Jill's Journal: Old-school editor meets keyboard generation

The generational communication gap showed up at the Brandon Valley Journal office last week in a way I didn’t quite expect.

It wasn’t about technology, social media, or even the ever-changing world of marketing.

It was cursive. Yep. Cursive.

Our new advertising and marketing director, Isaiah, walked through the door for his first day with us last Wednesday. On day two, reviewing a stack of handwritten notes by me, he innocently asked if I write in cursive.

I told him yes, of course I do. It’s a skill that was engrained in me many decades ago, and as they say, old habits die hard. I also told him that you’re able to write faster, and in my business, especially long before cell phones and recording devices turned into handy reporting tools, that’s what I did. I wrote like a madwoman on a mission.

He asked the question while doing his best to decipher my handwriting, cursive handwriting to be more exact.

And in that moment, it dawned on me that Isaiah is from a generation that was not taught cursive. Nope. He was taught to print and type on a keyboard.

“We’re going to have a cursive course for you,” I jokingly told him.

He smiled – probably trying to decide if I was serious or just having fun. I can assure you, it was the latter.

I experienced a similar moment with my great-niece Karly. When my Goddaughter opened the confirmation card I had given her last year that included a heartfelt message I’d written – in cursive – I noticed it was taking longer than it should have. After all, it was an inside panel of a greeting card with only so much available real estate. 

“You’re having a hard time reading my handwriting, aren’t you?” I blurted out.

She smiled and admitted that yes, she was.

At that moment it hit me: cursive may have quietly become the Latin of modern communication.

Fast forward to last week, Isaiah later told me that he actually did learn cursive handwriting, but other than writing his name, he hasn’t written by hand – printing or cursive – much since high school. That makes sense. At 23, he grew up with a keyboard in front of him years before kids from my generation learned the art of typing – on a typewriter. And, if he needed to write something, it was usually typed, texted, emailed, or posted.

Meanwhile, those of us from the “old school editor” generation grew up filling entire notebooks by hand. We wrote school papers long hand before typing them, took notes in cursive, and signed our names to just about everything.

Handwriting wasn’t a novelty. 

It was just how communication worked.

So here we are in the same office, our desks mere feet from one another: the editor who still scribbles notes in cursive and a marketing director who can design digital campaigns faster than I can sharpen a pencil.

Some might call it a generational gap.

I prefer to think of it as a translation opportunity.

The solution is probably a simple one.

First, I need to be mindful to “print” my handwritten notes for him.

Second, Isaiah may need a short crash course in Cursive 101, a quick tutorial on the mysterious shapes known as capital “G’s,” looping “L’s,” and other cursive letters that perplex him.

If that doesn’t work, we may have to meet in the middle.

I’ll type more notes.

He’ll practice reading cursive.

And together we’ll prove that old-school ink and new-school keyboards can still tell the same story, even if one of us occasionally needs a translator.