Elite party invitations written in elaborate script on handmade parchment and closed with sealing wax are only a dim memory from the past. They have faded from society like old ink on yellowed paper. Long before our technical age, people used cursive to communicate. Business correspondence, love letters, the Gettysburg Address, and the Declaration of Independence were all written in cursive. My grade school teachers tried to help me master this skill. Eventually they succeeded, though you wouldn’t have been able to tell from the low penmanship grades on my report cards.

Recent news articles are reporting that California schools are no longer required to teach handwriting. Printing, yes, but not cursive. Teachers are encouraged to find time for it in their lesson plans, but it is gradually becoming a lost art.

Physical books fill my library. I find their presence a comfort as I type on my modern computer. Most of them are printed in a modern, serif font. There are, however, some copies of old Bibles on my shelves. Even on close inspection they appear to be printed in a foreign language.

One uses Black Letter or Gothic, a typeset popular in the sixteenth century. Others use a flowing script that is a bit easier to read, but only if you are familiar with the passages. They are all filled with archaic spellings and many words that remain a mystery to me. The text reminds me of ancient runes and long forgotten scripts from vanished civilizations.

Other languages have always fascinated me, but I never learned more than a few words of anything outside of English. I was not good at Pig Latin, and have not kept up with changing slang. Although I tried shorthand, I was unable to retain it. I have mastered e-mail, but computer jargon and anachronisms are baffling. Texting remains a mystery.

Now I am encouraged to know that in another decade or so I will have a mysterious communication skill. It will be a strange exotic language, pretty to look at but incomprehensible to all but an elite group. Like a wise, ancient sage, I’ll be among the shrinking number of those still able to read and write in cursive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMYEJ7qCGd4

http://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/dpgo_Cursive_Writing_Being_Pushed_Aside2199832

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration.html