Yosser

It seems to me that 'handwriting' lessons do not exist in American schooling. It doesn't matter if its been written by a manager or a tea boy over here, it all looks like "spider" writing to me.

I just had a hand written fax sent to me from a project manager, and I swear it been done by a 6 year old. Now don't get me wrong, I wasn't top of the class in Mrs Thornberries handwriting class, but I Do kNow WHen tO wrIte in CaPitAls.

Ben

You are right, to a certain extent, that handwriting is not taught to the younger ages, but script/cursive/joined hand writing is. It is generally taught around the age of 8 or 9.

USBound

bloomin' 'eck.. I had 4 years, 5 lessons a week of handwriting... pure and simple... copy this page, now do it joined up, now do it neat for best work, now do it as fast as you can, now do it standing on one leg with your finger up your nose (well I added that last one)...

oh.. this was back in the UK BTW, taught by a hand writing champ I was.. I still crap mind...

monster

It's taught at 6 here. But the script they teach is thin and slanted and yep, perhaps even spiderish compared to the style taught in the UK.

suzieque

My daughter had a hard time as the script is so different from joined up in UK. She has done her joined up in UK since aged 5-6yrs and here at 9yrs her class is really just starting to work on it. Actually luckily for her as she can learn it with them.
I'm forever telling her she has spelt things wrong but actually it is just the way they do letters in script. for example the' n' has 2 arches (like a m) and 'm' has 3. Its all a bit much for me so have to leave it for hubby to sort out!!!
Suzie

Ridski

Yeah, I've noticed that it's often impossible to read US handwriting. But an interesting difference seems to be that whenever I have to write the number 4, Americans think it's a 6. Mostly because I write four's like this:

|
|_|_
...|

Sometimes when I'm in a rush, the pen doesn't quite leave the page, and the end of the horizontal line ends up a little joined to the top of the second vertical line.

So I say: How can you that's a six? This is a six:

._
|_
|_|

And they say: Yep. That's a six. And so's what you just wrote.

Apparently, they're taught to write sixes downwards, like this:

|
|.._
|_|_|
...|
Bah. Can't win sometimes...

ps. the silver dots are for spacing only. No one writes numbers with little silver dots in them where I comes from...

Ben

Yes, it can be depending on who is writing it, but that wasn't the statement


My eldest son has never been able to pick up script writing very well but my daughter does a beautiful job with it and when it is done properly it is lovely.

One thing I did notice is there is a difference in styles between states. The style used in NJ was much harder (and this was where my eldest learnt) than the one my kids use in their school on Long Island. Also, this school district has hand writing a little similar to the hand writing my children learnt back in the UK without the actually joining up. Something that wasn't allowed at all in the NJ school, much to my annoyance! In this district they are actually trying to standardise the early hand writing as well, but it is slow progress.



Ridski, again, your comment about the four seems to be different state to state. We had this problem in NJ but don't have it on Long Island. The four was done like an old fashioned four, similar to the letter y but more blocky. On long Island they do do it this way too, but they also understand the way we were taught and don't try and correct the children

Yosser

My wife writes cursive and so does he friends, it seems females in Texas especially pride themselves on it, but the blokes....bloody 'ell, its terrible, thats what I ment about spider writing.

My step-son is learning cursive in class (he's 10) but when he is at home writing its very bad, and if he's writing without lines on the page, forget it, you have to crank your head over 90 deg to read it