Schneier on Security: Decline in Cursive Writing Leads to Increase in Forgery Risk?

Schneier on Security: Decline in Cursive Writing Leads to Increase in Forgery Risk?

I've wondered about this myself. Namely, the thought occurred to me the other day of all those wasted hours I spent being forced to learn cursive and, as a warm-up exercise, almost a year of slanted-letter penmanship. I imagined having to explain to a youngster today what — and why — cursive writing ever existed. "Well, Johnny, a capital 'Q' is written like the number '2'. No, I don't know why. I can't tell you why a 'G' is shaped the way it is, either. And don't get me started on a lowercase 'z'."

It's not that I resent wasting my precious, unrecoverable youth indoors scrawling symbols onto dead trees in the era before recycling was even a thing that people knew about and ignored anyway. Far from it. Penmanship class gave me a great signature, one that I have been repeatedly told by several folks is the most legible they've seen. It is, I suppose, because the only thing I remember about cursive writing is how to form a signature, neatly rolling the pen around to form e-a-c-h l-e-t-t-e-r u-n-i-q-u-e-l-y. It is so very legible because it remains locked in exactly as it has since ninth grade: formed cautiously and carefully by the unsure and unskilled hand of a boy who would much rather use block letters or, for a retro feeling, mark an 'X'.

I suppose if I hadn't spent the time learning to sign my name, it would be harder to steal my things today. On the other hand, I'm fairly certain that hand-written signatures are fast becoming a formality. It began with the use of PIN numbers for debit card purchases at brick & mortar locations. Now, they don't even ask for a signature in about 20 to 30 percent of the places I visit. If I do sign something, they rarely if ever verify if the signature matches the back of the card.