Re: OT More pens (was Re: Phoneme winnowing continues)

On Tue, Jun 10, 2003 at 01:15:13PM +0200, Christophe Grandsire wrote:

> It's completely the opposite as what you say. First, writing in cursive
> doesn't take extra time. On the contrary, it's usually faster than typing
> for most people in France. Second, typing is considered impersonal and thus
> will end up at the bottom of the stack. It is considered that if you find
> something important, you'll write by hand for it.
This is such an interesting difference between the countries.  I think here
in America, if someone wrote a cover letter by hand for a serious job offer...
well, first, it wouldn't look good coming through the fax machine, but I
imagine that's yet another difference between our job markets :)  More to
the point, writing by hand would be seen as childish and too informal for
business contexts, I think.

I think one of the reasons children don't care about cursive is because they
pick up on the societal attitude that cursive is a childish thing, that
real, grownup, *businesslike* people write with typewriters (when I was
young) or computers (today).  Grownups writing in cursive brings up images
of women in low-paying jobs who still dot their i's with hearts or smiley
faces (so I guess cursive is considered not only childish but also unmanly!).

(As for the fax machine, I think if someone mailed their resume in without
faxing it first it might look like they're not really serious about getting
the job since they didn't try to get there first.)

> If you type, there's so
> much chance that you have in fact just made once a templace letter and send
> it to every company you know that it is not a big incentive for companies
> to consider your application seriously
Here, applicants are advised to tailor the words in the cover letter to the
targeted company, and show that they've "done their homework" and understand
the company's business and structure.  By individualizing the content,
individualization of the form is rendered unnecessary :)

> Also, don't forget that writing in legible cursive *is* a normal skill in
> France, that you're supposed to have mastered during your first year of
> primary school (of course, your handwriting will evolve with the years, but
> the basics will stay).
How much did your handwriting evolve and how close is it to what was taught
in elementary school?  I'm curious about whether, in part, it's our silly
and restrictive definition of "cursive" that has led to its own demise.  It
would be interesting to see a French teaching alphabet.

Amanda

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