The Creativity of Cursive

Written by Dr. Jennifer Phillips-Denny

Are you bored or stressed during quarantine? I have a great idea for you! How about either improving or learning cursive? Around 2010, public schools stopped teaching cursive, but now is your chance, with some time on your hands, to improve those handwriting skills or learn cursive if you were never taught it. Learning something new during a time like this increases confidence, and focusing on a repetitive task like improving your handwriting can be calming and help ease anxiety. There are a variety of mental benefits from writing in cursive.

Increase Mental Creativity
Writing in cursive improves the back-and-forth between the left and right parts of the brain and can increase mental creativity. Writing in cursive activates the parts of the brain involved in thinking and language, so handwriting notes when you are trying to learn increases mental retention. Because writing in cursive improves the dynamism between both sides of the brain, handwriting can help you get started on a paper, as well as helping you get writing again if you are fighting writer’s block.

Remember What You Write
Writing in cursive accelerates mental retention when you are taking notes or trying to learn anything new. Writing in cursive is also faster than printing because you lift your pen or pencil from the page fewer times than when printing. Faster writing means more writing! 

Improve Spelling
Writing in cursive can also improve your spelling skills. As you develop your handwriting, your spelling skills increase through muscle memory in much the same way a pianist learns patterns of hand movements.

The Tradition of Elegant Handwriting
Plus, having a pleasing signature is still an important element of rhetorical ethos, or credibility, in our world. Imagine if the founding fathers hadn’t been able to put their elegant signatures on the declaration of independence. Don’t you want your signature to be as impressive as that of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams?

Perhaps the most significant reason to improve your handwriting, though, are rhetorical situations that are more suited to cursive. Rhetorical pathos, the emotional needs of readers, is best expressed in a condolence letter sent by regular post instead of an email expressing sympathy. Taking the time to write a handwritten missive of “thank you” to a loved one shows more gratitude than a quickly sent email. And, of course, the most charming way to write a love letter is still in cursive. Let’s not let the art of elegant handwriting fade into obscurity. Just because we can type something, doesn’t mean we always should.

So where do you start, as an adult, to learn cursive? There are a lot of online resources for learning cursive, but the National Handwriting Association is a great place to start.