Writing in cursive is a big deal for you lot? Lol, kids at my primary school (fyi I’m English) were taught cursive basically from year 1 (age 5). By the time kids go to secondary school, it’s assumed they can write in cursive reasonably well as standard.
…that’s not taking into account that my handwriting has changed a lot since through secondary school, college, uni, and 12 years of (un)employment, becoming first a lot more loose and loopy and flowing, and then starting to kinda deteriorate as I find it more uncomfortable to hold a pen now. I think I’m starting to get arthritis in my writing hand. 🙁
We were taught cursive (in the U.S.) after we were taught print, but it wasn’t new to us in high school. It’s just that after being taught, we’re never expected to use it again as part of curriculum. Some of our primary schools aren’t teaching it to begin with now, and it’s causing a bit of an uproar, at least near me. Some people see it as very important, but given how quickly most people can type, learning a second script designed for speed has always seemed archaic and redundant to me.
Cursive made my handwriting worse…..before cursive I had s nice clean print. After cursive I created this weird half print half cursive writing only I can read. It does make you write HELLA faster though.
The essay doesn’t have to be incursive, but there’s a written statement that basically says “Don’t cheat or reveal test information”, and you are required to copy that statement in cursive to ensure you know to not cheat and stuff.
Like Wheelpath said, the “I won’t cheat” promise at the start needs (needed?) to be written entirely in cursive. It took us almost half an hour to write the single paragraph and we had to take a break after it. My wrist was tired afterwards and we essentially hadn’t even started the SAT.
Trufax: I read at a college level at 10. If I weren’t Canadian, might not have gotten into uni. I am 28 and still can’t write cursive (yes dysgraphia, the learning disability nobody’s heard about!)
Holy crap, thank you… I looked up Dysgraphia, and holy crap I match every single one of those symptoms. I can read fine, I have nigh perfect spelling and grammar, and can type faster than the average person, but make me sit down with paper and pencil? Takes me a year to write a paragraph, and you’ll have a hell of a time reading it.
Literally every time I mention dysgraphia, I get that response from at least one person.
Dunno bout you but for me when physio suggested it, it was a literal break down in tears moment for me because I was finally having someone else affirm that I wasn’t just lazy and that it really was that hard for me.
Didn’t realize how much handwriting baggage I had until then.
I had great handwriting as a kid, back when I was printing everything, but when they taught me cursive it and my regular handwriting merged and now everything I handwrite looks terrible, whether I’m trying to write in cursive or not.
I don’t know how long ago that was–or if you’re still in college–but in my current experience, even that doesn’t fly. I can’t remember the last time I was allowed to hand-write ANYthing to turn in except exams and the odd worksheet.
In most of my classes, typing was only required for grad students, and optional for undergrads. It wasn’t expected for high schools to have taught LaTeX, so the profs wanted to give us time to learn it before requiring it, since they knew that without a lot of practice, it can be very slow to type. But grad students were expected to turn in professional-looking work, hence the LaTeX requirement. For time context, this was about half a decade ago.
And it didn’t even occur to them to make undergrads type in something? I mean, Word/OpenOffice/HTML isn’t necessarily going to be professional/academic quality, but it’s got to be better than a modern teenager’s handwriting.
Argh! I forgot to mention context again, didn’t I? Sorry. 🙁
I majored in math. After the first few classes, our homework was almost entirely writing proofs. I haven’t been keeping up with recent developments in word processors, but at the time, it was new and unusual to have a good “formula mode” and even then, you had to click all the things like in a character picker, and it still might not have some of the symbols we needed. And without that feature, the choices would be a character picker or memorizing a lot of Unicode numbers, and it would look worse than nearly anyone’s handwriting. At least at the time, LaTeX was basically the only computerized method of writing that was up to the task for the type of assignments we had. Even the word processors that did have that new “formula mode”, that mode was basically just a wysiwyg-style gui for a limited subset of LaTeX.
So less “didn’t occur to them” in this case than “other tech wasn’t ready yet”.
Yeah, I remember similar struggles for naught. In elementary school we had these old DOS computers and dot matrix printers that had font settings on the printer, so to get around the cursive requirement I typed it up and printed it in “script” which was a font that resembled cursive.
Do they still require cursive? I can’t remember if I took the ACT or the SAT but as far as I can remember, I didn’t need to write anything in cursive on any part.
The thing about cursive is, it was invented for fountain pens. With a fountain pen, it comes fairly naturally. It’s actually more difficult not to join the letters up with extraneous swooping lines. But just about everyone who’s learned cursive writing for the last several decades has done it with a ballpoint, or worse, a pencil.
Cursive is pretty much all I remmember , I mean mine is still ugly as he’ll but when I try the print blocky ones it ends up with half letters in cursive just with spaces in between
I never learned to write in cursive. My disgraphia was diagnosed around the same time we were supposed to learn to write it due to it being made clear by how badly I was struggling. The school kinda gave up on forcing me after that and let me keep writing everything outside that one set of lessons in print. Eventually they gave up on making me write most things and let me hand in computer typed stuff (For homework) or stuff hand written by the aide they assigned to me.
Sensory-motor type here. I wasn’t diagnosed until college when forcing neat handwriting led to my grip dislocation my wrist ( scaphoid joint to be precise) as an RSI. Seriously wish my parents hadn’t been all “WE don’t have a r-slur in the family” when teachers first brought it up as a possibility.
Never mind that even if it did, that would not make me less a person. Intelligence not being a good proxy for worth as a person and all.
(I am autistic and have cousins with intellectual disability so I have a problem with framing the issue of learning disability discrimination as being wrong because intelligence because I know a lot of ppl who aren’t particularly intelligent and are still worth as much as me with my gifted status and high-160s IN.
Oh, well, my normal handwriting *is* cursive. We only write in cursive over here in Estonia while in school. It’s fluid and fast and I don’t understand why you guys are taught two different types of handwriting. Makes no sense.
Same here, another European country. We don’t even have a word for it, it’s just called “handwriting”. But I have to admit it’s kinda useless. I wish we adopted the murrican method and taught children to write print-like letters. It’s much more legible, cursive is just a pain to read to anyone else.
and another european country, where pupils are taught cursive, because it’s easier to form, then at the age of 11, are allowed to switch to print letters (called stick lettters or detached writing) which make more sense when using abbreviations and writing faster. Soon most adults and teenagers write with these ‘stick” letters. That was such a relief for me to give up cursive. Of course I had to teach to people with difficulties at interpreting letters, so I must go back to cursive and to have a terrible handwriting (I hate my handwriting so much that I stick computer printed texts when I have to write to friends or family!)…
I seem to recall that Dvorak was created to optimize typing. It’s setup, I’m pretty sure, with the most commonly used keys either on the home row or near the regular resting positions of our fingers. If my assumption is correct, the “arbitrary elitism” is assuming that just because our standard is so common, then that must be because it’s good. And no, I don’t use Dvorak. I’ve used QWERTY all my life.
Why would kids have *more* trouble learning Dvorak? I’d have thought it would be easier to learn than either qwerty or writing of any style. Or did I misunderstand?
I’ll second that. Because of computers, cursive is just antiquated. As stated somewhere above, cursive was created because of the old ink well pens. Cursive is useless in todays world.
Panel three is such a wonderful Dorothy moment. “what does he… why would anyone not write… Oh my poor lost innocence, now when I have seen how deep the corruption of the world goes, it is my responsibility to fix it, starting with YOU, WALKY!!!!!”
Do NOT mess with your terrifyingly assertive girlfriend, Walky. From now on YOU write thank you notes.
Suddenly, I had a flash of a strip where, after Joyce’s return, Dorothy confides in her about this event and tells her: “Now I have seen The Original Sin!”
That’s EXACTLY the trap Walky is afraid of. He KNEW it was trouble when Dorothy wanted to dress him, it was confirmed when his mother took an interest and this is just the other shoe he knew would drop one day.
Man, more like those *months*. So much school time was wasted on that useless skill. We could’ve been learning about dinosaurs!
(They’ve stopped teaching to post-Millennials. Not like they’re gonna need it.)
On big enough stuff, I went with a phone call. This seems like something a text would be appropriate for, but Walky being an ass ALSO calls for Dorothy making him write a note to teach him a lesson.
Are typed thank-you notes a faux pas? I can see it going either way, because handwritten notes are more personal, but they’d look a lot more professional typed out.
Speaking from my experience being forcedtaught to write them, they aren’t supposed to look professional. They need to be entirely personal (yet formal, but not impersonal-formal) and individualized, even if you have to write 13 of them to various relatives you barely interact with who all sent you US Savings Bonds for your middle school graduation.
Mind you, this is >20 years ago. These days, a thank you e-mail is probably fine, as long as it is well-written (use complete sentences with proper spelling, punctuation, and capitalization). But if you are snail-mailing, you probably still need to go with handwriting over typing.
Actually these days probably a thoughtful thank-you video-mail would probably be the ideal solution. Longer than a Vine, though; more needs to go into it than just the words “Thank you”. Some kind of personal meaning needs to be expressed.
Man… he surely takes everything for granted and thinks he deserves all the things they give to him just because. Is it me or Willis is using Walky to show us how male privilege looks like?
I wasn’t correcting spelling. I was agreeing that Walky has privilege, though it’s not necessarily gender-based in this case. It’s been set up as more race-related so far, based on Linda’s perception of her children’s behavior.
When did cursive stop being taught in schools, or am I being thick? I would have learned in the early 80s, and I’m wondering if this is considered to no longer be necessary learning, the same way some formats of writing have changed since then.
I definitely learned cursive when I started school in the late 80s/early 90s (in Germany though, where I do believe it’s absolutely still taught in schools now) and I now write in a sort of mix between cursive and whatever the opposite is. Like, some of my letters are connected and some are not. I feel like that’s the case for a lot of people in my/our generation!
It was a shock to me when I found out it was being phased out. Made sense but still a shock. I still use cursive a fair amount, particularly when writing something lengthy.
I definitely learned it in the mid-90’s stateside.
And then had to learn cyrillic cursive in college when I took a Russian language class. Ya’ll griping about written English cursive (or rather your first language)….ya just don’t know, man. Ya just don’t know.
Russian is my first language, and at school we were never given an option of NOT using cursive. I started mixing it with print by high school, but I still specifically mix, not just write in print.
I’ve been studying English since kindergarten though, and I think we learned print and barely touched on cursive there…
Dunno what’s so different between Engish and Russian cursive that makes Russian feel entirely natural and obvious?…
(Although, yeah, reading it can be a problem depending on handwriting – you are supposed to leave bigger gaps between letters than within them making words like дышишь legible, but not everyone does that…)
I don’t think I’ve used cursive since seventh grade. I don’t know ANYBODY that uses cursive except for my grandmother. So that’s some seventy year old values Dorothy’s toting.
Yeah, seriously, I’m on the downhill side of 40, and I don’t remember the last time I used cursive. I write in Anglo-Saxon runes more often than in cursive.
Actually, no, I wrote a note to my littlest niece “from Santa Claus” in cursive last Christmas. Specifically because she would have never seen my cursive handwriting before, and so wouldn’t recognize it. It took me a while to remember how to make some of the letters.
It was a thank you note. For the cookies and milk.
I wrote cursive longhand through college, but have gotten out of the habit (in favor of typing, of course); I actually tried it semi-recently, and it was unfamiliar and made my hand hurt. (My signature, IMO, does not count, as it is more a well-practiced pictogram/scrawl at this point than anything that could be untangled into individual letters.)
All of my writing on Post-Its, etc is in “Small Caps” – somewhere around middle school, I decided I hated how my mixed-case printing looked, and switched. The one and only place I use lower-case letters is in writing out (some) email addresses.
I don’t think I know anybody who *doesn’t* write at last partly in cursive. Maybe that’s a Germany thing? But I’d say anyone in my generation (so anyone born around 1980 +/- some years) writes in a sort of mix between cursive and not-cursive (print?). My mother (born in 1948) writes in cursive exclusively.
… maybe it totally is a Germany thing. We have a thing about importance of handwriting, it’s a cultural thing lol.
I don’t know, I connect a my tailed letters to the following letter all the time; it’s just faster. Personally, I don’t call it cursive unless the r’s are those weird flat-topped n things; otherwise, it’s just print (which is the term for “not cursive”, by the way).
Personally, I mix cursive and print letters indiscriminately in a mostly-but-not-entirely-connected scrawl. I could write neatly in cursive or in print if I tried, but I can’t really keep it up for more than a couple sentences, or at least I don’t care enough to. Fwiw, I’m Canadian and I was born in the late 90s. I think most people my age who I know write in print, though.
Not quite a German thing from my experience here in England (however I have noticed we now get printed prescriptions here so that the pharmacist does not have to phone the doctor to find out what was written however this may just be because of how bad my doctors handwriting is not sure if it’s uniform practice)
I’m pretty sure most brits write joined up unless legibility is key then we migh write in all caps instead. I’m amazed Americans are making such a big deal out of it here you learn joined up writing but it just seems like a natural step though some people end up settling on print in adulthood.
There’s joined-up, and then there’s cursive. They’re not quite the same thing. I do not write in cursive. I do, however, end up joining most of the letters I write, especially when writing fast.
…cursive has weird letters. (x, r, and s, to name a few, and quite a few capital letters.)
I’m curious how you were taught cursive, then? Maybe it’s different. What I remember is endless painful drills trying to get a bunch of seven year olds who could barely color inside the lines to put together big loopy letters that had to be perfectly legible, as fast as printing, and tilted to the right at exactly the correct degree.
I meant more in the way that thanking people for doing something nice comes so naturally for her, which is a good trait for a politician to have. But you have a point as well!
That sounds like a really polite threat to me. I wonder if I’m the only one who would see something like “I hope the Benelux nations are well” and immediately think “it would be a shame if anything were to happen to them”.
That referendum made me ashamed of my country, not necessarily due to the outcome but due to how little people cared about it. Only 30% of people eligible to vote in that referendum actually turned up to vote.
My signature is technically cursive, I guess, but the J and C are the only parts of it that are really recognizable. Mostly it’s just a bunch of vertical loops. I sometimes get carried away with the end bit and put three or four ‘l’s. Or maybe ‘e’s. It’s hard to tell the difference.
I thought that was the point. Nothing is so illegible as quickly written cursive, so it stops being recognizable letters and starts being inimitable patterns, perfect for signatures.
I like using cursive and calligraphy, but only because I am a total visual-arts nerd. I don’t support requiring it in schools, because that’s months of practice when they could be learning about dinosaurs and outer space instead.
Yeah, cursive matters for the arts no doubt about that. But for use in schools, I’m not entirely sure if I’m for or against it.
Personally, my private elem school required writing all in cursive starting from second grade to sixth grade. Then I moved to a different high school where I had the option to do standard or cursive. Ninth grade was the transitioning period of penmanship so all my writing looked straight but stayed interconnected. That was a weird year.
Dorothy, ever heard of a cell phone?(you have). These days when you want to thank some you call them personally or write an e-mail. Writing a “thank you” letter is so last century.
Cursive. I remember cursive. Which is good, because I forgot how to write in print because the teachers at my school required everything from fourth through eighth grade to be written in print at all times. People always say I have an eerily legible signature as a result.
Cursive was mandatory in third through fifth grades for my class. Mine was always so terrible even I couldn’t read it. “You just need more practice” they said, as they threw handwriting books and that extra-wide-ruled paper from the first grade room at me. (Others were almost as bad, but mine was MD-illegible no matter how hard I tried.)
Once they required a homework essay in cursive, and threatened to knock points off for bad penmanship. I had a cursive font on the computer, so I typed my essay then traced it onto note paper. That went over well. Next time the teacher told us we’d automatically fail if they even thought we typed it. I made two copies of my essay: one was handwritten in lousy cursive, but the one I actually turned in was transcribed into Pitman shorthand from a library textbook.
That finally put an end to their harping on perfect cursive, but to this day I question if she actually noticed.
O_o so much hate for cursive. Cursive saved my life through school and uni – it’s the only way I can write fast enough to keep up with my thoughts and meant I finished exams in half the time. HALF THE TIME.
I actually liked learning/writing in fancypants cursive, because I’m a visual nerd like that, but I feel the tedious months in 3rd Grade would be better spent on a thousand other things instead.
Current me likes cursive because I’m a visual nerd too, but third-grade me just liked how orderly those endless cursive drills were. (Mind you, I didn’t really do them ’cause I was terrible at finishing stuff, but I liked the idea.) I suppose it was at one time, but as much as I enjoy fancy lettering, I’d hardly consider it a practical life skill.
First-grade me hated how orderly the drills were. Tests were even worse. Mind you, that was because those letters were all /obviously/ meant to connect up, and they wouldn’t let us connect them. My teacher failed me for a test (even though, at that point in time, my cursive was very, very good) because I joined the letters in words up because that made it more obvious they were words, and it was clearer where one word started and the other begun, and they were *obviously* meant to join up.
Damm… maybe I should have paid better attention in cursive class. I take forever to write (and also type, incidentally) but I’ve forgotten everything about cursive except how to write my name (like a bunch of other people, apparently).
Cursive is a mess. Italics at least looks good; I can barely read cursive at all.
I kind of invented two handwritten “fonts” that I use and I’m not even making that up. One’s super-legible and fast (and if I let myself get sloppy, super fast – I used that for note-taking in class), the other’s still legible but arty as fuck because THANKS ART SCHOOL and I use it for things like holiday cards and not much else.
(Do I have an example of the latter online anywhere…? HA! I do! My first Folklife application. Scroll down. Yeah I can write whole letters in that. 😀 )
Yeah, I have three completely different sets of handwriting. There’s writing fast and for me handwriting which is basically legible only to me, trying to write fast but legible handwriting which is exactly how it sounds, and I want this to look nice handwriting which, while not as pretty as yours, is extremely neat and easily legible. All of these are printed, although the first two do have many letters run into each other much like in cursive.
I think Walky is supposed to have dot eyes, like Mickey Mouse. The black dots ARE the pupils, and those dashes of white are the light reflecting off them.
Considering that you are supposed to be constantly asking for and gaining permission before getting intimate and/or proceeding further — “Can I touch you here? How about here? Is it OK if I take off your panties now?” — I suppose thank-you notes (“Thank you for your lovely gift of head last night.”) are appropriate.
my boyfriend is from a “thank you note” family and every christmas we write our thank you notes and i always forget which family member is which and who got me what and thank you notes are the worst and i love my ungrateful heathen family more and more every day.
Yeah! She learns and studies for ambition and for her future, not out of some genuine joy of studying. She’s smart, but Slyterhins are smart! They are just also good at achieving their goals and they put a lot of energy into it.
I think a lot about these characters’ Hogwars houses (I think a lot about ALL fictional characters’ Hogwarts houses^^).
Walky: Huffelpuff. Sweet, kind, not particuarly ambitious and slightly naive to the world, but willing to learn. Loyal, funny. (I’m a Hufflepuff too, so I accept those negatives in myself)
Joyce: Gryffindor. Brave in the face of danger. Strong convictions, may they be right or wrong. Prone to rub people up the wrong way. Stands up for her friends, NO MATTER WHAT.
Becky: Gryffindor. Exact same reasons as Joyce.
Dina: Ravenclaw. Ecxessively brainy, smart, fond of learning. Even the issues with social interaction can be a Claw trait. Tends to be in her own head a lot, but is making an effort to be more open. A little odd, in a lovable way, surprisingly witty.
Sal: Slytherin. Hard outer shell with a loyal core underneath, but selectively loyal (which is different than Puff loyalty). Does her own thing, self-sufficient. Extremely stylish. Can be brusque and seem cold, but that all stems from somewhere. Just effortlessly cool. Which to me is a Slyth trait.
Sarah: Gryffindor. This one was the most difficult, because she is a good person with a good heart, but she’s not letting many people see that. Sarcastic, which is more a Ravenclaw thing, but she stands up for her friends and is loudly and bravely defending people when she feels like they’re being unfairly treated. She’s like a more sarcastic Neville Longbottom. Beware any and all evil snakes!
I mean. Like I said. I think about this stuff a LOT xD
Not being sure where else to put them is a perfectly acceptable reason to put them in Hufflepuff — in addition to being hardworking/steady/loyal, it’s the Not Otherwise Specified of houses. So I’d put Walky there, too.
Dorothy: “You would do well in Slytherin…” The Sorting Hat presents Slytherin as a ticket to the top. Dorothy’s studious, but her ambition is a much more defining trait, and if she got to pick, she’d choose it strongly.
Agreeing with everyone else on Dina-Ravenclaw and Becky-Gryffindor.
Joyce: Gryffindor. She’d have initially expected to be sorted Hufflepuff, but the Hat knew she was fighty-brave before she did. She’d be glad to be with Becky, at least.
Amber: Gryffindor, much to her initial surprise as an anxious preteen. (One might argue that Amber isn’t a Gryffindor but Amazi-Girl is, but AG is within Amber, so she’s got all that bravery buried in there under her childhood trauma. Perhaps Gryffindor could help bring her lion out in a healthier manner.)
Joe: Gryffindor. They can be grandstanding and showoffy, brave and they want you to know it. Also, he would have asked the Sorting Hat which house gets all the ladies.
Danny: So much Hufflepuff!
Ethan: Also Hufflepuff. He’s not all that brave or brilliant or ambitious, but he’s steady and supportive. Bit of a NOS choice.
Sal: Slytherin. She wants to prove herself, even enough to sleep with her moderately-cute TA for a better grade. Loyal to those who earn her respect. Cool, aloof, calm until provoked.
Sarah: Hmm, could argue her for anywhere. I suppose she’d ask the Hat which house caused the least drama, so that’s Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, tipping towards Hufflepuff due to her loyalty, which lets her room with:
Dana (Sarah’s previous roomie): Hufflepuff, for the ‘huff le puff’ and being right next to the kitchens.
She’s moved down on mine, but not by much. The idea of having someone tell me to write in cursive just freaks me out. She would probably be super understanding if I told her of my situation though. Plus she probably already knows what dysgraphia is.
I remember learning cursive writing in primary school where we had to do cursive writing in what they call copybook style, you know the one where the z looks like a weird 3.
Any rare instance of cursive writing on my part bares very little resemblance to copybook style especially the letters b,d,f,i,j,t and z. Also my numbers 2,4,5 and 8s are weird too.
I also dislike the cursive A. It was such a cop out! I mean, all the other differentiated capitals were properly different, even if they went a little crazy (seriously, G? How did you get that squiggly mountain thing from the printed form?). And the only other two like A, N and M, had the excuse of being hard to cursive right (I tried) and being close enough to count, respectively, that they can get away with it. But A? Just make a make a triangle starting in the bottom right corner, but angle the base to pierce the right side! We already start I by going backwards, why not A? (again, ask Ramona Quimby why she hates the cursive Q)
I looked up Copybook on Wikipedia, and got nothing for writing styles. It seems to be just a method where you have one line written out, and then copy it to practise the style. You can do that with ANY style.
Did you learn Sütterlin, perhaps? If so, you have my sincere commiseration. That’s borderline illegible even when written well.
They’re talking about D’Nealian Cursive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian And yeah, fuck that noise. I invented my own capitals for cursive writing during/after high school, which are a mix of fancy print and calligraphy that looks nice next to the lower-case letters.
I attended a school where they had some of the kids writing their Hebrew notes in Rashi-script, which imitates the handwriting of a very revered rabbi back in the day. (There are block letters, and Hebrew script, and Rashi-script, because Rashi is just that special.)
–oops, I just looked it up, it isn’t actually based on Rashi’s handwriting, it’s just customarily used for printing Rashi’s commentaries. Anyway it’s really fun to say Rashi as much as possible, I recommend it.
Here are the letters side by side – from right to left, it shows Print, Cursive, Rashi-script, and the numerical value of each letter: http://www.hebrew-language.com/alef-bet.htm
Who even uses cursive anymore? I remember our teachers saying we’d all need to know it for high school and college. When I got to high school and college, the only time we used cursive was to write our signature for some forms. No test or anything. And now I only remember the cursive letters that make up my name.
I’m pretty sure I remember at least half the alphabet not including my name in cursive. Sometimes when I’m signing my name for a purchase (literally the only time I’ve used cursive in the last five years) I’ll try, but most of the time I’ll get the first three letters out and then just seize for a second and call it good.
I’m totally with Walky here. With all the communication options open to us these days, a thank-you note is really impersonal. It means you didn’t want to deal with me for the three minutes it takes to take your phone out of your pocket and at least give me a perfunctory call.
And yet my history teacher thought that time was best used in making sure we had a complete set of colored pencils to spend a week drawing a personal timelines of our lives.
That at least makes sense. Spending a long time on a single work is not uncommon, if you think you can teach a lot of different things from it. Though I admit 13 weeks is a long time: I remember an entire work taking up 9 weeks–a quarter. You got two a year, with the other half of the year being used for smaller works.
ah, cursive… my second grade nemesis. i’m autistic/have nonverbal learning disorder so i’ve always had intermittent trouble with motor skills. learning cursive was literally physically painful. i only use it to sign my name these days. i have no idea how to write letters like g and f in cursive either
not, of course, to say that having motor skills problems on their own means you might be autistic. that’s just one part of a larger whole, and there are certainly autistic people with fine or even great motor skills.
if you want to know more about autism in general or have specific questions, i’m fairly knowledgeable or could direct you to other resources. feel free to send me a note on deviantart (click the link in my name) or on tumblr @eternalgaylord
This strip and all the comments about cursive have made me really curious about what all the characters’ handwriting looks like.
I imagine Walky has printing that’s just passably neat enough that he wouldn’t really get reprimanded for writing too sloppily. Dorothy’s would be neat and tiny, and in cursive I guess? I would’ve guessed she printed her letters because printing tends to be neater, but maybe cursive is for special occasions.
Does Joyce dot her i’s with hearts? (I feel like there was a Walkyverse strip that mentioned this but I could be wrong.) I’m thinkin’ either hearts or circles.
Am I the only one who sees Dorothy as being a bit of a jerk in this, too? Sure, Walky should have been more careful with his words. He just meant that few really expect thank you cards in this day and age–especially in informal situations. I only ever wrote thank you cards on graduation and to certain older relatives.
But “terrifyingly assertive” is also accurate, and is another way of saying dominating or controlling. He just said something in a stupid way, and now he’s being made to do something he doesn’t want to do? I can’t help but flip the genders and see how I would see this. A “plucky” girl who has a tact problem and the man who is “civilizing” her. Or man making his girlfriend do something.
Sure, it’s the last panel, and those are the jokes. I’m not upset or anything. And I think it’s perfectly in character for Dorothy–the control freak and hyperachiever. And I could buy that someone who has her goal to run for president is obsessed with even somewhat archaic etiquette.
It’s not that I hate Dorothy or anything. Just that I’m surprised that there’s all this talk about how big a jerk Walky was being, but none about Dorothy. They’ll argue she’s wrong about thank you cards, but the only opinions about her behavior seem to be cheering her on.
I probably wouldn’t have said a word if anyone else had, since it’s not that important.
agreed. granted i also hate writing thank you cards, so i’m biased, but that seems like his business, not hers. she could also just write hers from the both of them since she’s the one it’s important to.
i do really like dorothy, though, so i guess she’s allowed an imperfection or two.
I mean, Dorothy being a jerk here makes me really happy, because for the longest time her character’s been coming off like “Dorothy Keener, partying with mere mortals?” to me. Like, she was just the nicest, most awesome person ever who forgives all misdemeanors and guilts herself silly over any perceived mistake.
Seeing Dorothy here be super uptight about a thank you card, angrily barking that she wants to see cursive, is both genuinely hilarious and a needed shot in the arm for a character that was a little too vanilla for a series where everyone else has layers upon layers of depth and often acts incorrigibly to the betterment of their character.
It’s good that Danny’s a sexist twerp. It’s good that Amber lashes out at her friends. It’s good that Becky just called Jocelyne a Nazi. It’s good that Sal’s a Too Cool For School rebel who tried to beat the hell out of Malaya for not being contrite enough. It’s good that Billie’s an Alpha Bongo with a vehement hatred of those NERDS. It’s good that Ethan’s a neurotic basket case who gives his best friend a case of the stink eye because how dare she get mad at him for dating a girl. It’s good that Ruth is a pretty awful person when she wants to be. It’s good that Joyce has to be dragged kicking and screaming through life lessons. It’s good that Sarah is a misanthropic asshole who can barely be assed to express concern for people she loves. It’s good that Dina picks fights with Joyce over her religion. It’s good that Carla is an obnoxious butthole. It’s good that Walky is a raging manchild who doesn’t want to express those girly feelings.
Characters need to be terrible sometimes, and Dorothy’s been missing out something fierce for like two and a half years now.
Excuse you, Dina is never terrible she is great. Every character having some fatal flaw feels if anything MORE artificial (not to mention annoyingly cynical) than someone being “perfect” because in reality some, and in fact most, people are just pleasant human beings without glaring shortcomings.
Being a dick sometimes isn’t a fatal flaw. Most of the cast are, largely, pleasant people. It’s just sometimes they fall short of themselves, as we all do.
Like, Amber is straight up my favourite character. She has also been really awful at times by lashing out when Ethan and Danny do something outside of what she wants and then she tried to beat the hell out of Sal because she thought she couldn’t be Amazi-Girl anymore. I wouldn’t call her a bad person and I hate when people chime in with “why is Amber such an awful and crazy person” because I think there’s significant context that shapes Amber into what she is, and that’s what makes her a good character.
Dina doesn’t pick fights with Joyce over her religion. She picks fights with Joyce over how her religion causes her to deny reasonably important facts – and in a way that is constantly, regularly attempted at being enshrined as a mere ‘difference of opinion’. I don’t know why you insist on riding this, because they’re not the same – especially not when its your life’s passion they’re stating is filthy satanic lies.
I think that you may be on to something by pointing out a double standart. Totally.
But I also think that a relationship has it’s own terms, and that something which seems controlling to someone on the outside can totally not be on the inside, and also that Dorothy wanting to better herself all the time makes it okay that she hold the same standard for the people around her. In fact, she’s a lot less stringent with people around her, which imo makes her a very patient person as opposed to a jerk. Most people are the total opposite : a lot stricter on others than on themselves.
And in fact, I don’t think that Walky is a jerk. I think that he’s handling all the distruption from his usual way of life almost heroically. He’s been sheltered all his life, yet he accepts this girls who’s mere existence distrupts his comfort. Not many people who accomplish that either.
I think they form a wonderful pair for mutual growth (as opposed to anyone “fixing” anyone).
I think Dorothy is being a little harsh, but it’s a lesson that Walky should rightfully learn: Be grateful for things given to you. Walky is being an ass. If he hadn’t snapped at Dorothy about not writing thank you notes, I can believe that she wouldn’t be shouting “I want to see cursive!” at him.
Yes, but the point isn’t really to make him write a ritual thank you note (Which, yes, what the hell are you doing, Dotty, this is what texts are for), it’s to get him to actually open up. Because it’s kind of killing him not to.
A human being has paradigms. Paradigms are very strong. A person that has the strenght to apply them to themselves first instead of demanding them from others is a mature person. Dorothy is considerably less strict with Walky than with herself, which is a very difficult thing to do for someone who has strong beliefs, and is indicative of an empathic and respectful character. Also, as others said, she probably wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t nag her first, and I don’t see that last panel as nagging or agressive but as playful.
CURSIVE? Dorothy is now the most cruel character in the comic.
Also, thank you notes? I do thank you phone calls, who the hell writes thank you notes nowadays?
Speaking personally, my normal handwriting is a hybrid of cursive and block text; I think that’s really the case for everybody. However cursive is also considered ‘formal writing’ for purposes of etiquette and protocol (such as writing thank-you notes) so that might be why Dorothy is insisting here.
I’ve heard people wonder why Anakin built C-3PO in the prequels, why a slave would possibly need a protocol droid. Now I know: it’s all so that he wouldn’t need to write cursive.
Finally someone here who uses hybrid handwriting, like every person I know. But I have never ever in my life heard of such a thing as “formal handwriting”. It amazes me.
It’s official: Dorothy is my mum. 😀 (Also, she wouldn’t let us use ball-point pens for it for the longest time! Had to be felt-tipped [since we didn’t have fountain pens] because ball-point was “too informal”. That’s old-school thank-you note writing! 😀 )
Is…is cursive just joined up writing, as opposed to print? Or is it something more arcane because by the reaction here it’s like she’s asking for it be written in unicorn blood.
Cursive is the ancient art of drawing your life force through your hands, and it becomes an addiction, first official documents, then all your essays, soon you have to have a cursive font online in order to settle your urge. It is inescapable.
Don’t ask me. I’m the only person I know in Nowheresville, Midwest, USA who uses joined up (cursive) writing. Everyone I know asks why I still write like it’s a sixth-grade essay.
I feel people misinterpret that sequence. At least, I used to, and it’s why I used to hate it.
The point wasn’t that Dorothy is allowed to control Walky and he should be grateful she even looks at him, it was just a dumb, immature argument from an uptight mother hen and a slacker.
oh wow, walky is getting character development from every direction it seems. acknowledging his sister is less favored, knowing he should be studying even if he isn’t, and writing thank you card. wonder if this development will stick.
I’m worried that he’s becoming dependent in a way without even realizing it and that there might be some severe depression in store for him later, like in the situation you said.
I think Walky’s definitely going to miss her, he’s putting up walls in their relationship because he doesn’t want to admit it’s gone far deeper than he wanted it to, but I don’t think his post-breakup depression will be, like, crippling to him. It’s going to break his heart because Dorothy’s gone and he’ll start thinking that he could have done this or that, he could have gone with her, he could have tried to get her to stay, they could try long distance, etc., but I think he’ll be able to pick himself back up eventually.
Man, so much hate for cursive in the comments. I agree on the fact that some of the letters are really weird from their block counterparts, but you write much faster in that way and it comes in handy when you have a teacher that only dictates the lesson.
I may have done, ya know, this. ¨Cursive is the ancient art of drawing your life force through your hands, and it becomes an addiction, first official documents, then all your essays, soon you have to have a cursive font online in order to settle your urge. It is inescapable.¨, but I rather enjoy cursive, it’s easy to use.
When I’m upset or depressed, I grab a notebook and write out my thoughts, in cursive, backwards! Yep, I read somewhere that Leonardo DiVinci would write his notes backwards and I wondered how hard that would be so I gave it a try. Turns out it’s not so hard at all so now all my rants that I need to write down go in cursive… backwards.
The confusion from Dorothy is the realization she’d probably got a dozen small gifts for Walky and was just assuming he would get around to writing thank you notes for them.
Maybe this is a cultural divide? If I tried sending a thank you note when I was younger I’d have gotten scolded. My parents made me call people who sent me gifts even if it was just a greeting card for my birthday. Even stricter, when I got a cell phone I had to use that when making thank you calls instead of the house phone.
I wouldn’t say a cultural divide, but definitely a different tradition. My parents preferred thank-you notes because they believed writing something nice down and sending it via mail was a rare enough thing these days to be special. Bear in mind that they program for a living, so it wasn’t a luddite thing.
The verbal thank-yous were to be said when you got the gift, or the next time you saw them if they had not given it in-person
This strip confuses me. I had to look up what cursive is, and it seems to me whenever I write anything by hand (as opposed to typing it) I… use cursive? I guess? Is it an America thing to not write in cursive? Am I the only one who writes in cursive? Should I feel bad about it? Am I doing something wrong? Oh gods, am I insulting people when I write stuff to them?! Did I need more self-esteem before reading this strip?! SOMEBODY HELP ME!
Cursive is a standardized way of writing connecting letters, allowing writers with free-flowing ink pens to write quickly and cleanly without picking up the nib and blotting ink everywhere. But! when the ball-point pen came around, it required so much pressure that the quick, flowing letters of cursive became impractical. There’s kind of an ageist/classist divide about it now– Older folks, with nicer, non-disposable pens were taught “good penmanship” they took a lot of pride in, while younger folks are usually working with cheap, uncooperative plastic and find typing a much easier avenue.
When I’m writing quickly with pencil or marker, the result usually looks something like cursive– tails of one letter will fly into the other, and what have you–but I will have NONE of that nonsense with the lowercase cursive f or b.
What’s all this fuss about cursive? Like, everyone I know writes part cursive (some letters are, some letters aren’t, depending on their position in the word and all, to optimize practicality), and considers a nice handwriting to be one that is done with application and dexterity, nothing else.
Printing was taught in the first grade, cursive started in the second. After that, it was mandatory for all classes and lessons. My handwriting is terrible due to an injury to my right hand when I was six. I spent a lot of homework time writing the alphabet in cursive for “practice.” I still hate writing in all its forms. Keyboards are the only way I’ll voluntarily put words on paper. For those keeping track, first grade was in 1960.
I was taught cursive in elementary school, but I mostly either use print writing or a computer. The only thing I use cursive for anymore is when I have to sign my name. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a bad thing that lots of people don’t write in cursive anymore. I can understand still learning to read it for old historical documents, but it’s no longer necessary for writing in modern times.
So I might by old fashioned, but writing cursive is so much faster than writing printed letters for me, I cannot imagine anyone being able to do without.
Being dependent on a digital device to be able to note something down is not my idea of a good life…
I like writing in cursive, I kinda miss writing letters and getting them does that make me weird (or just old (er) ) hand writing is cool it tells you things. I mean we didn’t need emoji when we hand wrote things as much you could tell what someone meant by the slant of the letters, the way the letters where written,
Oh Dorothy… don’t you know that by making her son be considerate like this, you’re dooming yourself to having Mrs. Walkterton become another Mrs. Wilcox in your life?
the most impressive advocate for cursive writing I ever met was a physics teacher in junior high who claimed it was especially useful for taking lecture notes in a darkened room, where you couldn’t see your notebook – of course his penmanship was flawless, and he never had to look at the paper while he wrote
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“cursive”?? what’s that, like a fancy way to swear??
Fuckin’ gratitude and encouraging gift-givers to keep giving free shit!
[/sarcasm]
Nobody cares about cursive after elementary school until you have to take the bloody SAT or ACT. After that? Friggin’ useless.
The writing section of the SAT requires that you write in cursive?
Man, I am SO glad I got into college right before that change happened.
I took the ACT. No cursive there. Whew!
I’m glad I’m in Canada, so I didn’t have to take SATs or jump through the other hoops you apparently have to go through in the US to go to university.
No, but you have to sign this promise that you won’t share what’s on it note in cursive, the essay can be printed.
That’s not cursive, that’s a signature.
No. There’s a four line statement you have to copy, or they’ll void your test.
No. They actually make you write that pledge in cursive.
Writing in cursive is a big deal for you lot? Lol, kids at my primary school (fyi I’m English) were taught cursive basically from year 1 (age 5). By the time kids go to secondary school, it’s assumed they can write in cursive reasonably well as standard.
…that’s not taking into account that my handwriting has changed a lot since through secondary school, college, uni, and 12 years of (un)employment, becoming first a lot more loose and loopy and flowing, and then starting to kinda deteriorate as I find it more uncomfortable to hold a pen now. I think I’m starting to get arthritis in my writing hand. 🙁
We were taught cursive (in the U.S.) after we were taught print, but it wasn’t new to us in high school. It’s just that after being taught, we’re never expected to use it again as part of curriculum. Some of our primary schools aren’t teaching it to begin with now, and it’s causing a bit of an uproar, at least near me. Some people see it as very important, but given how quickly most people can type, learning a second script designed for speed has always seemed archaic and redundant to me.
Cursive made my handwriting worse…..before cursive I had s nice clean print. After cursive I created this weird half print half cursive writing only I can read. It does make you write HELLA faster though.
The essay doesn’t have to be incursive, but there’s a written statement that basically says “Don’t cheat or reveal test information”, and you are required to copy that statement in cursive to ensure you know to not cheat and stuff.
I the ACT test and we were all allowed to just handwrite that statement regualry.
Either that or the SAT.
My ACT was all multiple choice, and that was two years ago… I got a 22.
What did you do, pump a couple rounds of bird shot into the Scantron page?!
I’m pretty sure the ACT uses a scale of 24, not 2400, like the SAT.
36, actually.
That just means your school didn’t make you take the essay portion.
You also get to write it in cursive on the LSAT! yayyyyyyy
Like Wheelpath said, the “I won’t cheat” promise at the start needs (needed?) to be written entirely in cursive. It took us almost half an hour to write the single paragraph and we had to take a break after it. My wrist was tired afterwards and we essentially hadn’t even started the SAT.
Trufax: I read at a college level at 10. If I weren’t Canadian, might not have gotten into uni. I am 28 and still can’t write cursive (yes dysgraphia, the learning disability nobody’s heard about!)
Holy crap, thank you… I looked up Dysgraphia, and holy crap I match every single one of those symptoms. I can read fine, I have nigh perfect spelling and grammar, and can type faster than the average person, but make me sit down with paper and pencil? Takes me a year to write a paragraph, and you’ll have a hell of a time reading it.
Literally every time I mention dysgraphia, I get that response from at least one person.
Dunno bout you but for me when physio suggested it, it was a literal break down in tears moment for me because I was finally having someone else affirm that I wasn’t just lazy and that it really was that hard for me.
Didn’t realize how much handwriting baggage I had until then.
Huh. I’m still pretty sure my writing difficulties have purely motor skill causes, but… huh.
Anyway, regardless of possible difference in causes, I feel your pain.
The bad part is, I legitimately can no longer write in print anymore after being required to write in only cursive for four years.
I graduated over a decade ago, and except for a squiggly line that vaguely resembles my name I have completely forgotten how to write in cursive.
Even lower case print letters take effort; for some reason I default to small caps.
I had great handwriting as a kid, back when I was printing everything, but when they taught me cursive it and my regular handwriting merged and now everything I handwrite looks terrible, whether I’m trying to write in cursive or not.
Truly a boon to the species, cursive is.
I didn’t use cursive on my SAT/ACT. I stopped using it as soon as I was allowed to. So.. 5th grade?
Mmm. I remember when my teachers insisted that in college I’d have to write all my papers in cursive.
Get to college, “None of us wants to interpret your handwriting. Print neatly or use a goddamned computer.”
I don’t know how long ago that was–or if you’re still in college–but in my current experience, even that doesn’t fly. I can’t remember the last time I was allowed to hand-write ANYthing to turn in except exams and the odd worksheet.
In most of my classes, typing was only required for grad students, and optional for undergrads. It wasn’t expected for high schools to have taught LaTeX, so the profs wanted to give us time to learn it before requiring it, since they knew that without a lot of practice, it can be very slow to type. But grad students were expected to turn in professional-looking work, hence the LaTeX requirement. For time context, this was about half a decade ago.
And it didn’t even occur to them to make undergrads type in something? I mean, Word/OpenOffice/HTML isn’t necessarily going to be professional/academic quality, but it’s got to be better than a modern teenager’s handwriting.
Argh! I forgot to mention context again, didn’t I? Sorry. 🙁
I majored in math. After the first few classes, our homework was almost entirely writing proofs. I haven’t been keeping up with recent developments in word processors, but at the time, it was new and unusual to have a good “formula mode” and even then, you had to click all the things like in a character picker, and it still might not have some of the symbols we needed. And without that feature, the choices would be a character picker or memorizing a lot of Unicode numbers, and it would look worse than nearly anyone’s handwriting. At least at the time, LaTeX was basically the only computerized method of writing that was up to the task for the type of assignments we had. Even the word processors that did have that new “formula mode”, that mode was basically just a wysiwyg-style gui for a limited subset of LaTeX.
So less “didn’t occur to them” in this case than “other tech wasn’t ready yet”.
Yeah, I remember similar struggles for naught. In elementary school we had these old DOS computers and dot matrix printers that had font settings on the printer, so to get around the cursive requirement I typed it up and printed it in “script” which was a font that resembled cursive.
Do they still require cursive? I can’t remember if I took the ACT or the SAT but as far as I can remember, I didn’t need to write anything in cursive on any part.
The thing about cursive is, it was invented for fountain pens. With a fountain pen, it comes fairly naturally. It’s actually more difficult not to join the letters up with extraneous swooping lines. But just about everyone who’s learned cursive writing for the last several decades has done it with a ballpoint, or worse, a pencil.
Cursive is pretty much all I remmember , I mean mine is still ugly as he’ll but when I try the print blocky ones it ends up with half letters in cursive just with spaces in between
Haven’t used cursive since 5th grade. my life is better for it.
I never learned to write in cursive. My disgraphia was diagnosed around the same time we were supposed to learn to write it due to it being made clear by how badly I was struggling. The school kinda gave up on forcing me after that and let me keep writing everything outside that one set of lessons in print. Eventually they gave up on making me write most things and let me hand in computer typed stuff (For homework) or stuff hand written by the aide they assigned to me.
Sensory-motor type here. I wasn’t diagnosed until college when forcing neat handwriting led to my grip dislocation my wrist ( scaphoid joint to be precise) as an RSI. Seriously wish my parents hadn’t been all “WE don’t have a r-slur in the family” when teachers first brought it up as a possibility.
Never mind that learning disabilities aren’t a medical diagnosis and have nothing to do with intelligence…
“are” a medical diagnosis?
Otherwise, I’m confused.
Never mind that even if it did, that would not make me less a person. Intelligence not being a good proxy for worth as a person and all.
(I am autistic and have cousins with intellectual disability so I have a problem with framing the issue of learning disability discrimination as being wrong because intelligence because I know a lot of ppl who aren’t particularly intelligent and are still worth as much as me with my gifted status and high-160s IN.
Man, she’s asking a lot. Cursive? Hell, she’s lucky he’s not writing in purple crayon.
But if he uses the purple crayon, his drawings will come to life!
That might be a bad thing.
Dina would love it, except for the dinosaurs not being awesome giant chickens.
Purple crayon is fine, as long it’s cursive written in purple crayon.
Green ink on mauve paper or vise-versa would also be a possibility.
Oh, well, my normal handwriting *is* cursive. We only write in cursive over here in Estonia while in school. It’s fluid and fast and I don’t understand why you guys are taught two different types of handwriting. Makes no sense.
I didn’t ditch cursive, because I didn’t have it. I had italics to ditch instead. I print everything.
To wit: italics.
(I know! Let’s teach a handwriting that’s both slow and requires special pens! BRILLIANT!)
Same here, another European country. We don’t even have a word for it, it’s just called “handwriting”. But I have to admit it’s kinda useless. I wish we adopted the murrican method and taught children to write print-like letters. It’s much more legible, cursive is just a pain to read to anyone else.
and another european country, where pupils are taught cursive, because it’s easier to form, then at the age of 11, are allowed to switch to print letters (called stick lettters or detached writing) which make more sense when using abbreviations and writing faster. Soon most adults and teenagers write with these ‘stick” letters. That was such a relief for me to give up cursive. Of course I had to teach to people with difficulties at interpreting letters, so I must go back to cursive and to have a terrible handwriting (I hate my handwriting so much that I stick computer printed texts when I have to write to friends or family!)…
Every moment wasted teaching cursive today should be spent teaching typing / keyboarding instead. And on DVORAK keyboards, not QWERTY.
why on them? Most people would not be able type properly on those for ages. What makes those so special or is this just some arbitrary elitism?
I seem to recall that Dvorak was created to optimize typing. It’s setup, I’m pretty sure, with the most commonly used keys either on the home row or near the regular resting positions of our fingers. If my assumption is correct, the “arbitrary elitism” is assuming that just because our standard is so common, then that must be because it’s good. And no, I don’t use Dvorak. I’ve used QWERTY all my life.
Guh, its setup
Nah, ‘It is’ set up. So it’s.
Why would kids have *more* trouble learning Dvorak? I’d have thought it would be easier to learn than either qwerty or writing of any style. Or did I misunderstand?
I’ll second that. Because of computers, cursive is just antiquated. As stated somewhere above, cursive was created because of the old ink well pens. Cursive is useless in todays world.
I was learning cursive when Sputnik was in orbit. No wonder I can’t understand you kids. Get offa my lawn!
Panel three is such a wonderful Dorothy moment. “what does he… why would anyone not write… Oh my poor lost innocence, now when I have seen how deep the corruption of the world goes, it is my responsibility to fix it, starting with YOU, WALKY!!!!!”
Do NOT mess with your terrifyingly assertive girlfriend, Walky. From now on YOU write thank you notes.
In some strange ways, Dorothy may be as innocent and unsullied as Joyce.
“It’s cute that you think I know more than you”
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2011/comic/book-1/06-yesterday-was-thursday/predrunk/
Can we just take a moment to appreciate the difference in art quality between that strip and this one? Off topic I know, it just makes me happy.
Their heads were so huge in the past! They’re like bobbleheads. Can we make that a thing? DoA bobbleheads? Pwetty pwease?
Like the POP bobble heads? That would be so cute!
DO IIIIIIIIT!
Suddenly, I had a flash of a strip where, after Joyce’s return, Dorothy confides in her about this event and tells her: “Now I have seen The Original Sin!”
Is this one of the reasons why Walkie is afraid to tell Dorothy about his test scores?
Two words that will make your life so much easier, Walky: “Yes, dear…”
You mean… not smartassing? I don’t think that’s physically possible for him.
Also, Dotty would miss his blabbing, and Walky doesn’t want to disappoint.
True, but he’s only got a couple months with her, so why make them difficult?
Learn to pick your battles, dude, and this isn’t one of them.
“heck no” followed by “hell”. Walky, your inner xkcd is showing.
I’ve read every strip, sad to say I don’t get the meanig.
Mixing curse levels. The original xkcd has “What a gosh-darned conga.” Walky mixes “heck” and “hell.”
*plays Led Zepplin’s “Thank You” on the hacked Muzak*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1z4vkPWkLQ <- No need to thank me.
Thank you, Jimmy Page.
“It’s not slurring your words, it’s talking in cursive”
Writing thank you notes just makes people expect you’ll keep writing thank you notes.
That’s EXACTLY the trap Walky is afraid of. He KNEW it was trouble when Dorothy wanted to dress him, it was confirmed when his mother took an interest and this is just the other shoe he knew would drop one day.
Dorothy is still worth it, though.
Panel five Walky face is the greatest Walky face. So grump.
Walky like
I don’t know why, but seeing Megatron pissed/angry always puts a smile on my face.
LOL Like Walky knows Cursive!
*reads alt text*
Well– whatayaknow…
He was gone from third grade that day.
Man, more like those *months*. So much school time was wasted on that useless skill. We could’ve been learning about dinosaurs!
(They’ve stopped teaching to post-Millennials. Not like they’re gonna need it.)
Walky will need the cursive practice for when he is a doctor writing illegible prescriptions.
What kind of Doctor would Walky be?
Butt doctor! He can prescribe butt tacos.
Your kind. A time-travelling one in a blue box. I have a feeling he’d do well at that 😉
Proctologist. The only way he’ll let his mom herd him into doctorating is if he can be a butt doctor.
Surely a “thank-you email” would do?
If not, then my mom has been disappointed with the last twenty years of gift-giving for me and hasn’t said a word.
Or a thank you text?
On big enough stuff, I went with a phone call. This seems like something a text would be appropriate for, but Walky being an ass ALSO calls for Dorothy making him write a note to teach him a lesson.
you have got to be kidding me
you know who else wrote thank you notes? HITLER*
*note: not sure if hitler actually wrote thank you notes but that is beside the point
Are typed thank-you notes a faux pas? I can see it going either way, because handwritten notes are more personal, but they’d look a lot more professional typed out.
Frankly your elders are going to be grateful and astonished if you manage to acknowledge their gift in any manner whatsoever.
I’ve found that when it comes to things that fall into the category of “Don’t mention it” or “It goes without saying” you need to mention\say it.
They aren’t as super-special-awesome as a hand-written one, but unless your gift-giver is a real old-timey stickler, they’ll do just fine.
Speaking from my experience being
forcedtaught to write them, they aren’t supposed to look professional. They need to be entirely personal (yet formal, but not impersonal-formal) and individualized, even if you have to write 13 of them to various relatives you barely interact with who all sent you US Savings Bonds for your middle school graduation.Mind you, this is >20 years ago. These days, a thank you e-mail is probably fine, as long as it is well-written (use complete sentences with proper spelling, punctuation, and capitalization). But if you are snail-mailing, you probably still need to go with handwriting over typing.
Actually these days probably a thoughtful thank-you video-mail would probably be the ideal solution. Longer than a Vine, though; more needs to go into it than just the words “Thank you”. Some kind of personal meaning needs to be expressed.
This bodes well should Walky ever admit to Dorothy that he needs help studying.
Man… he surely takes everything for granted and thinks he deserves all the things they give to him just because. Is it me or Willis is using Walky to show us how male privilege looks like?
Privelige, yes. He’s the parents’ golden child who can do no wrong, in contrast with Sal’s percieved good-for-nothing-ness.
Actually, the correct spelling is “privilege”, Sam has it right.
I wasn’t correcting spelling. I was agreeing that Walky has privilege, though it’s not necessarily gender-based in this case. It’s been set up as more race-related so far, based on Linda’s perception of her children’s behavior.
Mrs. Walkerton will receive a photo of Walky and Dorothy in a wooden picture frame with engraved scripture extolling the virtues of thank-you notes.
lol
+1
…perfect.
When did cursive stop being taught in schools, or am I being thick? I would have learned in the early 80s, and I’m wondering if this is considered to no longer be necessary learning, the same way some formats of writing have changed since then.
They sort of have. More people use computers now, and they come with nice, uniform letters that everyone can understand.
I definitely learned cursive when I started school in the late 80s/early 90s (in Germany though, where I do believe it’s absolutely still taught in schools now) and I now write in a sort of mix between cursive and whatever the opposite is. Like, some of my letters are connected and some are not. I feel like that’s the case for a lot of people in my/our generation!
It was a shock to me when I found out it was being phased out. Made sense but still a shock. I still use cursive a fair amount, particularly when writing something lengthy.
I’m prone to mixing and matching too.
i learned cursive in second grade in 2001 or ’02 or so *shrug*
I definitely learned it in the mid-90’s stateside.
And then had to learn cyrillic cursive in college when I took a Russian language class. Ya’ll griping about written English cursive (or rather your first language)….ya just don’t know, man. Ya just don’t know.
Russian is my first language, and at school we were never given an option of NOT using cursive. I started mixing it with print by high school, but I still specifically mix, not just write in print.
I’ve been studying English since kindergarten though, and I think we learned print and barely touched on cursive there…
Dunno what’s so different between Engish and Russian cursive that makes Russian feel entirely natural and obvious?…
(Although, yeah, reading it can be a problem depending on handwriting – you are supposed to leave bigger gaps between letters than within them making words like дышишь legible, but not everyone does that…)
I learned it mid-90s, and it was a waste of time then, even before everyone had the internet.
Walky’s face in that last panel is my new favorite thing.
I don’t think I’ve used cursive since seventh grade. I don’t know ANYBODY that uses cursive except for my grandmother. So that’s some seventy year old values Dorothy’s toting.
Yeah, seriously, I’m on the downhill side of 40, and I don’t remember the last time I used cursive. I write in Anglo-Saxon runes more often than in cursive.
Actually, no, I wrote a note to my littlest niece “from Santa Claus” in cursive last Christmas. Specifically because she would have never seen my cursive handwriting before, and so wouldn’t recognize it. It took me a while to remember how to make some of the letters.
It was a thank you note. For the cookies and milk.
I still write in runes more often.
I wrote cursive longhand through college, but have gotten out of the habit (in favor of typing, of course); I actually tried it semi-recently, and it was unfamiliar and made my hand hurt. (My signature, IMO, does not count, as it is more a well-practiced pictogram/scrawl at this point than anything that could be untangled into individual letters.)
All of my writing on Post-Its, etc is in “Small Caps” – somewhere around middle school, I decided I hated how my mixed-case printing looked, and switched. The one and only place I use lower-case letters is in writing out (some) email addresses.
I don’t think I know anybody who *doesn’t* write at last partly in cursive. Maybe that’s a Germany thing? But I’d say anyone in my generation (so anyone born around 1980 +/- some years) writes in a sort of mix between cursive and not-cursive (print?). My mother (born in 1948) writes in cursive exclusively.
… maybe it totally is a Germany thing. We have a thing about importance of handwriting, it’s a cultural thing lol.
I don’t know, I connect a my tailed letters to the following letter all the time; it’s just faster. Personally, I don’t call it cursive unless the r’s are those weird flat-topped n things; otherwise, it’s just print (which is the term for “not cursive”, by the way).
Personally, I mix cursive and print letters indiscriminately in a mostly-but-not-entirely-connected scrawl. I could write neatly in cursive or in print if I tried, but I can’t really keep it up for more than a couple sentences, or at least I don’t care enough to. Fwiw, I’m Canadian and I was born in the late 90s. I think most people my age who I know write in print, though.
I’m exactly the same way. I *can* do perfect cursive if I have to. But 99% of the time I just can’t be bothered.
Not quite a German thing from my experience here in England (however I have noticed we now get printed prescriptions here so that the pharmacist does not have to phone the doctor to find out what was written however this may just be because of how bad my doctors handwriting is not sure if it’s uniform practice)
Doctors having horrible, indecipherable handwriting is a stereotype, here in Italy, to the point it’s the set-up of jokes.
That appears to be world-wide. Or at least Western European civilization-wide.
I’m pretty sure most brits write joined up unless legibility is key then we migh write in all caps instead. I’m amazed Americans are making such a big deal out of it here you learn joined up writing but it just seems like a natural step though some people end up settling on print in adulthood.
Joined-up letters symbolize totalitarian communism! Letter should be unbonded and free to associate only with the letters they choose!
There’s joined-up, and then there’s cursive. They’re not quite the same thing. I do not write in cursive. I do, however, end up joining most of the letters I write, especially when writing fast.
…cursive has weird letters. (x, r, and s, to name a few, and quite a few capital letters.)
I’m curious how you were taught cursive, then? Maybe it’s different. What I remember is endless painful drills trying to get a bunch of seven year olds who could barely color inside the lines to put together big loopy letters that had to be perfectly legible, as fast as printing, and tilted to the right at exactly the correct degree.
President Keener is going to be so good at international diplomacy 😀
If she can shape up her college friends she will have no problem with UN
I meant more in the way that thanking people for doing something nice comes so naturally for her, which is a good trait for a politician to have. But you have a point as well!
I’m sad because that interpretation did not even cross my mind.
Amazi-Girl for Sec of Defense then?
Dear European Union,
Thank you for the lovely trade sanctions, I’m sure we will find them very useful. I hope the Benelux nations are well.
Yours sincerely, Russia
PS President keener is here on a diplomatic visit, she is making me write this.
That is adorable and exactly the kind of thing I had in mind xD
+1+1+1
Later that evening, the president of Russia and the First Husband find time to sneak away to a burger joint and bongo about president Keener.
It’s true, sometimes you just need to break out the drum circle and let it all out.
I can see Putin as a drum circle guy. Any excuse to get the shirt off, that one.
Drum circle in a sweat lodge with peyote.
That sounds like a really polite threat to me. I wonder if I’m the only one who would see something like “I hope the Benelux nations are well” and immediately think “it would be a shame if anything were to happen to them”.
“What happened to Poland?”
Well, it IS Putin…
Given the results of the last Netherlands referendum, threatening the Benelux countries makes really no sense for Putin.
That referendum made me ashamed of my country, not necessarily due to the outcome but due to how little people cared about it. Only 30% of people eligible to vote in that referendum actually turned up to vote.
Now now, cursive is good for signatures and calligraphy classes.
That’s right! I use cursive for my signatures.
Though mine’s looking more and more like Arsenio Hall’s these days..
I can’t imagine how you thought to compare signatures with celebrities, much less Arnesio Hall.
*Arsenio. Ehh I need a Gatorade.
Hey, I’ve found Arsenio’s signature quite amusing ever since I was a child. Just an “A” followed by a squiggly line. It’s the greatest.
Gotcha. It was all just happenstance.
My signature is technically cursive, I guess, but the J and C are the only parts of it that are really recognizable. Mostly it’s just a bunch of vertical loops. I sometimes get carried away with the end bit and put three or four ‘l’s. Or maybe ‘e’s. It’s hard to tell the difference.
I thought that was the point. Nothing is so illegible as quickly written cursive, so it stops being recognizable letters and starts being inimitable patterns, perfect for signatures.
There is definitely wisdom in what you say.
True that. *thumbs up*
I like using cursive and calligraphy, but only because I am a total visual-arts nerd. I don’t support requiring it in schools, because that’s months of practice when they could be learning about dinosaurs and outer space instead.
Yeah, cursive matters for the arts no doubt about that. But for use in schools, I’m not entirely sure if I’m for or against it.
Personally, my private elem school required writing all in cursive starting from second grade to sixth grade. Then I moved to a different high school where I had the option to do standard or cursive. Ninth grade was the transitioning period of penmanship so all my writing looked straight but stayed interconnected. That was a weird year.
Dorothy, ever heard of a cell phone?(you have). These days when you want to thank some you call them personally or write an e-mail. Writing a “thank you” letter is so last century.
Cursive. I remember cursive. Which is good, because I forgot how to write in print because the teachers at my school required everything from fourth through eighth grade to be written in print at all times. People always say I have an eerily legible signature as a result.
They required it written in cursive at all times. Print was forbidden. Stupid brain not working properly without coffee.
Cursive was mandatory in third through fifth grades for my class. Mine was always so terrible even I couldn’t read it. “You just need more practice” they said, as they threw handwriting books and that extra-wide-ruled paper from the first grade room at me. (Others were almost as bad, but mine was MD-illegible no matter how hard I tried.)
Once they required a homework essay in cursive, and threatened to knock points off for bad penmanship. I had a cursive font on the computer, so I typed my essay then traced it onto note paper. That went over well. Next time the teacher told us we’d automatically fail if they even thought we typed it. I made two copies of my essay: one was handwritten in lousy cursive, but the one I actually turned in was transcribed into Pitman shorthand from a library textbook.
That finally put an end to their harping on perfect cursive, but to this day I question if she actually noticed.
Walky’s mom is going to want him to keep Dorothy, I’d figure
She will call her Treasure for sure after this
A buck says she’ll call her “my precious” after this.
I can totally hear Walky’s mum with Smeagol’s voice.
“Waaalky, my preeeeesious lovely son… NO, GO AWAY SSSSAL. WE HATESSSS YOU FOREVER!!!”
O_o so much hate for cursive. Cursive saved my life through school and uni – it’s the only way I can write fast enough to keep up with my thoughts and meant I finished exams in half the time. HALF THE TIME.
I actually liked learning/writing in fancypants cursive, because I’m a visual nerd like that, but I feel the tedious months in 3rd Grade would be better spent on a thousand other things instead.
Current me likes cursive because I’m a visual nerd too, but third-grade me just liked how orderly those endless cursive drills were. (Mind you, I didn’t really do them ’cause I was terrible at finishing stuff, but I liked the idea.) I suppose it was at one time, but as much as I enjoy fancy lettering, I’d hardly consider it a practical life skill.
First-grade me hated how orderly the drills were. Tests were even worse. Mind you, that was because those letters were all /obviously/ meant to connect up, and they wouldn’t let us connect them. My teacher failed me for a test (even though, at that point in time, my cursive was very, very good) because I joined the letters in words up because that made it more obvious they were words, and it was clearer where one word started and the other begun, and they were *obviously* meant to join up.
Damm… maybe I should have paid better attention in cursive class. I take forever to write (and also type, incidentally) but I’ve forgotten everything about cursive except how to write my name (like a bunch of other people, apparently).
Cursive is a mess. Italics at least looks good; I can barely read cursive at all.
I kind of invented two handwritten “fonts” that I use and I’m not even making that up. One’s super-legible and fast (and if I let myself get sloppy, super fast – I used that for note-taking in class), the other’s still legible but arty as fuck because THANKS ART SCHOOL and I use it for things like holiday cards and not much else.
(Do I have an example of the latter online anywhere…? HA! I do! My first Folklife application. Scroll down. Yeah I can write whole letters in that. 😀 )
Yeah, I have three completely different sets of handwriting. There’s writing fast and for me handwriting which is basically legible only to me, trying to write fast but legible handwriting which is exactly how it sounds, and I want this to look nice handwriting which, while not as pretty as yours, is extremely neat and easily legible. All of these are printed, although the first two do have many letters run into each other much like in cursive.
Does nobody care that we can see THE WHITES OF WALKY’S EYES?
I care more about the fact that in this universe, eye colors are apparently inverted (the pupils are white and the sclera is black).
I think Walky is supposed to have dot eyes, like Mickey Mouse. The black dots ARE the pupils, and those dashes of white are the light reflecting off them.
Now Walky’s gonna have to write “thank you” notes to Dottie after post coitus.
Afterplay is important.
If it’s “after post coitus”, I’m wondering what they’re doing immediately post coitus. Smoking has gone out of fashion.
Obviously cartoons.
A+ Recommendation
Judging by previous examples, developing film and weenus pointing.
Erasing stuff on Mike’s phone.
Considering that you are supposed to be constantly asking for and gaining permission before getting intimate and/or proceeding further — “Can I touch you here? How about here? Is it OK if I take off your panties now?” — I suppose thank-you notes (“Thank you for your lovely gift of head last night.”) are appropriate.
“Please accept this!”
“Much obliged, thank you!”
“Please accept this!”
“Much obliged, thank you!”
“Please accept this!”
“Much obliged, thank you!”
“Thank you sir, may I have another.”
my boyfriend is from a “thank you note” family and every christmas we write our thank you notes and i always forget which family member is which and who got me what and thank you notes are the worst and i love my ungrateful heathen family more and more every day.
Just write “thank you for the lovely gift” over and over and be done with it.
Having dysgraphia, Dorothy wanting Walky to write a thank you letter in cursive is making my hand hurt.
Good job, Dorothy. +20 classiness points to Ravenclaw.
no, wait, Dorothy is smart but she’s totally a goodguy-Slytherin instead.
Yeah! She learns and studies for ambition and for her future, not out of some genuine joy of studying. She’s smart, but Slyterhins are smart! They are just also good at achieving their goals and they put a lot of energy into it.
I think a lot about these characters’ Hogwars houses (I think a lot about ALL fictional characters’ Hogwarts houses^^).
Houses for Dorothy, Walky, Joyce, Becky, Dina, Sal, and Sarah, go.
Dorothy: Slytherin, as explained above.
Walky: Huffelpuff. Sweet, kind, not particuarly ambitious and slightly naive to the world, but willing to learn. Loyal, funny. (I’m a Hufflepuff too, so I accept those negatives in myself)
Joyce: Gryffindor. Brave in the face of danger. Strong convictions, may they be right or wrong. Prone to rub people up the wrong way. Stands up for her friends, NO MATTER WHAT.
Becky: Gryffindor. Exact same reasons as Joyce.
Dina: Ravenclaw. Ecxessively brainy, smart, fond of learning. Even the issues with social interaction can be a Claw trait. Tends to be in her own head a lot, but is making an effort to be more open. A little odd, in a lovable way, surprisingly witty.
Sal: Slytherin. Hard outer shell with a loyal core underneath, but selectively loyal (which is different than Puff loyalty). Does her own thing, self-sufficient. Extremely stylish. Can be brusque and seem cold, but that all stems from somewhere. Just effortlessly cool. Which to me is a Slyth trait.
Sarah: Gryffindor. This one was the most difficult, because she is a good person with a good heart, but she’s not letting many people see that. Sarcastic, which is more a Ravenclaw thing, but she stands up for her friends and is loudly and bravely defending people when she feels like they’re being unfairly treated. She’s like a more sarcastic Neville Longbottom. Beware any and all evil snakes!
I mean. Like I said. I think about this stuff a LOT xD
Dorothy: Ravenclaw or Slytherin, she’s both ambitious and studious.
Walky: Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. Not that he is exceptionally fit for these houses, but he’s definitely neither Ravenclaw nor Slytherin.
Joyce: Again Gryffindor or Hufflepuff, but this time because she has both houses’ values in spades.
Becky: Gryffindor.
Dina: Ravenclaw. So much Ravenclaw.
Sal: Gryffindor.
Sarah… I’d say Ravenclaw.
Gryffindor: Joyce, Becky, Sal
Ravenclaw: Dina
Slytherin: Dorothy, Sarah
Hufflepuff: DANNY and I guess Walky because I’m not really sure where else to put him.
Not being sure where else to put them is a perfectly acceptable reason to put them in Hufflepuff — in addition to being hardworking/steady/loyal, it’s the Not Otherwise Specified of houses. So I’d put Walky there, too.
Dorothy: “You would do well in Slytherin…” The Sorting Hat presents Slytherin as a ticket to the top. Dorothy’s studious, but her ambition is a much more defining trait, and if she got to pick, she’d choose it strongly.
Agreeing with everyone else on Dina-Ravenclaw and Becky-Gryffindor.
Joyce: Gryffindor. She’d have initially expected to be sorted Hufflepuff, but the Hat knew she was fighty-brave before she did. She’d be glad to be with Becky, at least.
Amber: Gryffindor, much to her initial surprise as an anxious preteen. (One might argue that Amber isn’t a Gryffindor but Amazi-Girl is, but AG is within Amber, so she’s got all that bravery buried in there under her childhood trauma. Perhaps Gryffindor could help bring her lion out in a healthier manner.)
Joe: Gryffindor. They can be grandstanding and showoffy, brave and they want you to know it. Also, he would have asked the Sorting Hat which house gets all the ladies.
Danny: So much Hufflepuff!
Ethan: Also Hufflepuff. He’s not all that brave or brilliant or ambitious, but he’s steady and supportive. Bit of a NOS choice.
Sal: Slytherin. She wants to prove herself, even enough to sleep with her moderately-cute TA for a better grade. Loyal to those who earn her respect. Cool, aloof, calm until provoked.
Sarah: Hmm, could argue her for anywhere. I suppose she’d ask the Hat which house caused the least drama, so that’s Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, tipping towards Hufflepuff due to her loyalty, which lets her room with:
Dana (Sarah’s previous roomie): Hufflepuff, for the ‘huff le puff’ and being right next to the kitchens.
…oh hey, this seems to have ballooned into being my first fanfic. 0.o
I completely forgot how to write cursive except for my signature after 4th grade
Aaaaaaand now we know why Dorothy is so popular with mothers.
because they are kin
Dorothy: “And remember, spelling counts too!“
———————
Dotty, you are rapidly moving up the ladder in my personal “favorite character” rankings.
She’s in the top three for me, together with Becky and Joyce.
She’s moved down on mine, but not by much. The idea of having someone tell me to write in cursive just freaks me out. She would probably be super understanding if I told her of my situation though. Plus she probably already knows what dysgraphia is.
I remember learning cursive writing in primary school where we had to do cursive writing in what they call copybook style, you know the one where the z looks like a weird 3.
I HATE that weird three. With a DEEP and ABIDING passion. I hate it so much, I always right my cursive z’s, when I have the opportunity, in print.
Why do I hate it so much, you ask? For the same reason Ramona Quimby hated the cursive Q.
Any rare instance of cursive writing on my part bares very little resemblance to copybook style especially the letters b,d,f,i,j,t and z. Also my numbers 2,4,5 and 8s are weird too.
I also dislike the cursive A. It was such a cop out! I mean, all the other differentiated capitals were properly different, even if they went a little crazy (seriously, G? How did you get that squiggly mountain thing from the printed form?). And the only other two like A, N and M, had the excuse of being hard to cursive right (I tried) and being close enough to count, respectively, that they can get away with it. But A? Just make a make a triangle starting in the bottom right corner, but angle the base to pierce the right side! We already start I by going backwards, why not A? (again, ask Ramona Quimby why she hates the cursive Q)
I looked up Copybook on Wikipedia, and got nothing for writing styles. It seems to be just a method where you have one line written out, and then copy it to practise the style. You can do that with ANY style.
Did you learn Sütterlin, perhaps? If so, you have my sincere commiseration. That’s borderline illegible even when written well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%BCtterlin
They’re talking about D’Nealian Cursive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%27Nealian And yeah, fuck that noise. I invented my own capitals for cursive writing during/after high school, which are a mix of fancy print and calligraphy that looks nice next to the lower-case letters.
I attended a school where they had some of the kids writing their Hebrew notes in Rashi-script, which imitates the handwriting of a very revered rabbi back in the day. (There are block letters, and Hebrew script, and Rashi-script, because Rashi is just that special.)
–oops, I just looked it up, it isn’t actually based on Rashi’s handwriting, it’s just customarily used for printing Rashi’s commentaries. Anyway it’s really fun to say Rashi as much as possible, I recommend it.
What does rashi-script look like?
Here are the letters side by side – from right to left, it shows Print, Cursive, Rashi-script, and the numerical value of each letter: http://www.hebrew-language.com/alef-bet.htm
And here’s a page of Gemara; the original text is printed in the middle, with its interpretation all around it in Rashi-script: http://www.beverlyhillschabad.com/TEXT/GEMARA/gemara-rosh-hashana-2-10/gemara-rosh-hashana-2a.jpg
i assume walky is one of those folks w/ irritatingly neat cursive, but indecipherably messy normal writing
Who even uses cursive anymore? I remember our teachers saying we’d all need to know it for high school and college. When I got to high school and college, the only time we used cursive was to write our signature for some forms. No test or anything. And now I only remember the cursive letters that make up my name.
I’m pretty sure I remember at least half the alphabet not including my name in cursive. Sometimes when I’m signing my name for a purchase (literally the only time I’ve used cursive in the last five years) I’ll try, but most of the time I’ll get the first three letters out and then just seize for a second and call it good.
I’m totally with Walky here. With all the communication options open to us these days, a thank-you note is really impersonal. It means you didn’t want to deal with me for the three minutes it takes to take your phone out of your pocket and at least give me a perfunctory call.
You know what’s easier AND more personal and meaningful than a thank you note? Friggin’ calLING AND SAYING THANK YOU FOR THE DAMN COOKIES.
Cursive for a thank you note? Damn! I don’t even see wedding invitations written in cursive anymore.
Still holding out for a wedding invitation in Wingdings.
I wonder if I’ve ever gotten one of those. I’m sure I wouldn’t have known.
stealing this for my wedding
They are going to break uuuuuuuuuuuuuuup so hard-OH YEAH!
Lots of schools have abandoned cursive in favor of teaching computer literacy. There’s only a finite amount of teaching time…
And yet my history teacher thought that time was best used in making sure we had a complete set of colored pencils to spend a week drawing a personal timelines of our lives.
…. in high school.
I remember in high school my english teacher spent 3 months on Macbeth alone.
That at least makes sense. Spending a long time on a single work is not uncommon, if you think you can teach a lot of different things from it. Though I admit 13 weeks is a long time: I remember an entire work taking up 9 weeks–a quarter. You got two a year, with the other half of the year being used for smaller works.
In US History, a test basically had us draw whatever pictures we wanted.
I drew Sonic the Hedgehog. Most people just doodled.
Wait what? Why couldn’t I have had teachers like that?
Blame faith for that, anyway for me the best teachers were those from who I understood what they teached and were not always cranky.
Wow.
Dorothy is REALLY twisted.
… you know, because cursive letters twist around a lot?
Anyone? Anyone?
…. I’ll just show myself out.
*sits silent until Reltzik has left*
“Cursive… Heh, that was actually pretty funny”
Well, that’s going a bit far. I don’t think Dorothy’s twisted, but she might be a little loopy!
…
*follows Reltzik out the door*
Cursive?? Come on, Dorothy, this is 2016, not 1916.
ah, cursive… my second grade nemesis. i’m autistic/have nonverbal learning disorder so i’ve always had intermittent trouble with motor skills. learning cursive was literally physically painful. i only use it to sign my name these days. i have no idea how to write letters like g and f in cursive either
Wait, what? Are you saying there’s a link between fine motor coordination issues and autism? Asking for a…friend.
yep! various problems with motor skills are fairly common in autistic people, judging from both studies and anecdotal data.
not, of course, to say that having motor skills problems on their own means you might be autistic. that’s just one part of a larger whole, and there are certainly autistic people with fine or even great motor skills.
if you want to know more about autism in general or have specific questions, i’m fairly knowledgeable or could direct you to other resources. feel free to send me a note on deviantart (click the link in my name) or on tumblr @eternalgaylord
This strip and all the comments about cursive have made me really curious about what all the characters’ handwriting looks like.
I imagine Walky has printing that’s just passably neat enough that he wouldn’t really get reprimanded for writing too sloppily. Dorothy’s would be neat and tiny, and in cursive I guess? I would’ve guessed she printed her letters because printing tends to be neater, but maybe cursive is for special occasions.
Does Joyce dot her i’s with hearts? (I feel like there was a Walkyverse strip that mentioned this but I could be wrong.) I’m thinkin’ either hearts or circles.
Joyce use a pink pen because of course she does
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2010/comic/book-1/02-uphill-from-here/notes/
She also writes cursive, D’Nealian I’d say.
Aww, and it looks like her paper is pink too, because of course it is.
Walky thinks the question we want the answer to.
I…I am both of them. How am I both of them here.
Like I think thank you notes are very important, but I absolutely hate writing them.
sounds like you and me both had parents who were really insane about them
Apparently, Dorothy intends to civilise Walky, by hook or by crook!
It’s like G. B. Shaw’s Pygmalion, with even more uncomfortable themes
When she sings “I’ve grown accustomed to his …” what will it be instead of face?
Weenus.
So many of you mentioning cursive. Do you ever write longer texts by hand – like notes on a lecture or meeting?
re: thank you notes
Wouldn’t texting or email be a normal way to do this? Phoning seemsa bit over the top to me.
Somebody took the time to select, wrap, and send it to you.
How hard is it to take pen in hand and write — using cursive — a quick note to thank them?
DOWN WITH CURSIVE.
REVOLUTION.
Just think … in another twenty years spies will be able to send secret messages in plain English merely by writing in cursive.
100% true. I can’t read my partner’s cursive very well at all. It’s like trying to read German.
Am I the only one who sees Dorothy as being a bit of a jerk in this, too? Sure, Walky should have been more careful with his words. He just meant that few really expect thank you cards in this day and age–especially in informal situations. I only ever wrote thank you cards on graduation and to certain older relatives.
But “terrifyingly assertive” is also accurate, and is another way of saying dominating or controlling. He just said something in a stupid way, and now he’s being made to do something he doesn’t want to do? I can’t help but flip the genders and see how I would see this. A “plucky” girl who has a tact problem and the man who is “civilizing” her. Or man making his girlfriend do something.
Sure, it’s the last panel, and those are the jokes. I’m not upset or anything. And I think it’s perfectly in character for Dorothy–the control freak and hyperachiever. And I could buy that someone who has her goal to run for president is obsessed with even somewhat archaic etiquette.
It’s not that I hate Dorothy or anything. Just that I’m surprised that there’s all this talk about how big a jerk Walky was being, but none about Dorothy. They’ll argue she’s wrong about thank you cards, but the only opinions about her behavior seem to be cheering her on.
I probably wouldn’t have said a word if anyone else had, since it’s not that important.
agreed. granted i also hate writing thank you cards, so i’m biased, but that seems like his business, not hers. she could also just write hers from the both of them since she’s the one it’s important to.
i do really like dorothy, though, so i guess she’s allowed an imperfection or two.
Yeah, this feels fairly uncomfortable to me but then the undertones of Dorothy trying to “fix” Walky have always made me uncomfortable.
1) She’s not perfect
2) Walky has been improving himself independently of Dorothy too
3) He can still be dorky, arrogant Walky. Just a dorky, arrogant Walky with enough responsibility to survive adulthood
I mean, Dorothy being a jerk here makes me really happy, because for the longest time her character’s been coming off like “Dorothy Keener, partying with mere mortals?” to me. Like, she was just the nicest, most awesome person ever who forgives all misdemeanors and guilts herself silly over any perceived mistake.
Seeing Dorothy here be super uptight about a thank you card, angrily barking that she wants to see cursive, is both genuinely hilarious and a needed shot in the arm for a character that was a little too vanilla for a series where everyone else has layers upon layers of depth and often acts incorrigibly to the betterment of their character.
It’s good that Danny’s a sexist twerp. It’s good that Amber lashes out at her friends. It’s good that Becky just called Jocelyne a Nazi. It’s good that Sal’s a Too Cool For School rebel who tried to beat the hell out of Malaya for not being contrite enough. It’s good that Billie’s an Alpha Bongo with a vehement hatred of those NERDS. It’s good that Ethan’s a neurotic basket case who gives his best friend a case of the stink eye because how dare she get mad at him for dating a girl. It’s good that Ruth is a pretty awful person when she wants to be. It’s good that Joyce has to be dragged kicking and screaming through life lessons. It’s good that Sarah is a misanthropic asshole who can barely be assed to express concern for people she loves. It’s good that Dina picks fights with Joyce over her religion. It’s good that Carla is an obnoxious butthole. It’s good that Walky is a raging manchild who doesn’t want to express those girly feelings.
Characters need to be terrible sometimes, and Dorothy’s been missing out something fierce for like two and a half years now.
Excuse you, Dina is never terrible she is great. Every character having some fatal flaw feels if anything MORE artificial (not to mention annoyingly cynical) than someone being “perfect” because in reality some, and in fact most, people are just pleasant human beings without glaring shortcomings.
Being a dick sometimes isn’t a fatal flaw. Most of the cast are, largely, pleasant people. It’s just sometimes they fall short of themselves, as we all do.
Like, Amber is straight up my favourite character. She has also been really awful at times by lashing out when Ethan and Danny do something outside of what she wants and then she tried to beat the hell out of Sal because she thought she couldn’t be Amazi-Girl anymore. I wouldn’t call her a bad person and I hate when people chime in with “why is Amber such an awful and crazy person” because I think there’s significant context that shapes Amber into what she is, and that’s what makes her a good character.
Dina doesn’t pick fights with Joyce over her religion. She picks fights with Joyce over how her religion causes her to deny reasonably important facts – and in a way that is constantly, regularly attempted at being enshrined as a mere ‘difference of opinion’. I don’t know why you insist on riding this, because they’re not the same – especially not when its your life’s passion they’re stating is filthy satanic lies.
I think that you may be on to something by pointing out a double standart. Totally.
But I also think that a relationship has it’s own terms, and that something which seems controlling to someone on the outside can totally not be on the inside, and also that Dorothy wanting to better herself all the time makes it okay that she hold the same standard for the people around her. In fact, she’s a lot less stringent with people around her, which imo makes her a very patient person as opposed to a jerk. Most people are the total opposite : a lot stricter on others than on themselves.
And in fact, I don’t think that Walky is a jerk. I think that he’s handling all the distruption from his usual way of life almost heroically. He’s been sheltered all his life, yet he accepts this girls who’s mere existence distrupts his comfort. Not many people who accomplish that either.
I think they form a wonderful pair for mutual growth (as opposed to anyone “fixing” anyone).
Nah, holding yourself to an unreasonably high standard doesn’t magically make it appropriate to inflict those same standards on the people around you.
I think Dorothy is being a little harsh, but it’s a lesson that Walky should rightfully learn: Be grateful for things given to you. Walky is being an ass. If he hadn’t snapped at Dorothy about not writing thank you notes, I can believe that she wouldn’t be shouting “I want to see cursive!” at him.
Being grateful is completely orthogonal to writing ritualized pseudo-thanks.
Yes, but the point isn’t really to make him write a ritual thank you note (Which, yes, what the hell are you doing, Dotty, this is what texts are for), it’s to get him to actually open up. Because it’s kind of killing him not to.
Of course, but that’s not what I said.
A human being has paradigms. Paradigms are very strong. A person that has the strenght to apply them to themselves first instead of demanding them from others is a mature person. Dorothy is considerably less strict with Walky than with herself, which is a very difficult thing to do for someone who has strong beliefs, and is indicative of an empathic and respectful character. Also, as others said, she probably wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t nag her first, and I don’t see that last panel as nagging or agressive but as playful.
CURSIVE? Dorothy is now the most cruel character in the comic.
Also, thank you notes? I do thank you phone calls, who the hell writes thank you notes nowadays?
Do that thing no school teaches anymore! You should have taught yourself!
Speaking personally, my normal handwriting is a hybrid of cursive and block text; I think that’s really the case for everybody. However cursive is also considered ‘formal writing’ for purposes of etiquette and protocol (such as writing thank-you notes) so that might be why Dorothy is insisting here.
I’ve heard people wonder why Anakin built C-3PO in the prequels, why a slave would possibly need a protocol droid. Now I know: it’s all so that he wouldn’t need to write cursive.
Finally someone here who uses hybrid handwriting, like every person I know. But I have never ever in my life heard of such a thing as “formal handwriting”. It amazes me.
Yeah, trying to force me to use cursive again is grounds for a break-up.
It’s official: Dorothy is my mum. 😀 (Also, she wouldn’t let us use ball-point pens for it for the longest time! Had to be felt-tipped [since we didn’t have fountain pens] because ball-point was “too informal”. That’s old-school thank-you note writing! 😀 )
Dorothy is her own mum. She’s like two of her own mums.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2015/comic/book-5/03-the-butterflies-fly-away/confidentially/
Great. Now Walky’s parents are going to rush over, wonder if a reptilian took over their son.
…but cursive is actually uglier than print.
You know who forced people to write thank you notes? Hitle- I mean Dorothy.
Is…is cursive just joined up writing, as opposed to print? Or is it something more arcane because by the reaction here it’s like she’s asking for it be written in unicorn blood.
Cursive is the ancient art of drawing your life force through your hands, and it becomes an addiction, first official documents, then all your essays, soon you have to have a cursive font online in order to settle your urge. It is inescapable.
eventually you’ll be buying a calligraphy pen so as to better write cursive.
Don’t ask me. I’m the only person I know in Nowheresville, Midwest, USA who uses joined up (cursive) writing. Everyone I know asks why I still write like it’s a sixth-grade essay.
I was thinking more of a blood quill. You know, Umbridge’s signature item?
Heh, Harry Potter.
The best strip in this relationship so far was when he walked away in the fight over pajama jeans. You shoulda just kept walkin’.
He doesn’t seem to agree with that.
I feel people misinterpret that sequence. At least, I used to, and it’s why I used to hate it.
The point wasn’t that Dorothy is allowed to control Walky and he should be grateful she even looks at him, it was just a dumb, immature argument from an uptight mother hen and a slacker.
Exactly. It was intended, as this likely is, as a flaw in Dorothy’s character – along with the obvious flaws in Walky.
It also was, I believe, a bit where Dorothy got to realize that man-child though he is, Walky wouldn’t push around as easily Danny had.
oh wow, walky is getting character development from every direction it seems. acknowledging his sister is less favored, knowing he should be studying even if he isn’t, and writing thank you card. wonder if this development will stick.
It will slide right off the back of his hoodie.
I think the sister thing will stick, but I’m worried that all the improvements Dorothy made are gonna go away when she gets into Yale or whatever.
I’m worried that he’s becoming dependent in a way without even realizing it and that there might be some severe depression in store for him later, like in the situation you said.
I think Walky’s definitely going to miss her, he’s putting up walls in their relationship because he doesn’t want to admit it’s gone far deeper than he wanted it to, but I don’t think his post-breakup depression will be, like, crippling to him. It’s going to break his heart because Dorothy’s gone and he’ll start thinking that he could have done this or that, he could have gone with her, he could have tried to get her to stay, they could try long distance, etc., but I think he’ll be able to pick himself back up eventually.
Yeah probably not crippling, but hard for a while, for sure. Maybe I should’ve said “moderate depression” XD
I’m still sort of insulted that long distance isn’t an option to them. Like, personally. It’s silly, I know. But it’s a legit good choice.
I’ve just decided to vote for Dorothy as president.
Man, so much hate for cursive in the comments. I agree on the fact that some of the letters are really weird from their block counterparts, but you write much faster in that way and it comes in handy when you have a teacher that only dictates the lesson.
I may have done, ya know, this. ¨Cursive is the ancient art of drawing your life force through your hands, and it becomes an addiction, first official documents, then all your essays, soon you have to have a cursive font online in order to settle your urge. It is inescapable.¨, but I rather enjoy cursive, it’s easy to use.
Dunno, my writing actually sped up when I switched from cursive to print.
If it works for you, that’s cool. But it goes slower for me. These days, I have to just type it out and then write it down later to put it in my head
When I’m upset or depressed, I grab a notebook and write out my thoughts, in cursive, backwards! Yep, I read somewhere that Leonardo DiVinci would write his notes backwards and I wondered how hard that would be so I gave it a try. Turns out it’s not so hard at all so now all my rants that I need to write down go in cursive… backwards.
Leonardo’s writings are mostly in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left.
The confusion from Dorothy is the realization she’d probably got a dozen small gifts for Walky and was just assuming he would get around to writing thank you notes for them.
Maybe this is a cultural divide? If I tried sending a thank you note when I was younger I’d have gotten scolded. My parents made me call people who sent me gifts even if it was just a greeting card for my birthday. Even stricter, when I got a cell phone I had to use that when making thank you calls instead of the house phone.
I wouldn’t say a cultural divide, but definitely a different tradition. My parents preferred thank-you notes because they believed writing something nice down and sending it via mail was a rare enough thing these days to be special. Bear in mind that they program for a living, so it wasn’t a luddite thing.
The verbal thank-yous were to be said when you got the gift, or the next time you saw them if they had not given it in-person
His life is going to fall apart when they split. She’s a better mother than his own birth mother. let’s hope he absorbs some good habits at least.
Walky wanted a flaming skull and now he’s got Dorothy becoming one for him.
You could just text her and say thank you.
This is a more efficient method of communication.
This strip confuses me. I had to look up what cursive is, and it seems to me whenever I write anything by hand (as opposed to typing it) I… use cursive? I guess? Is it an America thing to not write in cursive? Am I the only one who writes in cursive? Should I feel bad about it? Am I doing something wrong? Oh gods, am I insulting people when I write stuff to them?! Did I need more self-esteem before reading this strip?! SOMEBODY HELP ME!
*curls up in a dark corner and shudders*
Cursive has become less common since we became more reliant on computers.
Cursive is a standardized way of writing connecting letters, allowing writers with free-flowing ink pens to write quickly and cleanly without picking up the nib and blotting ink everywhere. But! when the ball-point pen came around, it required so much pressure that the quick, flowing letters of cursive became impractical. There’s kind of an ageist/classist divide about it now– Older folks, with nicer, non-disposable pens were taught “good penmanship” they took a lot of pride in, while younger folks are usually working with cheap, uncooperative plastic and find typing a much easier avenue.
When I’m writing quickly with pencil or marker, the result usually looks something like cursive– tails of one letter will fly into the other, and what have you–but I will have NONE of that nonsense with the lowercase cursive f or b.
….oh. I never, ever thought about how different writing implements would effect the ease of writing in cursive. You’ve opened my eyes.
What’s all this fuss about cursive? Like, everyone I know writes part cursive (some letters are, some letters aren’t, depending on their position in the word and all, to optimize practicality), and considers a nice handwriting to be one that is done with application and dexterity, nothing else.
No love for the long s?
(“ſinfulneſs” for “sinfulness” and “ſucceſsful/ſucceſſful” for “successful”)
I’ve always enjoyed the purfuit of happineff.
I knew this had to be out there somewhere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yR2y_eZe4g
Printing was taught in the first grade, cursive started in the second. After that, it was mandatory for all classes and lessons. My handwriting is terrible due to an injury to my right hand when I was six. I spent a lot of homework time writing the alphabet in cursive for “practice.” I still hate writing in all its forms. Keyboards are the only way I’ll voluntarily put words on paper. For those keeping track, first grade was in 1960.
I was taught cursive in elementary school, but I mostly either use print writing or a computer. The only thing I use cursive for anymore is when I have to sign my name. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a bad thing that lots of people don’t write in cursive anymore. I can understand still learning to read it for old historical documents, but it’s no longer necessary for writing in modern times.
So I might by old fashioned, but writing cursive is so much faster than writing printed letters for me, I cannot imagine anyone being able to do without.
Being dependent on a digital device to be able to note something down is not my idea of a good life…
The idea that cursive is faster is absolutely mindboggling to me.
Trying to make cursive even vaguely legible means one word takes longer than I take writing a whole paragraph in block.
That is perfect break-up justification…
I like writing in cursive, I kinda miss writing letters and getting them does that make me weird (or just old (er) ) hand writing is cool it tells you things. I mean we didn’t need emoji when we hand wrote things as much you could tell what someone meant by the slant of the letters, the way the letters where written,
Oh Dorothy… don’t you know that by making her son be considerate like this, you’re dooming yourself to having Mrs. Walkterton become another Mrs. Wilcox in your life?
You precious precious treasure you.
the most impressive advocate for cursive writing I ever met was a physics teacher in junior high who claimed it was especially useful for taking lecture notes in a darkened room, where you couldn’t see your notebook – of course his penmanship was flawless, and he never had to look at the paper while he wrote
My mother would approve.
Don’t know about cursive, but definitely some cursing going on.