cursive

For those of you who write your stories on the keyboard, here's a piece by Umberto Eco on handwriting. "The three-page article pointed out that writing by hand obliges us to compose the phrase mentally before writing it down. Thanks to the resistance of pen and paper, it does make one slow down and think. Many writers, though accustomed to writing on the computer, would sometimes prefer even to impress letters on a clay tablet, just so they could think with greater calm." The first time I heard the word cursive was when Tristan was learning the skill Mary Bethune Elementary. Cursive: "Written with a running hand, so that the characters are rapidly formed without raising the pen, and in consequence have their angles rounded, and separate strokes joined, and at length become slanted. In ancient manuscripts the cursive style, showing some of these characteristics, is distinguished from the more formal uncial writing." (OED) The nuns just called it writing as opposed to printing. We learned to write with the Palmer Method using fountain pens (Cardinal preferred--were the nuns getting a kickback?), which we called ink pens as opposed to ball point pens. The Cardinal had a levered clip on its barrel that you opened to fill the ink (dark blue, please). No mess.