3 myths about cursive handwriting

Cursive is making a comeback. States and provinces across North America are re-introducing the continuous form of handwriting, making all sorts of arguments as to why.

There are good arguments for teaching cursive, granted, but some of the most common ones don’t stand up to scrutiny. People will confidently state the idea that cursive is faster, that it offers cognitive benefits over manuscript handwriting, and that signatures legally need to be in cursive. The problem: None of that’s true. Let’s dig into what the science, and the law, actually suggests.

Cursive isn’t faster than handwriting

A common idea is that cursive is faster than printing, but scientific research doesn’t bear this out. I couldn’t find a single study that suggests cursive is faster, though I did find some interesting ones.

A 1998 study by researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Washington found no speed difference between students who wrote in cursive and manuscript. There’s a weird caveat, though: students who combined elements from each were both faster and more legible.

But more interesting is a natural experiment. Schools in France teach all students to write exclusively in cursive, while schools in Quebec teach both cursive and manuscript. A 2013 study by researchers at the University of Brest and the University of Sherbrooke found that kids from Quebec wrote faster, though their handwriting was less legible. Writing in cursive was found to be slower than manuscript.

So why is this? The researchers in both studies don’t speculate, but I have a personal guess: Ballpoint pens are the culprit. A 2015 article in The Atlantic by teacher Josh Giesbrecht outlines how cursive is a natural fit for fountain pens, where the continuous flow makes connecting letters natural. “Fountain pens want to connect letters,” he writes, “Ballpoint pens need to be convinced to write, need to be pushed into the paper rather than merely touch it.”

But the research doesn’t clarify this, it just shows that cursive really isn’t any faster than manuscript.

Cursive doesn’t have magical educational benefits

I’ve written in the past about how writing by hand is better for remembering things, and there’s all kinds of research that backs this up. Taking notes on paper activates a different part of your brain than typing, and that seems to be connected to learning. It’s a good reason for kids to learn to write with a pen.

But that’s an argument for writing on pen and paper, not writing in any particular style. There’s a common argument that writing in cursive has cognitive benefits compared to manuscript handwriting, but I couldn’t find a single study proving that. Neither could Jim Hewitt and Nidhi Sachdeva, two education researchers from the University of Toronto. They extensively reviewed the scientific literature and had a clear conclusion: “Our review of the literature failed to find any evidence of advantages for cursive writing,” they wrote. “We think it is unlikely that cursive offers more cognitive benefits than printing, or vice versa.”

Similarly, a 2012 research review, also by researchers based in Toronto, found no clear evidence that one form of writing is superior to the other. “We cannot yet say definitively whether cursive or manuscript writing is best for children when first learning to write,” the paper concludes, adding that “whether both are necessary is also questionable.” The paper does state that writing by hand has clear learning benefits over typing, just that the way you write doesn’t matter.

Signatures don’t have to be in cursive

An extremely common myth is that kids need to learn cursive because only cursive signatures are legally binding. There’s no truth to this at all. According to the Uniform Commercial Code, a US law setting various standards for trade and commerce in the United States, a signature may be “a word, mark, or symbol executed or adopted by a person with present intention to authenticate a writing.” In other words: a printed signature is fine. So is any kind of symbol, so long as you use it consistently with the intention of proving your identity.

I tried to find any example of a country, anywhere, that specifically required cursive for signatures, I couldn’t find one. Printed signatures are legally enforceable just about everywhere.

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