What if John Hancock printed his name…?

Well, Bgddyjim, over at Fit Recovery, wrote a blog post yesterday regarding Blog Grammar, which stirred up my brain waves and got the old synapses firing! I’m not sure if I’m blogging, posting or making an entry in My Diary, but I’m going to go a step further and opine on the soon to be lost art of cursive handwriting. I figure, by the time Baby Boomers become extinct, cursive handwriting will go the way of Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Remember this?

 

Egyptian cursive, maybe? (Before my time)

It is my understanding that Common Core Academics doesn’t require cursive handwriting to be taught in schools any longer, and as of last year 41 states had discontinued the instruction. I would dare to assume that Typing (yes, I took that in high school) will also follow in the footsteps of the Dodo bird.

When was the last time you saw one of these?

I can actually remember putting both hands on a type writer and using at least 9 of my 10 digits to make words appear on paper. I easily adapted to a word processor, but I still call it typing, but I have to print it afterwards. That just reminded me of sniffing the old mimeographed test papers that were handed out in elementary school…but I digress 😯

My first electric typewriter, featuring cursive type

Now, all that is required are two thumbs:

Thumb typing

Which leads to this:

The new arthritis… thumb typing syndrome

Eventually, the remaining few who remember cursive writing will be able to communicate with each other, while the younger generations will spend enormous amounts of time trying to decipher it, thinking it is encrypted 😦

So, what do you think the Declaration of Independence would look like if it were hand-printed and John Hancock printed his name?

Wow, that is some encryption, isn’t it?

One last thought, does anyone out there remember the smell of mimeographed paper? 🙂