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Growing Danger of Cursive Writing Illiteracy?
Is anyone thinking yet about the consequences for the discipline of history of the rapid decline in the teaching of cursive writing & reading?
Cursive writing refers to "penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters" (Wikipedia 2025). At present, your author believes that the vast majority of current archival holdings is available only in cursive format (Thistle 2022a, 2022b). Problematically however, the literature addressing the teaching of cursive writing & reading reports that this skill is in serious decline (Roessingh 2019).
Therefore, in future, are we confident that historic hand-written documents will continue to be legible to future scholars who have never learned how to read--to say nothing about having experience in writing in--cursive scripts?
With regard to custodial institutions with archival holdings & purposes, may I assume most of my readers here would agree that the current vast majority of documents in all languages held by archives around the world will be written by hand in cursive scripts?
Googling the term "cursive" will produce much, much more scholarship on the mental & physical benefits to young children of using cursive. Sadly however, you will find nearly nothing about how the discipline of history will be able to continue to function effectively without the ability of researchers to understand documents written in cursive script.
QUESTION: How need we address the clear & present danger of creeping cursive illiteracy?
References Cited:
Roessingh, Hetty. 2019. “Why cursive handwriting needs to make a school comeback.” [1] (accessed 11 August 2020).
Thistle 2022a. “How Will Archives Function Once Reading Cursive Disappears?” Archives Association of Ontario 'New Ideas for Archivists' Conference session presented virtually on 26 May beginning at minute 2:30 of the recorded narrated PowerPoint [This is the original 20-minute version of the 4-minute Thistle 2022b below. The live links to resources cited in this presentation are available in a PDF at [2] (accessed 8 April 2025) .
Thistle 2022b. “Risk Management: How Will Archivists Function Once Reading Cursive Disappears?” Society of American Archivists 2022 Research Forum Part 1: Sessions 1.1, 1.2 – Welcome, Discovery, and Lightning Talks session presented virtually on 3 August 2022 [On the day of the conference, author's PowerPoint ‘lightning’ presentation was cut from its originally scheduled 5 to only 4 minutes!] available beginning at minute 31:22 at [3] OR [4] [To access this section of the video click on the above page's first item. Note a related comment was made at minute 57:12 stating that transcription is a viable solution. However, in the author's opinion, this was a misinterpretation of my presentation. This transcription gambit is absolutely cost prohibitive! ‘Transcription’ CLEARLY can be no answer to cursive illiteracy due to the expense involved in transcribing every cursive document wanted by non-cursive-literate researchers! N.B.!: Loss of user ability to read cursive is the problem! The author's abstract & my biography for the above conference programme can be found at Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). (accessed 8 April 2025).