Huh. I'm not sure using SAT essays is the best way to measure what percentage of college freshman can write in script -- I always did essay tests in block letters because I didn't want to risk the teacher not being able to read my writing, not because I didn't know cursive.

I'm not at my most alert and focused today.

HA! Coffee not workin' for ya, lady?

My brother is pretty hardcore dyslexic, and had trouble writing until he learned cursive. Something about connecting the letters helped.

Oh, oh, and to brag, I have excellent handwriting.

I am hardcore cursive. By block letters you just mean lowercase but not joined up?

I used to have bad enough handwriting that teachers mocked me for it. Then I had good enough handwriting that strangers complimented me on it.

But, boy, when it was bad it was horrid.

I'm a cursive writer since before I was officially taught to do it, and I find it almost impossible not to use cursive (as I keep rediscovering every time I have to fill out forms by hand). On the other hand, based on my totally unscientific looking-over-people's-shoulders impressions, I'm not too surprised at the death of cursive. And it's always seemed to me that people tend to be strongly one or the other.

(Other random handwriting observation: it's common in a lot of places not that are not here to teach kids to write in cursive from the start. I'm not sure what effect that would have on the claims of cognitive development blah blah, but it was one of those little "I never thought of *not* doing it this way!" shocks.)

I have been told I write "calligraphically". Interestingly, my handwriting is MUCH better when I write with an ink pen than when I write with a ballpoint. MUCH. My normal handwriting is a mix of cursive and printing - some letters connect and some don't.

Also, to me "block letters" would imply ASSCAPS.

By block letters you just mean lowercase but not joined up?

I think of block letters as being basically small caps.

I have a ridiculous semi-cursive way of writing, like I'm really printing, but too lazy to pick up the pen. Although I write by hand less and less anymore.

This just seems weird to me. Only 15% of the next batch of college freshmen use cursive?

I was taught cursive from the beginning and discarded it just as soon as I was allowed to. I could never write in cursive as prettily as I could when printing.

My writing changes with my mood. But mostly I use a combination of 'printing' and cursive. Often in the same word. For some reason, if more than one s appears in a word, the first will be block, the next cursive and so on. I have NO idea where that habit came from.

But being dyselxic holds its own thrills where handwriting is concerned. Frankly I'm damned if I do and if I don't. Handwritten things need crossings out where a d becomes a g or a b becomes a p. But spell check doesn't catch mistaken words that are spelled correctly.

Thank gods for the email age. Now most people make little errors here and there.

Speaking of the information age. I tried to explain a mimeograph machine to a young military administrator yesterday. It was hylarious. Sort of like explaining color to the blind.

to me "block letters" would imply ASSCAPS.

It implied that to me, but since I can't imagine writing more than a sentence in ASSCAPS, and I'm entirely normal, can't be, can it?

Or perhaps my logic is flawed somewhere.

Fountain pens were mandatory in high school for me, and calligraphy was mandatory for my sister in her last prep school. Not like a calligraphy class, but they had to do all their writing in italics with a slant-nib pen.

I only calligraphed as a hobby.