In a tv debate recently, someone mentioned ‘joined-up thinking’, and got unexpected laughter from the audience. Partly this was the audience’s perfectly reasonable satirical response to one of the early New Labour catchphrases. [There's an Observer article about it's removal from the political lexicon here for those that enjoy socio-political analysis.] As an amateur calligrapher – and newspaper reader – it struck me that the wonk who dreamed up the phrase was a little … well, wonky, in their analogy.
I guess they thought joined-up writing was more sophisticated, intelligent and efficient that what we used to call print stick – each letter standing alone and crafted in isolation. Well, yeah but no but …
Joined-up writing just means any style of writing where some of the letters are joined together. That’s all. Depending on the style, it could actually be very slow to read – and very hard to read. Until we (calligraphically) saw the light in the UK, somewhere in the 16th century, those of us who could write used what was called the secretary hand. The letters were cramped together very densely, and it’s nowadays indecipherable to anyone but an expert. Try an original Shakespeare folio sometime, and be glad he’s not writing your prescriptions.
The breakthrough came with what we now call italic (which actually just meant ‘Italian’, rather than ’sloping to the right’). Italic was joined-up, of course, but that wasn’t the only point. The italic hand, developed by Italian humanist calligraphers, and is more accurately called cursive.
Cursive means flowing, which better captures the intention. Cursive writing is designed not just so that the pen leaves the paper as little as possible, but so that the letter forms don’t become distorted even as the scribe races to record either their thoughts or someone else’s words. Cursive writing was a breakthrough in official court record keeping, no-one having invented shorthand or tape recorders at the time. [It also avoided the loops that continue to plague what is - I can't help think but unfortunately - known as 'Civil Service Hand'. Far be it from me to say anything about how to go slowly loopy ...]
Writing could not just be done faster and more efficiently, but the results were better: records were fuller, more accurate – and highly legible. Which, let’s face it, is the point of handwriting. (Today, the British Dyslexia Foundation recommends this style as easiest to read by sufferers.
Writing cursively did more than join one thing to another. It made things flow efficiently and productively, and it produced better results for the people on the receiving end. Why trip up over the joins when you can go with the flow?
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