Information on joined up writing in the UK

gull5426

interesting thread..
i am now nearly 40 and i still cant do joined up writing!!
could never do it at school, but was never a problem.. you just wrote slower than everyone else.

i can read my writing, some people struggle to and at work i was nicknamed " harry , the spider" because of it..
that still makes me laugh.

dizziblonde

I'm quite honest with the kids I teach - I hate my handwriting in comparison to that of other primary teachers (it's not bad - just I loathe it). My cursive still feels pretty stiff and spidery - and it's purely because I was a little pain in the rear at primary school who decided to rebel and refuse to join her writing up when the teachers tried to make me!

Result - it's taken about a decade to un-learn the silly habits I intentionally cultivated at the age of 10 (I'll admit I was a pain in the butt to teach) and develop decentish writing.

HelenKA_2

Grrr. huge post and lost it somehow.

Anyway, just wanted to say look at Colinton Mains and Oxgangs Primary too!

tandraig

I dont get this? cursive is very rounded and really hard to join up! I was taught a more italic hand (in early sixties) and most of my generation have joined up handwriting. my daughter was taught (in my opinion) an extreme form of cursive (I could hardly tell the Os from the Us) and she found it really hard. her handwriting now is similar to mine - because she rebelled! she found it too hard to please her teacher. I have seen adults handwriting which looks to me like kids writing. I am not suggesting going back to copperplate, but the hand I was taught in the late fifties early sixties, my daughter seemed to 'get'. both my sons were taught by this teacher, both gave up!! my DS1 sons writing is very upright almost germanic, my DS2s is more rounded but much more legible. both say they hated her class. she insisted on all the class writing the same!!! they all found it really really difficult.

Chatternooga

It seems that there are almost as many styles of handwriting in the UK as there are schools. Most schools try to teach to one style, but if a child of 8 joined the school with their own joined up handwriting style most wouldn't want them to change, provided it was legible. I think the biggest difference between US cursive and UK style is that we don't do special cursive capitals now, but use the print forms (at least in my experience).