Cursive is Dead in The Toronto Star

We made it into the Toronto Star! If only as a corollary character to the main star, which is the declining glory of the handwritten signature. Cursive is dead! Let’s interview Jon Chan about it. Sir, do you have any thoughts on the terminal diagnosis of handwriting, which is, oh how interestingly, the point of your business?

The article goes on to outline how, with Covid and the magnificence of technology, we’re all e-signaturing about. It’s not an overly optimistic article, but it’s also not a totally pessimistic one either. It’s the reality of the world we live in, one where we are, indeed, signing our real estate contracts with little replicable digital signatures: tap, tap, tap. Actually it was really just quite nice to know that people are still thinking about things like writing, and writing by hand, and noticing how things are changing in this world. We did have one or two people discover our shop through the article, so that’s even better.

I am joking about our shop’s terminal diagnosis (if only between my weeping) because so many of the people who come to the shop are coming because there is a different drive to write inside of them. No one is coming to buy pens because they absolutely must sign something (except occasionally a wedding) or absolutely must write something by hand; it’s because there is something inherent in them, at least for right now, that itches for a pen in hand, to make the marks on the page with the effort of it, to sketch out an idea or to hold a notebook like a security blanket.

You can read the article here. As if to further make their point, in the online version they prominently feature a photo of some certain 8-year-old’s terrible handwriting, pondering whether or not some certain 8-year-old’s parents who own a stationery shop are actually going to teach him cursive, or, I suppose, anything at all.

For myself, I am not quite ambivalent about cursive, but it’s not a hill I’m going to die on. When I was a teacher, I spent a few very enjoyable hours with my students at the end of June, after report cards were in, teaching cursive. In the heat of late June, in a classroom without air conditioning and 30 marinating pre-adolescent bodies, it was quite meditative, all those loops and hills, lights off, music in the background, and it turns out that students enjoy writing by hand.

I do intend to attempt to teach, and to encourage my own three kids to learn to write in cursive, if only because it’s such an easily achievable skill, and not one that we’ll have to slog away on for years and years to be respectable (legible), although it might surprise (or it might not) how low my own bar is. I would love for them to have confident, lovely handwriting, but in this world ahead of them, I would more like for them to have really interesting things to write about, in whatever handwriting they end up with—adventures, thoughts, ideas, stories, experiences, feelings, tiny and large treasures and journeys.

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Only a small correction for this article, although I doubt they’ll print a retraction: this is actually Caleb’s third library card, not his first. He got it in the summer, and immediately went nuts, after the horror of being library-card-less for several months. Here he is, looking exceptionally unhinged, missing tooth, arms overflowing with library material destined to be overdue, grinning at the thrill of free books once again. Before cursive, maybe his parents need to teach him how to keep track of his library cards.

All of his holds.