
I have had, like most, that same experience with a misunderstood email. It was compounded by the unwillingness of the other party to get on a phone call to sort things out. A lot was going on in that instance. But I still wonder if it might have been smoothed over if we had maintained a written correspondence. A sustained written interaction would have helped us “hear the tone”.
One of my grandsons went to Catholic school from K through 8th grade and studied cursive and had to write in it. I thought it was a very good thing. And I worry about a generation unable to read old letters and manuscripts, etc., what about their grasp of history? And what about when we finally run out of energy and our computers can’t run anymore? I am not a techno modernist and do believe that will happen some day, perhaps sooner than we realize or have planned for. Just my 2 cents. But I’m an old woman who still writes my shopping list on odd bits of paper, in a scrawled long hand, as we used to call it. My kids “write” their shopping lists on their phones. Two of my grandkids write me thank you notes in “short hand”, or printing, but at least they write them!
Thanks for the comment, Heather. I’m afraid you may be right. If history is any guide (and it is), empires always crumble, technologies get lost. Best to try and keep the old ways alive, just in case you need them.
It’s funny, Amanda and I were talking about the slow death of cursive handwriting and the possible ramifications (albeit in lesser depth) the day before your blog post arrived. We didn’t come to any useful conclusions other than being a bit nostalgic. I realized the only cursive I have used in 20+ years to speak of is “Happy Birthday’ and “Love Andy” and maybe a few other obligatory holiday messages of cheer.
Must be in the zeitgeist. Since I published that piece (yesterday) I ran across a few other pieces ruminating on the same. Hope you both have a grand Christmas.
In my own little defiant stand, I consider letterwriting (in cursive like my mom taught me as a homeschooled missionary kid) my ministry to others (who doesn’t like a surprise letter?!), a way to keep the art of letterwriting alive, and it brings me lots of enjoyment, too (and a chance to use a pretty wax seal. When I also homeschooled my kids, I taught them cursive if for no other reason than to be able to read it in old documents and letters.
Keep fighting the good fight, Kim.
Merry Christmas,
Brian