alt Hacker NewsThis is the kind of thing that makes cursive painful to read. The `i` and `j` in this script are harder to quickly lex, and the `t` (especially in the `tt` ligature) with the added loop flourish diverges sufficiently from a standard `t` to make it hard to decipher in running text.
In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.
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Easy reading is achieved by typesetting later if needed. Writing by hand is painful and slow and it makes sense to optimize for the write operation as much as possible
No experienced reader reads letter-by-letter. These issues are not really problems, because you read whole words by sight and are not usually confused by whether a letter is an "i" or a "j".
If it's just for note taking, it's no different than learning shorthand, since you are the only one that has to be able to read it.
I read the backtrack free "pretty" as "pretly" at first; it adds cognitive load to understand it as intended.
It also makes writing more difficult --- the doubled-up pen movements help get ink flowing, esp. on certain letters at certain angles, esp. w/ a fountain pen.
I wonder to what extent this is just habituation to styles that do not do what they are doing.
If I might, modern people tend to find cursive difficult to read. This depends somewhat on culture (nastaliq is the default in Iran) but is a kind of generalized trend that holds for most modern developed countries (see gyousho and sousho almost disappearing in daily use in Japan outside of menus and signage and - increasingly rarely - formal letters). It's not as if, I think, that when these older forms were more common that people struggled to read them (at least, not anymore than individual handwriting typically causes problems).
People who grew up writing cursive also often struggle with older scribal hand (though less so than someone who did not grow up with cursive), say from 1500s-1700s. Again, I think it's unlikely that the writers of those hands were so constrained by medium and technology (or cultural norms) that they chose to write in a way that was deemed inaccessible. (One might, if not attenuated to it, say that sousho is akin to deliberate cultural obfuscation, but my experience suggests that you quickly learn to recognize the patterns in kuzushiji.)
In the case of CJK scripts, brush pens haven't changed. Fountain pens are perfectly adequate for cursive (though some nibs were developed that differ specifically to make them even more suitable). For nastaliq, as for naskh, a reed pen is fine for both. (Modern pencils, ballpoints, and typical modern Western-tipped FPs do struggle to give nastaliq the line variation needed for a legible result). For Western scripts, pens and their tipping simply hasn't changed much beyond a decrease in the flexibility of nibs in FPs. (Something which also varied historically - pens oriented at most shorthand styles always had hard tips, excluding those shorthand styles that incorporate line-width variation which was meant to be achieved with a flexible tip.)
So my thinking is this is mostly something that comes down to 'are you used to it' and shifts in this area have a lot mroe to do with culture than anything else.
There are of course two other matters.
First, how easy something is to learn - I think the only place this is a consideration is sousho of the scripts I've mentioned (even with nastaliq's hundreds of thousands of possible ligatures).
Second, are the people around you accustomed (culturally) to the hand you are writing in, and how hard is it for them to adapt if they are not. Broadly speaking, people are not accustomed to reading much cursive in general these days, let alone one that varies from the recent hands of the area. So generally if one is writing for coworkers say, one would do well to simply write in print or at most a semi-cursive style.
In that regard the more that something deviates from its print form, the harder it will be to read for them. This ultimately comes down to interpersonal consideration - if you're writing for yourself or people who are regularly reading/writing cursive, I don't think the author's changes will be a significant issue beyond a short acclimatization phase that does not extend far beyond the phase that would be needed to adapt to an individual's personal quirks in a hand that has had some recent sway in the local area (and those hands do differ by country/area, quite a lot). (As a tangent, some of these tricks of the author's are commonplace in specific historical European hands.)
This reminds me of build-time optimizations increasing compile times for faster performance at runtime. A tradeoff I could make without a sweat in prod, but not so much during development, at a certain scale. It feels like a dichotomy almost unavoidable in life.
> In text, as in code, I prefer to optimize for easy reading rather than faster writing.
Author here!
It really depends on what you write.
When I write something for others to read, I type it or (on special occasions) write it one letter at a time with a calligraphy pen.
I’m the only intended reader for almost all of my handwriting (personal journal, article drafts, exercises, and notes). In this setting, it’s much more natural to optimize the script for enjoyment, convenience, and speed. But even then, I think my script is still quite legible.