@vasta - I should clarify: the loops at the top are not in and of themselves hard to read, it's just that it makes the top half (and often the bottom too!) of lots of letters all look the same, which makes it much more difficult to distinguish them quickly. With most people's handwriting you end up with a bunch of slightly different loops that you have to look at carefully to distinguish. (Also I think something got messed up in that URL when I posted it. lets try it again: slate.com/human-int...) I don't think there's anything wrong with working on penmanship, but I don't think cursive itself is important or even really a good use of students time. I've been really interestd in learning the Italics based writing system mentioned in that article for a while now though. That sounds like a method of writing that is both easy on the writer and legible for the reader.