Reply #229: Less usage? Yes. Obsolete? No.

[road2000]

The OP asked if cursive is obsolete. I've always enjoyed sending and receiving personalized, hand-written notes in Christmas or birthday cards, thank-you notes... even wedding invitations generally require the invitee to be able to read a script style. As someone who likes to uphold those conventions, I rue the potential loss of cursive usage. I was a newspaper reporter for many years, and was thankful for the rapidity of cursive, while envying my mother's generation for its knowledge of shorthand. (Now, there's a skill that has passed into oblivion.) But there will always be some need, at some point, for an ability to make quick notes. So I give the nod to retaining cursive.

Another point: some posters are confusing the definitions of "printing" and "handwriting" or "lettering." It's a common mistake in terminology, and it took a draftsman to explain the difference to me.

From thefreedictionary.com:

"Depending on the reproduction technique used, a distinction is made between handwriting, which is produced with a pen or other implement on a soft material, such as papyrus, parchment, or paper; lettering applied by hand with a brush or other implement on signs, vases, fabric samples, original bookbindings, book covers, title pages, and other elements of publications; engraved lettering, which is cut or stamped in wood, metal, stone, or some other hard material and used for inscriptions on monuments, architectural structures, or engravings; and print, which consists of individual letters and other elements and which is designed for the manual or mechanized composition of texts to be reproduced by printing, chiefly on paper."

Link: <http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/Print+and+Lettering>

The warning before the article is a hoot!