I cross sevens and zeros too. And say zero, particularly when reading out an alphanumeric string.
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That’s the part that I don’t get about the ‘zOMG Cursive!!!’ crusade.
There is some at least interesting research suggesting that writing rather than typing has different effects on retention(and taking notes on something that doesn’t have internet access seems likely to as well…); and all my own school notetaking was done manually; but just in print.
There’s a lot of…frankly puzzling…near-mystical rhapsodizing about how cursive is building self-expression and creativity and stuff; while apparently being able to print things doesn’t do any of that?
I work with computers and I’d still be skeptical of the idea that obviously we can just have children type everything; but there’s a lot of daylight between that and grinding them through that awful cursive practice paper with the dotted target line between the two boundary lines over and over until their loops are the right size because otherwise culture dies.
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Did you, at some point in your life, learn FORTRAN or COBOL?
(An Ø is not a zero, though. I thought the Norsemen made that abundantly clear the last time they came to call.)
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Neither of them.
BASIC on a Sinclair?
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Closer!
BBC Micro?
Basic. I was familiar with both those machines though.
This here - except I had a Brother word processor in 7th grade.
I write like this, except I’m right handed. I would say it explains the fact my handwriting is horrible, but my father also has mostly illegible writing as well.
In 9th grade someone complained to me that I typed all my homework as a way to suck up to the teacher. I picked up my notebook and said “Can you read this?” at which point their face kind got distorted trying to figure out what they were trying to read. My response was, “Yeah me neither - that’s why I type my homework.”
I’ll also say my wife has at least 4 variations of writing cursive, all of which are excellent. Her grandmother did calligraphy as well. She’s in charge of teaching the kids writing for rather obvious reasons.
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I read very recently that the hieroglyphics we all know were not really an alphabet for everyday use (and of course many are logoglyphs, whilst some do represent a letter) but were strictly for decorative and ceremonial/religious purposes. Can’t find the article now, but I did find an extensive description at Quora that really explained it well. Their everyday writing was ‘hieratic’.
And according to ChatGPT:
ancient Egyptians had a letter alphabet in addition to hieroglyphs. The alphabet they used is known as the hieratic script, which was a cursive form of hieroglyphs that was used for everyday writing. Additionally, the Egyptians also developed a system known as demotic script, which was a more simplified version of hieratic script, and was used for administrative and business documents.
But scroll down at this link to the article with the cartoon to read a much fuller explanation.
Early life working for a well-known computer company drilled into me the need to cross sevens and zeros. I’ve largely lost the habit with zeros but still always cross sevens. I always say zero when giving a phone number. I fucking HATE unthinking ambiguity. (So it’s fine when it’s me doing it very deliberately, of course.)
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As a fellow southpaw who writes in cursive and goes through about a half-dozen journals in a year, I highly recommend the Pilot Precise v7. Nice array of colors, and dries so fast I hardly ever smudge it. Apparently it’s some kind of anti-check washing ink, so it doesn’t ever rub off.
My new pup actually got hold of one of them, and and it took 99% alcohol and a bit of water to get her perfect paw stamps off the hardwood. Your dragging palm doesn’t stand a chance.
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My biggest complaint about handwriting notes has always been that my hand cramped after the first thirty minutes, or so.
Cursive, though, keeps my hand loose and flowing, and I don’t have to periodically stop to rest it. I write exclusively in cursive now (I find brainstorming easier with a notebook than with a computer), but I wish I would have gotten back into the habit of cursive writing back when i was in college, if only so I could have saved myself from a bit of pain during lectures.
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A møøse once bit my sister.
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I’m not sure if I support mandating cursive or not, but I will say that i regularly use it (even as a lefty). It’s the only way I can keep my hand from cramping when writing for any length of time.
Honestly, I really wish someone would have explained that aspect to me when I was younger, if only so I could prevent a bit of cramping while going through school. Something about typing out notes never triggered the same retention in my brain as handwriting them, so I printed my notes by hand. I ended up absolutely miserable by the end of each full day of classes. It took me till I was bored (and considering icing my hand one evening) in my late 20s or early 30s to switch back to cursive, and I sat down and brushed up on my letters.
About a decade later, and block printing feels horribly wrong, like I’m intentionally holding a fork incorrectly or throwing with my offhand.
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I picked that habit up after learning Italian, AFAIK, there is no other way to say the number 0 in Italian.
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I’m probably older than you are. My father had his left arm tied behind his back in school, whereas in my generation we were allowed to use our left hand but not allowed to alter any of the other instructions. That’s why there’s an entire generation of ‘hook’ writers in the U.S.
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That’s why the dotted zero convention exists. And hope you didn’t have to transcribe Greek where you might find a capital Theta Θ.
I’ve also heard of zero with a backslash, just to make things interesting.
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And of course once we stopped restricting people from using their preferred hand, or just barely putting up with them, but not accommodating them in any real way, left-handed people “suddenly” became more common in the general population. Funny, that reminds me of something …
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