Cursive adaptations

Your excellent piece on contemporary moves to bring back cursive writing in today's schools brought back memories of my own attempts to learn it as part of my 1940s elementary education regimen.

We were force-fed the "Palmer Method" in the third or fourth grade and, as I recall it, a key part of the endless drilling involved positioning your writing hand flat enough while practicing the circles and whorls that you could keep a coin balanced on the back of that hand. I couldn't. In addition, my ungainly technique caused the sharp pen points - which we dipped into actual inkwells nestled into the desktops - to rip into my rough-grained, lined practice sheets.

So, today, I print. Or trace my finger across the credit card screen. Or use a keyboard. None as artistic as cursive, of course, but at least in my case, a heckuva lot more legible.

Bill Murray

Palatine