In a recent issue of Time, a 26-year-old wrote a first-person piece regarding the continuing decline of American handwriting, particularly cursive, which some feel is going the way of Latin.

I’ve read similar articles before, including one a couple years ago by our own Jennifer Moody.

And let’s just say that everytime I hear something about the death of cursive, I look around for a shovel to help with the burial.

I hate cursive for a variety of reasons:

– I was never very good at it.

– I resented my grade school teachers making me devote extra time to penmanship that could’ve better been used for, say, four-square, tetherball or prison ball (that’s what we called dodge ball where I grew up).

– With very few exceptions, it’s really tough to read, and the older the person manning the pen — I’m thinking here of the 80-somethings who still mail us handwritten letters to the editor — the less readable it becomes. (That is not to be construed as an agist comment, just a simple fact that an older person’s printing would likely be a lot easier on the eyes than his/her cursive).

My own handwriting, a print/cursive combo that I use mainly for note-taking and note-leaving — you know, things like “feed the dogs” and “turn off the sprinklers” — is, admittedly, not real good. My wife’s description is “all your letters look the same,” which, while an exaggeration, has elements of truth to it, particularly when I’m in a hurry.

Still, if I take a bit of time, it’s perfectly legible, especially for (I’m playing the sympathy card here) someone who has sustained four broken digits on his writing hand.

Bottom line: As long as a person can print all the letters of the alphabet in a more or less readable fashion, there’s no reason I can see for bothering to learn all of those loops and curves of cursive.