Historical ~ Maybe ~ Not Necessarily Tobacco ~ But There May Be

[RPK]

I thought this link might peak the interest of some members here. I didn't sign up and so I don't know but possibly some information regarding tobacco, pipes or cigars might be available, provided you can read cursive !

Can you read cursive? It's a superpower the National Archives is looking for.

The National Archives is looking for volunteers with an increasingly rare skill: Reading cursive.

www.usatoday.com

 

[Briar Lee]

I grew up with lots of nuggets of wisdom my elders and parents would say, and one of them was the boy who cannot read and write will grow up to be a slave of the man who can.

My cursive deteriorated from 41 years of law practice writing things for secretaries to type using word processors, but if I slow down, I can still write in legible cursive. And I can read almost all cursive hands.

My mother was taught cursive by a school teacher who learned cursive before typewriters.

She thought my cursive was horrible, and by comparison it was. I’m sure hers was horrible compared to her teacher’s, and so on. Pre typewriter cursive is breathtakingly beautiful.

Why cursive is dying is that it’s slow.

When I practiced law I used two or three secretaries on world processors, and proofread their work.

The young man I sold my office to has a secretary in another town to answer the phone.

He does as he pleases and types letters and pleadings on his laptop.

Sorta takes all the romance out of practicing law, but time marches on.

 

[sablebrush52]

Reading cursive is a rare skill? Yikes!

 

[Briar Lee]

Reading cursive is a rare skill? Yikes!

To read pre typewriter cursive is I think what they are referring to.

I’m the of the last generation of lawyers who has read a whole bunch of abstracts of title.

And I’ve not read an abstract in about twenty years, now.

Until about 1900, all abstracts were in an antique style of cursive. It wasn’t the style we learned.

Pleadings and judgements were masterpieces of brevity.

When handwritten, we lawyers used a lot less words.

Getting rid of abstracts and lawyers reading them was an excellent thing, the cost of delayed closings over defects a hundred years old only somebody like us could find should have been criminal.

Modern small town law practice, of the kind I did, began when young lawyers with typewriters started representing old civil war veterans trying to get disability pensions. At first only Union veterans qualified and there were maybe a million of them that claimed a disability. Then later the Confederates qualified, and at the end they just paid any surviving veteran. They also paid their spouses who survived, and the last Civil War widow died only in recent times, sort of a gold digger during the thirties.

American Civil War widows who survived into the 21st century - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

They also needed the abstract work, I suppose.

 

[Waning Embers]

Reading cursive is a rare skill? Yikes!

It hasn't been taught in school for almost 20 years. I can read those pages from the link in the OP.

 

[sablebrush52]

Looking at the samples, I didn’t see anything I couldn’t decipher. Then again, none of the documents were doctor’s prescriptions, a notoriously illegible form of handwriting that sometimes served as a method of population control.

 

[Waning Embers]

a notoriously illegible form of handwriting that sometimes served as a method of population control.

Probably why cursive is no longer taught.

 

[condorlover1]

I still write in cursive!

 

[MisterBadger]

I still write in cursive!

I went to an old-school old school where from age 10 or so we were taught 'grown-up writing', the standard cursive copperplate used by clerks for centuries. Not an option. Once taught thus, you weren't allowed to write any other way. We were supplied with wooden pen holders and steel nibs, to dip into porcelain inkwells that sat in a cavity on the top right hand corner of the desk (it was always assumed you would write with your right hand), next to a groove in the wood where you would lay down your pen when not in use. It was not to be left standing in the inkwell. The grain of the desk lids were marbled blue-black with generations of ink blots left by previous inmates, and canted at a 30-degree angle which was deemed optimal for handwriting. Then I was sent to a slightly less archaic secondary school where you were expected to have your own fountain pen (though the desks were of the same design and condition. Using a ball-point pen was regarded as somehow vulgar and not as thing a gentleman would do.

The thing about learning to write with a nib is that you learn thick down-strokes and thin up-strokes with the pen, otherwise you tear and blot the paper. If I'm not in a hurry I can still do that cursive thing with a ball-point. And of course, if you can write cursive, you can read it, too: but again, not if you're in a hurry. The pace of life certainly seems to have accelerated significantly in my lifetime.

 

[sablebrush52]

I went to an old-school old school where from age 10 or so we were taught 'grown-up writing', the standard cursive copperplate used by clerks for centuries. Not an option. Once taught thus, you weren't allowed to write any other way. We were supplied with wooden pen holders and steel nibs, to dip into porcelain inkwells that sat in a cavity on the top right hand corner of the desk (it was always assumed you would write with your right hand), next to a groove in the wood where you would lay down your pen when not in use. It was not to be left standing in the inkwell. The grain of the desk lids were marbled blue-black with generations of ink blots left by previous inmates, and canted at a 30-degree angle which was deemed optimal for handwriting. Then I was sent to a slightly less archaic secondary school where you were expected to have your own fountain pen (though the desks were of the same design and condition. Using a ball-point pen was regarded as somehow vulgar and not as thing a gentleman would do.

The thing about learning to write with a nib is that you learn thick down-strokes and thin up-strokes with the pen, otherwise you tear and blot the paper. If I'm not in a hurry I can still do that cursive thing with a ball-point. And of course, if you can write cursive, you can read it, too: but again, not if you're in a hurry. The pace of life certainly seems to have accelerated significantly in my lifetime.

Loss of this venerable tradition has contributed to developing generations of squatting drooling flatulent thumb suckers.

 

[RPK]

I learned cursive in grammar school using the Palmer Method, taught by Nuns that were very intense. I still write in cursive especially in the cards (with $) given to our grandchildren for their birthdays and Christmas. @MisterBadger I remember the inkwells and nib pen heads and fountain pens, especially one I received, a Waterman, for my very own as a birthday gift along with my own bottle of Waterman's Ink. Was that ever special!. WOW you brought back some fond memories.

When I get some time I plan on gone to the site to read some of the old documents.

 

[Kobold]

I still write in cursive sometimes except for the letter “z”. That letter is impossible to remember how to write.

 

[MisterBadger]

Loss of this venerable tradition has contributed to developing generations of squatting drooling flatulent thumb suckers.

Folk were probably saying this in the 16thC when the old medieval 'secretary hand' was being replaced by Italic handwriting, and before that in the 4thC when Uncial took over from Old Roman Cursive...

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I could read cursive before I could write it. I find it very hard to believe that someone couldn't make out what words in cursive say, without having been taught it. Just seems like bullshit to me. It merely takes a smidge of creativity to read it. Just look at the millions of barely legible fonts out there.
I think that writers of articles like this are just making up bullshit sometimes.


I've never written in pure cursive. It is just my own sort of mixmash of cursive and sloppy regular letters. The Z, Q, S, and G in traditional cursive just look and feel stupid to make. Sometimes it's just easier to make T's in script and cursive the rest of the word.

I don't trust people who write in totally correct cursive style. Seems more likely they would be psychopaths for doing that.

 

[Briar Lee]

The Smithsonian is resorting to the same flattery that has young clerks tell me, thank you, young man.

 

[MisterBadger]

I could read cursive before I could write it. I find it very hard to believe that someone couldn't make out what words in cursive say, without having been taught it. Just seems like bullshit to me. It merely takes a smidge of creativity to read it. Just look at the millions of barely legible fonts out there.
I think that writers of articles like this are just making up bullshit sometimes.


I've never written in pure cursive. It is just my own sort of mixmash of cursive and sloppy regular letters. The Z, Q, S, and G in traditional cursive just look and feel stupid to make. Sometimes it's just easier to make T's in script and cursive the rest of the word.

I don't trust people who write in totally correct cursive style. Seems more likely they would be psychopaths for doing that.

Yes, but if you want volunteers - lots of them - to help you work on a project for no money, you have to tickle their vanity, e.g. by making them think they're special. Or confirming their existing delusion that they are special. Thus Virtue becomes its own reward.

Some folk are simply better at pattern recognition than others, and I think that more people suffer from a mild form of dyslexia that is commonly realised.

Among graphologists there is an interesting consensus that certain handwriting mannerisms evince psychopathy, and many large and reputable corporations have in the past employed these analysts to help sift job applicants. I bet Professor Moriarty (the Sherlock Holmes arch-enemy, not the PM forum member) used pure cursive to disguise his own symptoms.

 

[LotusEater]

I learned and used cursive through elementary school, junior high and high school but after high school. I reverted to a hybrid cursive/printing style that makes sense to me. The only time I really write anything by hand these days is when I jot down a message in a birthday card or something like that

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I still write with pen and pencils all the time. I can grab a pencil and jot a note out much faster than I can bring up an app and type on tiny screens with my giant thumbs. I also carry a notebook with me everywhere.

Believe it or not, we won't always have devices like smartphones. Just because we do now, doesn't mean that they will always be here.

 

[Briar Lee]

Yes, but if you want volunteers - lots of them - to help you work on a project for no money, you have to tickle their vanity, e.g. by making them think they're special. Or confirming their existing delusion that they are special. Thus Virtue becomes its own reward.

Some folk are simply better at pattern recognition than others, and I think that more people suffer from a mild form of dyslexia that is commonly realised.

Among graphologists there is an interesting consensus that certain handwriting mannerisms evince psychopathy, and many large and reputable corporations have in the past employed these analysts to help sift job applicants. I bet Professor Moriarty (the Sherlock Holmes arch-enemy, not the PM forum member) used pure cursive to disguise his own symptoms.

In four decades and over 20,000 clients I met exactly four stone cold, remorseless psychopaths.

Two were lawyers, one was a breathtakingly beautiful woman, another a regular Adonis of a young man.

You can catch a psychopath in a lie and their eyes do not show it.

Sharon Stone played the part perfectly in Basic Instinct.

One of the psychopaths I knew was a personal injury lawyer friend of mine, who was a benevolent psychopath. He did use perfect cursive.

When his mother died (that he never had mentioned) I was the only friend he had who attended her funeral. His wife and I cried, the undertaker had to hire all six pall bearers, and he sort of sat there with a slight smile.

If he’d have been evil, there’s no imagining the carnage.

 

[sablebrush52]

Yes, but if you want volunteers - lots of them - to help you work on a project for no money, you have to tickle their vanity, e.g. by making them think they're special. Or confirming their existing delusion that they are special. Thus Virtue becomes its own reward.

Some folk are simply better at pattern recognition than others, and I think that more people suffer from a mild form of dyslexia that is commonly realised.

Among graphologists there is an interesting consensus that certain handwriting mannerisms evince psychopathy, and many large and reputable corporations have in the past employed these analysts to help sift job applicants. I bet Professor Moriarty (the Sherlock Holmes arch-enemy, not the PM forum member) used pure cursive to disguise his own symptoms.

Professor Moriarty writing in cursive strikes me as dubious since he’s a fictional character and thus wrote nothing at all.
Any time that I am required to sign legal documents I write my name. Do others simply print their names, or just use an X?