Handwritten: The Case for Cursive

It’s easy to dismiss cursive as something quaint. Instead, let’s consider something rather striking: the remarkable satisfaction of writing in cursive. There’s a tactile pleasure in it.

The author’s cursive handwriting decorating a Pysanky egg, circa 2018

Cursive handwriting. A dying art? A relic of some forgotten era when the flick of a pen and the swirl of ink seemed to matter more than a tap of a key? Yes, we are living in a digital age, where typing reigns supreme and handwritten words are relegated to the niche corners of the world such as our signatures on forms we pretend to read before signing away our lives (but even that is becoming digitized). And yet, there persists this question, one that lingers in the margins of educational discourse: Why teach cursive? Why continue to handwrite anything? Why even care about its inherent beauty and cognitive benefits in an age dominated by strokes of a keyboard?

It’s easy to dismiss cursive as something quaint, something that belongs in the dusty shelves of old classrooms and Victorian epistles. Instead, let’s consider something rather striking: the remarkable satisfaction of writing in cursive. There’s a tactile pleasure in it. One is not merely arranging letters but orchestrating a flow of movements, a dance between the hand and the page. The loops, the curls, the way the words glide off the pen, there is something undeniably satisfying about it. When I write in cursive, I feel a direct connection between my thoughts and the page. It’s something fundamentally different from typing, where thoughts often come in disjointed bursts, the machine offering no resistance, no pause, no negotiation with the act of creation.

“The beauty of handwriting reveals the depth of a soul.” — Leonardo da Vinci

“Penmanship is an art, and every stroke tells a story.” — Jane Austen

“The art of writing is the art of discovering oneself.” — Gustave Flaubert

“Every man’s handwriting is a symbol of his mind.” — Sir Francis Bacon

“Every stroke of the pen is a movement of the heart.” — Henry David Thoreau

“Handwriting is the intimate connection between thought and action.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

In fact, research suggests that there may be a very real cognitive benefit to this old-fashioned form of writing. Studies in the realm of neurobiology have shown that cursive writing engages the brain in ways that typing cannot. A study published in Frontiers in Psychology found that students who wrote by hand—especially in cursive—performed better on tasks that involved memory and idea generation.

The act of forming the letters by hand, the fluid, continuous motions, engage the brain in a kinesthetic rhythm that is markedly different from the mechanical rhythm of typing. It activates areas of the brain associated with fine motor skills, memory, and cognitive processing in ways that typing cannot replicate. It seems that cursive, with its emphasis on flowing, interconnected strokes, facilitates not just the act of writing, but thinking itself—stimulating the brain to form better, more coherent memories and ideas.

The author’s seminar notes while teaching “The Pardoner’s Tale.” The Canterbury Tales, circa 2014

I’ve known this instinctively for years, ever since I first learned cursive at the age of seven. I remember it clearly—not the rote drills, the endless repetitions of “a,” “b,” “c,” but the sudden beauty of the letters as they began to flow from the tip of my Number 2 pencil. It was as if the connections between my mind and the paper became something that could create rather than simply record. In my 17 years of teaching, I continued to write in cursive, on the board and in my own notes, while teaching high school students. I wasn’t just imparting information; I was conveying something greater, a way of thinking and being that couldn’t be captured in any digital font.

One time after a meeting in my classroom, a parent asked to take a photo of my cursive writing on the board. (The subject was Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the novel, not the movie.) This wasn’t a boast; it wasn’t even a comment on the content of the lesson; it was a recognition of the beauty in the cursive form itself. The parent was fascinated, perhaps even moved, by something as simple as a sentence written in a flowing script. It was as if, in that moment, the act of writing itself, with all its attendant grace, had transcended the mundane and become something profound. This is what cursive can do. It has the power to elevate the ordinary into something extraordinary.

Sure, we type a lot now. More than a lot. We type constantly, endlessly. Emails, texts, tweets (or X’s?), Substack posts (like this one), all churned out on our glowing screens, disappearing into the ether the moment we hit “send.” There is, to be sure, an efficiency in it, an ease. But there is a cost. We lose something in the process. Cursive reminds us of the beauty of creating. It’s not just about communicating ideas—though it certainly does that—it’s about the act of creation itself, the joy of transferring thought to paper in a way that feels personal, intentional, and yes, beautiful. It’s a connection to something older, something slower, something that encourages reflection over speed. It is a skill that encourages mastery, that demands attention, that requires an artist’s touch.

So, yes, I advocate for the teaching and practice of cursive handwriting. Not because it is “better” than typing—not in any absolute sense. But because it offers something that typing does not: a deeper connection to thought, a richer experience of expression, and a profound beauty that resides in the very motion of writing itself. To teach cursive is to teach more than just a method of writing; it is to encourage a way of thinking, a way of being, that is slow, deliberate, and profoundly human. In a world that moves faster every day, we need such moments of pause, of grace. We need cursive.

Michael S. Rose, a leader in the classical education movement, is author of The Art of Being Human, Ugly As Sin and other books. His articles have appeared in dozens of publications including The Wall Street Journal, Epoch Times, New York Newsday, National Review, and The Dallas Morning News.