Song Lyrics I connect to
I listen to a LOT of music, so I’ll just go with some I really connect to
All the lyrics from Fire Drill by Melanie Martinez but I’ll pick a few
“Crying inside cause nothing I say ever comes out right” -Fire Drill
“I’ve never fit into any category Always deemed an outcast” -Fire Drill
“I’m bad at public speaking But I’m speaking now so hear me out I personally believe that everyone is fully capable of more than what they’re doing All of the bullying All of the screwing around with people they don’t really know” -Fire Drill
“I am not apart of anything that is hateful Love is seeping out my pores, I don’t feel anger anymore, even for people who hurt and betray me” -Fire Drill
“I’m just another teenage tragedy And life keeps draining my batteries” -Teenage Tragedy- Rory Webley
“You don’t want to know me, I will just let you down” -Castles Crumbling- Taylor Swift
“Now they’re screaming that they hate me Never wanted you to hate me” -Castles Crumbling
“I’ve got a smile cut into my cheeks I hide things when I speak Looks like I mean it I guess I’m a joker My hairs burnt from the bleach I hope you like what you see Need you like me I guess I’m the joker Why so serious?” -Joker, Rory Webley
“The thoughts in my brain, I’m going insane I’m somebody Arkham Asylum could never contain” -Joker
“Seems kind of dumb to worry bout good grades when this generation’s dealing with its own black plague”—Everybody Dies, Rory Webley
“It’s kinda sad to watch your superheroes fall from grace”- Everybody Dies- Rory Webley
“Feels like I’m dead before I’m even in the casket” -Everybody Dies
“Telling me that the end’s getting closer While I’m sitting on my phone scrolling TikTok turning my brain into a toaster” -Everybody Dies
“Your heart’s too big for your body That’s why it won’t fit inside You pore it out where everyone can see” -Crybaby, Melanie Martinez
“So what if I’m crazy, all the best people are”—Mad Hatter, Melanie Martinez
“You and I’ll be safe and sound” -Taylor Swift, Safe and Sound
“Why do I always spill? Feel it coming out my throat Guess I better wash my mouth out with soap” -Soap, Melanie Martinez
“Why’d I put my heart on every cursive letter?” -Melanie Martinez, Pity Party
“Why not me?” -Washing Machine Heart, Mitski
“What was I made for?” -What was I made for- Billie Eilish
“Loving you was lethal, guess that makes me evil” -EVIL, Melanie Martinez
“If you bite my hand again I will never feed you” -Melanie Martinez, EVIL
“I like shiny things but I’d marry you with paper rings You’re the one I want And I hate accidents Except when we went from friends to this”-Paper Rings, Taylor Swift
“I see things that nobody else sees”- Dollhouse, Melanie Martinez
“I’ll try not to starve myself Just because you’re mad at me” -Tv- Billie Eilish
“It’s you that I lie with As the atom bomb locks in”—As The World Caves In- Matt Maltese
“I’m not cool and I’m not smart and I can’t even parallel park 🤪” -brutal- Olivia Rodrigo
“Who is in control?” -Control, Halsey
“Go on and step on me” -Step On Me- The Cardigans
“You’re perfectly imperfect, You’re hurting but you’re worth it You don’t know why I would waste my time But I’m falling and I mean it I want you like I need it There’s nothing you could try to change my mind Cause I’m In Love With You” -Perfectly Imperfect, Declan J Donavan
“Your body is imperfectly imperfect Everyone wants what the other one’s working” -Orange Juice, Melanie Martinez
“My heart just burst like the glass balloon I let it fly too high and it shattered to soon” -MARINA, Hermit The Frog
“I’ve been chosen last since the kindergarten” -Chosen Last, Sara Kays
“I’m so sick of myself” -jealousy jealousy- Olivia Rodrigo
“The world will feel the fire and finally know” -The World Will Know- Newsies
“Just an appendage live to attend him so that he never lifts a finger” -labour- Paris Paloma
“Im more than my body” -Body, Jordan Suaste

Letter from the Producer LIVE Part LXXXI

The broadcast is scheduled for 4 AM Pacific 7 AM Eastern 11 AM UTC 9 PM Australian Eastern.
This Live Letter will preview upcoming Job updates for Dawntrail!
Where to watch:

• YouTube
• Twitch
• Niconico

This Live Letter will have live audio translation from Japanese to English, and presentation slides and important information will be presented in both English and Japanese text. As always, we invite you to check out the #translations-and-liveletters channel on our subreddit's Discord for unofficial translations of past and future broadcasts.

My spelling can look so messy because I can do random letters in cursive but not the rest 😆

I am working on a logo that I got from an SVG file and it has cursive lettering that's all attached. I scaled it up to where it needs to be but I need the letters themselves to be thicker, I don't know how to accomplish this without making the dimensions on the letters change. It seems like such a simple fix but I can't figure it out.

Hi all. I would like to recommend the most interesting work by Ernst Axel Knauf. I will quote the most interesting quotes (from my point of view) here. But I still advise you to read the entire article, as it is written in a very accessible and understandable language.
author's profile at the academy: https://unibe-ch.academia.edu/ErnstAxelKnauf?swp=tc-au-28366493
read the article: https://archive.org/details/arabo-aramaic-and-arabiyya-from-ancient-arabic-to-early-standard-arabic-200-ce-600-ce
"Nabatean Arabic became some sort of standard Arabic as early as the second century bce, but it was a spoken, not a written language, and it was, in the beginning, of no interest to anyone outside the relatively small circle of Arabian international traders and shippers. It became a written language between the third and fourth century ce in post-Nabatean texts.96 500 years of Old Arabic–Ancient Arabic coexistence and/or diglossia can now be considered."
"The Nabatean script is a cursive script. It was developed for writing on “paper” or its ancient equivalents. It reflects the needs of a society of traders who had to keep accounts and set up contracts. Only secondarily, with the onset of conspicuous architectural consumption at the end of the first century bce, their utilitarian cursive script was put to lapidary, epigraphic use. Unfortunately for the perception of Nabatean society through modern eyes, it is their “luxury” (and basically non-essential) written record which dominates the data base, whereas the main output of Nabatean scribal activities, the papyri, have only survived in meager installations, like the Nabatean papyri from the Babatha archive.106"
"With the imperial crisis of the second half of the third century, Greek lost its splendor in the East: the Parthians' Sasanid successors wrote Middle Persian (and Aramaic, for that was the language of their economical powerhouse, the Iraq); Arabs ( if not Christianized) turned away from both Greek and Aramaic."
"Aramaic, no longer in use for written business transactions among the Arabs themselves, remained present in pre-Islamic Arabia from the fourth through the sixth/seventh centuries through the Jewish and Christian communities which felt no urge to translate their scriptures into Arabic; a fact which one day early in the seventh century ce would instigate a failed merchant from Mecca to give his fellow Arabs a “liturgy” or “recitation” (in Arabic: qurʾān) in plain Arabic, obviously being of the opinion that the other monotheistic religions had failed, or neglected, to do so."
"From time to time the assumption resurfaces that the Arabic script did not develop from Nabatean Aramaic but from Syriac. It can be traced back to early Muslim scholarship,128 but it has no other argument in its favor than the relationship of the written word to the line: while Nabatean is sublinear (the letters are hanging from the line), Syriac and Arabic are supralinear (the letters are standing on the line). This feature can be explained by the easier assumption that Nabatean writing (the origin of all individual letters) was influenced by a Syriac adstrate in Arabian scribal practice during the fourth and fifth centuries ce. (Hoyland, “Language and Identity,” 196, with n. 50.)"
"Cursive writing with diacritical points indicates that throughout the fourth through sixth centuries ce Arabian merchants continued to trade merchandise and to keep records of their business in the Early Standard Arabic which they had inherited from the Nabateans.144"
"The cultic origins of Poetic Old Arabic with its archaic and, in prose and everyday speech quite superfluous case-endings are, especially since the discovery of Avdat 1, no longer questionable. On the other hand, Luxenberg has reopened the question of how pagan (instead of non-standard Christian) pre-Islamic Arabic really was.151"...
I’ll stop at the most interesting point, the article is very informative, be sure to read the footnotes and bibliography. Good luck.

So I was looking through AO3 define a fanfiction cuz I was bored and something that just drives me insane so much is when authors side to use like fancy lettering that are really hard to read in their summaries cuz I'm dyslexic so I already have a hard time reading a lot of stuff but then when you use fonts that are like cursive or Don't know what it's called but this is literally a word directly from the one I saw that made me want to talk about this "𝕔𝕙𝕚𝕔𝕠" I don't know what this font is called but it drives me insane It is so hard to read please I am begging you if you are making a summary please put it in regular font

Hi, I just moved to Michigan from Virginia with my boyfriend. It’s been almost 5 months. I’m tired of being around his family and would like friends outside of it. lol We have nothing in common. And I can tell you all about it in a letter or email lol. About me -I like crochet & cross stitching - playing sims 2 atm -writing. Trying to get better at cursive - cooking -I live in a camper so we can talk about that if you want -like Coke Zero - and I enjoy a long email or letter
I’m sure I’m missing stuff but that’s kinda the point of the letters right?
I’m looking for female penpals because I’m surrounded by dudes, apparently his family cannot produce women which is great for them but not for me socially.

Next part from The Lost Women of NXIVM:
PRODUCER: Do you have the suicide note?
HEIDI CLIFFORD (As “Anonymous Classmate”): (Reading purported “suicide note” aloud): This is a copy of the suicide note.
“I attended a course called Executive Success Programs, aka Nexium (sic), based out of Anchorage, Alaska and Albany, New York. I was brainwashed and my emotional center of the brain was killed and turned off. I still have feeling in my external skin, but my internal organs are rotting. I’m sorry, life. I didn’t know I was already dead.”
“No need to search my body.”
Was this potential suicide letter in Kris’s car coerced?
Was it her willingly writing it?
You don’t know.
As we have discussed in previous posts, nothing about the Kristin Snyder missing person case makes any sense whatsoever, and the purported “suicide note” found in her vehicle is certainly no exception.
Before we start analyzing the “suicide note,” here are a few factors to keep in mind:
• We know through information from multiple sources that Kristin was a prolific journal writer and letter writer, so we have a plethora of writing samples to compare with this alleged “suicide note.”
• We refer to “the writer” in our discussion of the “suicide note” below. The reason for this phrasing is because the actual writer of this note is unknown. Did Kristin herself write it, either as a explanation for killing herself, or for the purpose of faking her own death? Did someone else write it to make her disappearance appear to be a suicide? Was part of the text written by Kristin and added to by another party? Was the entire note faked? Was the note written by Kristin, but under duress/coercion as Heidi pondered?
• See notes under each section below regarding clear discrepancies between Kristin’s baseline writing style based on the hundreds of writing samples we have obtained from multiple sources through varying times throughout her life.
Now, without further ado, let’s take an in-depth look at this “suicide note” – line by line.
“I attended a course called Executive Success Programs (aka Nexium) based out of Anchorage, AK + Albany, NY.”
• Who is the note intended for? There is no salutation. We have tons of samples of Kristin’s letters and there is always a salutation – AND a date. If this is really her “suicide note,” why wouldn’t she address it to her partner Heidi, friends, coworkers, and/or family – as she always had addressed people in her letters? Similarly, wouldn’t she document the date of the most significant letter of her life, as she did routinely with her letters? In fact, she often even included the specific time (for instance, 7:15 p.m.) that the letter or journal entry was written.
• In addition to a salutation and date on other writing samples, Kris also typically indented her paragraphs and she also usually wrote on each line of the paper in her letters and journal entries, unlike this “suicide note,” which does neither.
• Related to the numerous writing samples we have acquired though multiple sources, Kris also primarily wrote in cursive in both her letters and in her journal. This “suicide note” is an odd hybrid of cursive and print.
• Why would anyone start a suicide note with “I attended a course…”? Clearly, the writer of this note is directing the reader to correlate ESP with the disappearance, but it seems like a very odd place for anyone to start a suicide note. Also, Kris attended two courses, not “a course”; a fact that Kris would have clearly known.
• “aka Nexium” is another oddity. Kris did not take any NXIVM classes, not even one, despite the extensive recent propaganda linking her to NXIVM. Why? Because NXIVM did not even exist at the time of Kristin’s disappearance; it was still in the planning stages. The writer had obviously heard about these plans as evidenced by the phonetic spelling. Again, it is obvious the writer of the note is clearly directing the reader’s attention to ESP/NXIVM – but if Kris were distraught enough to write a suicide note (and as functionally incapacitated as reported by her partner), why/how would she focus on minutiae like this?
• Speaking of minutiae, it gets even more obvious in the next words: “based out of Anchorage, AK + Albany, NY.” First of all, WHO CARES where ESP was based? That is in no way pertinent to the reasoning, and apparently is another clear attempt by the writer to direct the reader toward ESP/NXIVM. Secondly, this information is actually wrong. ESP wasn’t “based out of Anchorage, AK” – they held classes in Anchorage in a rented hotel space. The home base was in NY. Furthermore, Kris knew very well that this information was wrong, having recently visited their NY headquarters herself weeks before her disappearance!
•The words “based out of” (city, state) are odd as well. None of Kristin’s other writing samples did this. Nowhere does she mention elsewhere that anything is “based out of” anywhere in any of her copious writing samples we have obtained.
• Furthermore, why would the note say “Anchorage, AK” anyway? Presumably, Alaska law enforcement would be able to deduce that Anchorage is in Alaska without this unnecessary clarification.
“I was brainwashed + my emotional center of the brain was killed/turned off. I still have feeling in my external skin but my internal organs are rotting.”
• If Kris was brainwashed, she wouldn’t know (at least at the time) that she had been brainwashed. Again, this seems to be yet another clear attempt by the writer to direct the reader to look at ESP.
• Furthermore, if Kris finally did realize that she had been brainwashed, why would she then kill herself?
• The writer switches “my” and “the” in a sentence – something Kris never did, even once, in the hundreds of pages of writing we have obtained. The sentence should read “the emotional center of my brain,” not “my emotional center of the brain.”
• Another oddity is in the redundancy of “external skin.” Again, this sort of mistake does not appear to be Kris’s style, based on other writing samples. She had a Master of Science (M.S.) in Biology and she worked as an environmental consultant to the National Guard. She was a precise, clear, scientific, and articulate writer.
• This passage clearly implies that Kris was suffering from Cotard’s syndrome; per WebMD: “People with Cotard’s syndrome (also called walking corpse syndrome or Cotard’s delusion) believe that parts of their body are missing, or that they are dying, dead, or don’t exist.” We have talked to multiple people who Kris had visited in her January 2003 trip immediately prior to her February 2003 disappearance, and nobody reported any observations of any mental health issues, suicidal ideation, depression, psychosis, nor delusions of any sort. All of the people who discussed Kris’s reported mental health decline stated that they had not personally witnessed any symptoms, but rather, they were told of a rapid decline following Kris’s disappearance.
• If Kris thought she was already dead, why would she kill herself?
“Please contact my parents Bob + Jonnie Snyder at (number redacted) in Dillon, SC if you find me or this note.”
• Why would she specify to contact her parents, who lived out-of-state? Why not her partner? Why, in fact, is Heidi, the love of her life and civil union partner not mentioned AT ALL in the entire note?
• The inclusion of Kris’s parents as the sole contacts listed in the note contradicts a specific story told at the time of the disappearance alleging that Kris had uncovered memories of abuse during the class and that these purported memories were the reason/a factor in her alleged suicide. But: if that story was true, why would she include her father in the note? It should be noted that there is no evidence whatsoever that Kris was abused. As with the alleged rapid mental health decline, people who reported that story were not told of the purported abuse by Kris themselves, but rather, they were told of the purported abuse allegations after her disappearance. In fact, we even have been given a copy of a text message exchange in which the person who spread this abuse claims refers to it as “the lie.” This is yet another example of the myriad of inconsistencies and contradictions that plague Kris’s case.
• Why mention “Dillon, SC”? There is already a phone number given, so the city/state is irrelevant, and also, it is not her typical style. Again, it seems like someone with a quirky tic to mention a city and state wrote this.
• “if you find me or this note” is similarly nonsensical. If someone found her but NOT the note, they wouldn’t see the note, would they? Again, this oddity of wording is inconsistent with Kris’s typically precise style.
“I am sorry, life, I didn’t know I was already dead. May we persist into the future. KRISTN (sic) SNYDER”
• Again, if she thought she was already dead, why would she need to kill herself?
• Why is she addressing “life”?
• “May we persist into the future” is interesting. “Persist into the future” is a phrase used in ecology, which could potentially mean a couple things: a). Kristin wrote this herself; b). Kristin wrote this phrase elsewhere and someone traced/copied it onto the “suicide note”; or c). the writer had seen a document that referred to this phrase and used it.
• WHO LEAVES A LETTER OUT OF THEIR OWN NAME???? The second “I” is missing in “KRISTN.” Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, Kris predominantly wrote in cursive and she typically signed her name in cursive as well. Why, in the most important document of her life, would she BLOCK PRINT her name, and even more bizarre, why would she leave a letter out of her own name? The writer appears to drop letters and cram letters together, but there is no evidence from other writings that Kris did these things.
“No need to search for my body”
• Why was this written on the BACK of the page on the “suicide note”? And why was the note left inside of a notebook to begin with?
• Kris was a member of the Anchorage Nordic Ski Patrol, and therefore, she was involved in search and rescue. Therefore, she would already know that THEY WOULD SEARCH FOR HER ANYWAY. Also, more importantly, why would she intentionally hide her own body and therefore put her colleagues/friends on the search and rescue team through the extensive trouble and potential dangers of conducting the search for her?
• Why write “my body” on the back of the page but write “me” on the front of the page of the note? That is yet another incongruity.
• Why the emphasis on not looking for a body? The writer clearly has a very specific reason to mention this; there is a reason the writer does not want the body found. It is very rare for a person to want to hide his/her own body, and even more rare to be able to successfully do so.

So, I've been trying to learn how to write in Old Roman Cursive, but there seems to be many different ways to write each letter, and the sources I've been using seem to conflict on almost all of them (A is the only letter that seems to actually stay the same throughout all of them). The sources I've been using are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXWUL8ieBgE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQu2zKYdIWw
https://www.omniglot.com/writing/romancursive.htm
https://sites.dartmouth.edu/ancientbooks/2016/05/25/ancient-fonts-rustic-capitals-old-and-new-roman-cursive/
https://coriniummuseum.org/schools/resources/roman-writing/
https://www.detailedpedia.com/wiki-Roman_cursive (full image is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cursive )
I've also been using LLPSI to learn Latin, and the Epistula Magristrī chapter (as well as an image on p259 of some carving from Pompeii) has some Old Roman Cursive that I transcribed onto a notebook, so I have that as well to reference.
Anyway, the conflictions between all these sources has me wondering which I should rely on. The person on this 9 year old Reddit post said he used the the second link I provided, but the detailedpedia source and the first YouTube link both seem to use the same letters (the omniglot and dartmouth links also use the same letters), so that's two sources that actually agree... originally I was actually going to compare each letter with each source and use the form for the letter that the most sources used, but I don't want to accidentally mix dialects or something, and end up writing E's like I'm from Ostia while writing my P's like I'm from Pompeii, or anything like that.
Anyway, what do you guys think? How should I pick which source to rely on? Or is there other sources that are more accurate than these, that I should be looking at?
P.S. Some of the letters are even considered New Roman Cursive in some of the sources, but put under Old Roman Cursive for other sources, to make things even more confusing (e.g., the "New Roman Cursive" E in the coriniummuseum link and the third "Old Roman Cursive" E in the omniglot link are identical)
P.P.S. A couple of other sources I excluded, as I haven't actually looked into these two too deeply: https://www.reddit.com/latin/comments/f7wtc2/breakdown_of_the_cursive_used_in_ancient_roman/ https://www.reddit.com/latin/comments/ecgk4a/old_roman_cursive_variants/

Hello! My name is sowofty here, ill tell you my real name if i decide id like to be penpals! Im 18 :))
-im a canadian!
-I write in cursive, but i can print (just, my printing is a little bit messy)
-I like to decorate letters, so expect little drawings and coloured backgrounds, stickers, etc.
-i like bugs, programming, monsters, cryptids, video games (no mans sky, slime rancher, stardew valley, dont starve, lethal company, and content warning), lobsters, the sea, shiny rocks, and lots more!
-dm me or comment saying bleepis if youve read this!! :>
-I have a partner i may reference in letters! Most of my experiences and stuff thatd id share involve him :))
what im looking for
-SOMEONE WHO LIVES IN CANADA (important)
-someone who wants to talk about their interests as well as mine
-someone who is patient
-any length letters
-any gender
-i preferably want a penpal who is 16-21 :>
Thank you!! ^{^}

I received a long-lost letter that my Uncle wrote years ago about the abuse I was suffering. In the letter he mentioned I hadn't been home in several nights, and I told my mom, "she was not my mother."
I had ripped out the dictionary definition of a mother. "Gives birth to. Loves and cares for" I told her, none of those things were her.
I then ran away and lived on the streets for two years. I was accepted to SCSU at 13, and my mother was disgusted that I was so weird. I was autistic, but she only told me on her deathbed that this is why she hated my for so long...and that she was sorry.
I am 48 (f) and I thought that I was done with all this trauma. But seeing it in the handwriting of my Uncle, reminded me how dire it all was. How disturbing it all was. How real it all was.
I once went viral for allowing an abused son and daughter to publish an obituary! I almost got fired for letting another tell their story, but for me, I have kept it all to myself. I thought there was no reason to bring harm to others, negating the damage it did to myself.
I have been in a spiral in the month since I received this, along with other thoughtfully collected books from my Uncles estate. I don't know how to express any of this to anyone who knows me. How dysregulating this all is. I have tried to share it with some friends...but they don't read cursive and also don't get the gravity of knowing, in writing... the evidence...I did not make it up.
I just overcame it all, few who know me would ever guess.
But my kids, all adults now, both called me today and thanked me for me being the best mom in the world. I thanked them for teaching me how to be a mother. Moment by moment...how can I be there for you? They taught me.
Happy mothers day.

the prompt is 2021 Q1
https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap21-frq-english-language.pdf?course=ap-english-language-and-composition
For centuries handwriting has been our primary source of documenting data, but is it still currently? With digital technology reaching into everyones' back pockets the decline of handwriting is evident. Email's have replaced letters, Word has replaced note taking, powerpoint has replaced posters, and many more. Even though handwriting is a great skill to have, and can help you with other aspects in life, its pragmatic uses are continuously declining. Thus it should not be focused on in school as a mandated class but rather as an elective.
Undoubtably, handwriting has major benefits, more than just the physical writing it self. Cursive script is proven to develop fine motor skills and improve mental organization (SOURCE D). Even though cursive handwriting has such benefits, the uses it posses in the everyday world are exponentially declining. What would be the point of focusing valuable education time on forcing every student to learn cursive? It would be absurd, if they want to do it, they can choose to in the form of an elective. It would be deranged to force woodworking kids to join the band, same applies here. Or it would be the same thing as forcing every student to learn French, Japanese, Spanish, and Arabic, indisputably learning many languages has great benefits to one's mind, but it should be a choice especially since it is not used in everyday life. Or as SOURCE E states, Super Mario Bros can develop better motor skills. Another important factor to consider on WHY we should make it optional is its [handwriting and cursives] roots. The real reason we adopted such writing habits in the 19th century was to make our national identity and our sense of uniqueness. We differed from other scripts not limited too but including the Gothic script, or the Palmer method because they were connoted to different cultures (SOURCE C), we adopted this so we can show we are different, however in todays world that matters very little because everyone has the same Sans Serif font in their inboxes (font gmail uses). Vouching the fact that we should not make it a necessity at school for children to learn at school.
Even though mandating such a dying subject could potentially revive it, there is no practical need to do so. Doing so would most likely do more harm than good. SOURCE B portrays one of the thousands of worksheets teachers would have to print for every student to strenuously practice their cursive writing. We all know that deforestation is hurting our climate. Badly. So why waste even more paper, especially on children who have no interest in learning the skill as well. It is like buying a $100,000 racecar for a student who has no interest in racing. What will it lead to? Immense waste. To reiterate. The printing of worksheets should be encouraged for children who want to learn the skill of cursive handwriting, but shouldn't be forced upon everyone. There would be no point in encouraging penmanship in school since post-school the focus is towards technology, after all school is meant to prepare us for the future (SOURCE A). Schools that are focusing on it should reconsider and put more effort into preparing the children for the future. In 2013, writing on paper was on average 2x than writing with technology (SOURCE F), that is however 11 years ago and if numbers like that are still prominent, school administration should reconsider.
The point of school is to be prepared for the future. In today's world penmanship is almost extinct, and in tomorrow's world it will be extinct. Technology is more efficient to use, saves the environment, and is the standard for today. So why force children in learning something that will not have technical use to everyone. It [cursive handwriting] should be more of an optional elective, like woodworking or coding.

Hi All,
New to Penmanship 😁
I need a guidance on improving my penmanship. Especially for the cursive and courier new Font. Mainly with Fountain Pens.
So far since a month i have been practicing the letter tracing, writing small sample paragraphs etc.
But for every different pen it feels different, seems like i have to practice for every pen?
Any guidance and tips for correct practice and improvement??
It would be great if you can share the PDFs, materials etc, if you have any on penmanship that helped you personally 😁
Thank you 🙏

frq from the 2021 exam : https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ap21-frq-english-language.pdf?course=ap-english-language-and-composition
note : i’m self studying for the exam and this is my first ap lang essay ( and my first essay in a long damn time in general ) . i know it’s crazy that it’s my first with the exam being so soon, but it is what it is. i tried to get chat gpt to grade it based on the rubric, but it gave me a 5 and to me that’s unbelievable. anyways, i’m open to constructive criticism to improve my skills with the time i have left.
here is the essay itself :
Thesis :
While cursive in the presence of digital technology is not necessary, hand written instruction, such as print, should still have a place in schooling because of the cognitive benefits; relevance to daily activities ( specifically in schools ); and the use of it in scenarios where the use of technology is not available or an option.
P1 Concession
To begin with, it is easy to admit that handwritten instruction in schools is not necessary in the digital age.
In the classroom, traditional writing has been “swapped for keyboards” and “blocking cursors” while “some teachers believe that cursive is archaic and that students should be prepared for more contemporary communication” ( Source A ) so that they may “ become better writers as handwritten instruction takes up less of their education ( Source C ), for this type of instruction is only emphasized inside the classroom and “the move outside our schools, and in innovative schools, is toward technology.” ( Source A )
This evidence confirms that cursive is not necessary in today’s educational programs because of the need to instead prioritize how the majority of our communication is done.
However, since handwritten instruction is not just made up of cursive, and benefits of it can still be achieved without having to dedicate the time to learning cursive, handwritten instruction should still have a place in school.
P2
Unlike the former point, handwritten instruction ( such as print ) has a place in schooling because of the cognitive benefits developed when taught compared to fully transitioning to only teaching forms of modern communication. When it comes to the opposition of handwritten instruction, most people focus on the cursive part of the argument as if handwriting consisted of just cursive and not the printed word as well. Both give cognitive benefits to whomever is taught it, but only one is necessary to be taught to receive the enhancements.
For example, “ Because handwriting is a complex skill that involves both cognitive and fine motor skills, direct instruction is required to learn handwriting ( it is not good enough to just give a workbook to students and hope for the best. However, the result of good instruction is that students are benefited in their cognitive development and fine motor skills.” Specifically, when taking handwritten notes students more effectively retain information, comprehend the content, and have more focus during lectures compared to students who took notes on a computer. They are also less likely to “...have problems retrieving letters from memory; spelling accurately, extracting meaning from a text or lecture, and interpreting the context of words and phrases.” As well as expressing more ideas and writing longer compositions. ( Source D )
This evidence supports that handwritten instruction should still have a place in schooling due to the cognitive benefits because it illustrates what benefits are present in students when they are exposed to handwritten instruction as opposed to disadvantages when they are not.
Consequently, since students are put in an advantageous position in contrast to those who rely on writing on keyboards, educators should consider whether prioritizing the focus on the digital age is actually hindering the educational progression of their students. Therefore, Handwritten instruction should be a part of the learning experience due to the fact that its absence would decrease the quality of their education.
P3
In a similar manner, the relevance of handwritten instruction in daily activities ( specifically in schooling ), has made it necessary to still be taught in school. The data “of a 2013 survey of 450 elementary school teachers that asked how much of their time students spent on writing on paper and how much of their time they spent using technology” concluded students spent the majority of their time writing on paper compared to using technology and as you move up in the education system you see that over time they use less and less of technology in contrast to using paper. ( Source D )
This evidence proves that handwritten instruction is relevant enough to be taught because of how much students still use it. Consequently, since the usage of handwritten instruction is still relevant in the lives of students, it should not be removed from their education. Therefore, due to its relevance in education it is evident that handwritten instruction still has a place in education.
P4 ( maybe i should’ve removed this… it’s outside evidence )
Equally important is the usage of handwriting where technology isn’t accessible or an option. Solar flares, simply not having access to an internet connection due to circumstance, or even knowing that technology is not inherently secure ( data can be sold, obtained, or silenced ) can make it so that you cannot type what you want to express. Having the ability to write on paper allows you to have access to a written of communication even in these scenarios. Therefore, being taught how to write by hand gives you an alternative in an ever-changing world where you cannot control or know what will happen next.
another note : i know it’s pretty bad. my commentary should be more developed and link back to my thesis, but i would like someone’s advice on what and how i could do better.