Cursive Handwriting and Other Education Myths (2016)
I&#x27;m surprised that I didn&#x27;t see hand fatigue mentioned, which is probably the number one reason cursive is actually useful, not that it is fast or &quot;aided in cognitive development&quot;. Business scripts (like Spencerian in the early 20th c) were developed if you were Clerk or someone who had to scribe stuff out for hours on end, and it had to be legible and consistent. The mechanics of it are quite simple. If you hold a pen, pinch it, and write each letter by moving the your fingers in and out, you will tire quickly or get hand cramps. Cursive scripts on the other keep your fingers fixed, and you write by moving your whole arm, and bending your wrist back and forth, that&#x27;s why letters come naturally at a fixed angle, because your wrist is going up and down as your arm moves across the page. It also makes writing legibly easier when you write large, your arm system is like one of those old line plotters doing big sweeping motions that you can easily control. Try writing large letters with finger movements while keeping your wrist and elbow mostly still and it&#x27;s like chiselling them out. It&#x27;s hard to maintain the right movements over large sweeps and make consistent letters. So this I feel is the number one reason to learn cursive, if you go to college and want to take notes for three hours a day while keeping your hand comfortable, it&#x27;s natural to write through your whole arm, and the way to write naturally with your whole arm is to basically flick up and down while smoothly pushing your arm across the page: cursive scripts.