By Cory Ackerman, Historian
When I taught high school, I emphasized the importance of understanding primary source material–particularly historical documents that are often written in cursive. One day in class, I handed out copies of an account of a coal miner on strike. He wrote in looping, flowing cursive. My students were baffled. They knew what cursive handwriting was, but none had been taught to read it and they didn’t see any need to learn. “When will we ever need this?” they asked. The truthful answer is, they might not need to use it, but there are benefits for those who invest the time into learning to read and write cursive.
What We Can Learn from Cursive
As of November 2024, a total of 42 states have dropped cursive writing instruction in favor of keyboard instruction after first grade.1 It seem logical, since computers are used for recordkeeping, communications, and education–but cursive writing is not going the way of the card catalog just yet. The ability to read and write in cursive is slowly becoming a specialized skill that those who choose to harness its power will continue to learn and preserve historical documents.
How someone connects their letters, the size of their handwriting, even the pressure they use to write – all of these are clues that we can use to glean more information about the writer and their place in history. University of Pittsburgh Medical Center staff member Mary Biertempfel, a certified handwriting analyst, says that handwriting reveals identifiable personality and character traits. For example, Queen Elizabeth I signed her name purposefully to communicate that she was important and was not afraid to hide it.2 Credit: Wikimedia
Our staff here at HAI ranges in age from early 20s to mid-50s. Some of us learned cursive in school and regularly used it in our daily lives while others got a head start on mastering the computer keyboard instead. Now, those of us who practiced cursive can pass those skills on to our more junior members as we dig into archival documents and historic materials. By teaching others and refreshing our own cursive reading skills, we ensure HAI is always staffed with professionals who can read and comprehend cursive English.
Why use cursive? Practical Considerations
A valentine from 1919, written in cursive, which reads “All the paper in the country, all the stamps and pens and ink I should need if I should tell you, all the compliments I think, yours truly.” Cards like this are unreadable for some people.
Credit: Library of Congress
Some practical considerations of cursive writing are its neurological impacts and developmental benefits. Writing in cursive can help develop a person’s fine motor skills3 and there is evidence that writing by hand can boost literacy.4 Ditching the laptop and writing out notes by hand is also beneficial because capturing essential information and framing it in your own words helps the brain process and retain information.5
Access to History
Understanding cursive opens doors to accessing and understanding the past. The foundational documents of our country, such as the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, are written in cursive. Thomas Jefferson drafted these documents in his compact, cursive handwriting. Other Founding Fathers, including John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, provided their feedback, thoughts, and notes in cursive. The ability to read, for yourself, how these documents arrived at their final forms, and who might have contributed, is valuable context. Yet, it’s not just for the nation’s founding documents. You could find cursive in the documents concerning your family. This skill could make coming across a long-forgotten diary or love letter in an attic a source of new family stories to be shared with your loved ones.
A draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, with notes by Ben Franklin and John Adams. Image from Library of Congress.
Decoding Cursive
Before 2010, young Americans could expect to learn and use cursive for most of their schooling, usually starting around first or second grade. Nowadays, many real introduction to cursive comes in college when professors expect them to be able to read original, hand-written materials. Some students approach the task as a kind of code-breaking exercise while others are able to read it more fluently. Either way, reading cursive allows students to understand materials without the need for transcripts and expands their ability to conduct historical research on their own.6
Cursive writing may eventually become the province of graduate students and scholars, but it’s a specialized skill set that anyone can master. Want to learn how to decode cursive yourself? There are a number of strategies you can pursue to learn to read and write in cursive–as well as exercises to brush up on any existing skills! The most important thing is to start. The more you read cursive, the more familiar with it you’ll become. You can also create a key by using a table with cursive letters in one column and printed letters in another to help your eyes and brain get used to reading cursive handwriting.7 For those who might be curious about how cursive has evolved over the centuries, check out this link to learn how cursive grew into the form we know it today. However, if you’re already part of the “cursive club,” the archivists at the National Archives could use your expertise transcribing documents from across history!
Writing example of the Business Writing style by American Edward Clarence Mills, published in 1909. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
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Notes:
1 What We Lose With the Decline of Cursive | Edutopia
2 https://www.utimes.pitt.edu/archives/?p=8753
3 The Case for Cursive – The New York Times
4 The effects of handwriting experience on functional brain development in pre-literate children – PMC
6 Cursive Is an Endangered Species – Furman Library News
7 https://readcoop.eu/how-to-read-cursive-handwriting-in-historical-documents/