Kind of creepy. Point taken.

“Should students still be taught cursive writing?” This is the title of a piece I came across recently in, of all places, The Costco Connection magazine. Proponents for both sides of the issue state their opinions, the yes-ers arguing that cursive helps students with hand-eye coordination, improves their ability to “chunk” letter sounds (-ing endings, for instance) which leads to better reading comprehension and spelling, and that cursive is an important part of our cultural heritage. The naysayers counter that time spent teaching cursive should be devoted to other, more important, subjects, that good handwriting is no indicator of intelligence or success (insert predictable joke about doctors’ illegible scrawls here), and that in this electronic age, the need for tidy penmanship is on its way out.

Frankly, I was surprised that anyone is even talking about this, but a quick Google search revealed that a lot of people are. I’ve never given cursive much thought, because I never learned it. I was in elementary school in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and we learned a script-print hybrid called Duvall, which I abandoned a long time ago for a makeshift printing style that deteriorates a little more each year. Of course, this is because I seem to type exponentially more each year; when I write, unless it’s a note or a list or a birthday card, I do it at my keyboard.

But the piece made me curious about how other writers work, and if the way we write actually matters. What kind of penmanship did you learn in school? What’s your weapon of choice when you’re writing? Pen and paper? Computer? Butcher paper and crayon (as visiting writer Sallie Tisdale suggested in a workshop last year)? Does what you write with change what you write?