But when reading cursive, this advantage was much smaller, indicating that the right hemisphere plays a much larger in reading cursive than in printed form. And reading cursive also activates different parts of the brain than printed text-one study found that in all cases they studied, when they presented information to the left hemisphere of the brain fewer errors occurred than when it was presented to the right hemisphere. Cursive gets the entire brain working.Ĭursive may seem like just a different way of writing, but studies have found that it activates different neurological pathways than typing or manuscript writing. By not having to slow down with block printing, experts believed they could put virtually all of their focus on the content of their work. In fact, the College Board found that students taking the essay portion of the SAT exam scored slightly higher when writing in cursive than if they printed their answers. When one becomes proficient in cursive, the barrier between thought and action is minimal. Humans, after all, think structurally, not phonetically. It demonstrated that the act of writing words in a continuous fashion-as opposed to the interrupted format of block letters-promoted an understanding of complete words better than separate letters. Numerous studies on the effect of writing in cursive have been completed, but one of the most influential remains a 1976 investigation from the journal Academic Therapy.

Cursive provides a flow of thought as well as a flow of words. And just because we have more tools to communicate doesn’t mean that those who aren’t in school should abandon cursive writing, which provides an abundance of benefits. It does not store any personal data.If you have kids or attend school yourself, you might have noticed that cursive handwriting-that loopy, continuous written style popular in the 20th century and recently cast aside in favor of key-boards-is making a comeback. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Performance'. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Necessary'. The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Functional'. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category 'Analytics'. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. Whatever our own handwriting looks like, whatever style we use, or even if we never write by hand at all, we can make sense of every cursive letter we are shown what parts of a cursive letter make that letter make sense. When cursive letters make sense, we do not need to write cursive in order to read it. When we know how each cursive letter happened, we know (and we never forget) what makes the letter understandable. Learners reaching this point are usually pleased and amazed that they can now read historical material. Therefore, Read Cursive Fast includes a section specifically on historical documents. This means that most students (particularly those with neurodiverse learning styles) will benefit from practice with historical cursive samples once they are experienced in reading present-day cursive samples. Today, reading historical documents is one of the most frequent reasons for needing to read cursive, but handwriting style variations in past centuries were even more frequent than they are today.

Once students can read present-day cursive with some fluency, they will eventually want or need to read our nation’s historical documents, many of which are written in very elaborate forms of cursive. The beginning of each story resembles familiar printed letters, but each sentence adds more and more cursive features, carefully easing readers into understanding increasingly complex forms of cursive.

Cursive letters