Penmanship is Underrated for Admins

Lauren Krause
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Today's young adults are graduating high school and college without cursive writing skills, or even decent penmanship. But is cursive writing really necessary in today's digital world? The majority of writing is done on the computer, laptop, tablet or even on a mobile phone. If things continue the way they are going, cursive writing skills will be something only discussed in history books.

A CNN report points out that 40 out of the 50 states in America have implemented the Common Core curriculum that aims to teach topics relevant to the real world in order to build skills that will enable children to become successful adults. Common Core does not incorporate cursive writing skills into its curriculum. Instead, it focuses on computer skills, including typing. One of the biggest surprises in the professional world today is that people are graduating high school and college without knowing how to read and write in cursive. Yet, it doesn't seem to be an issue. In fact, this trend seems to follow current workplace norms.

As today's students grow up and enter the professional world, where most offices have reduced their use of paper and moved many processes to computers, good penmanship at work doesn't matter very much. This means that cursive writing skills are even less important. In most cases, the only time you write on paper is when taking notes for yourself. The only thing that really matters is that you can read your own handwriting. Once the meeting is over, someone will type up the meeting minutes and distribute them via email. Those handwritten notes will usually find their way into the recycle bin.

The most common question asked whenever the topic of cursive writing skills comes up is, "How will you sign your name if you don't know cursive?" When you have to sign your name, you will do it just as you always have done. You'll write your name in your own style of writing. It may be printed, it may be in some form of cursive, or it may be a hybrid of cursive and printed letters.

Keep in mind that even though cursive writing skills may not be taught in schools, some kids will be curious about that archaic form of letter writing and will teach themselves some basic cursive writing skills so they can write their name in this fancy script.

The majority of writing is done on such electronic devices as computers, tablets and smartphones. If something does get written down, it's usually transferred into a digital format before it's read by other people in the workplace. There really isn't a need for cursive writing skills anymore because penmanship at work isn't as important as it was a few decades ago.



(Photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net)

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