The Aug. 6 Sun Journal editorial continued an ongoing discussion of cursive handwriting, “New ways to write right, but not in cursive.” A lot of people have been making noise about the death of cursive handwriting. They don’t want cursive to die.

Handwriting matters, but does cursive matter?

Research by Steve Graham, Virginia Berninger and Naomi Weintraub in “The Relation between Handwriting Style and Speed and Legibility,” in the Journal of Educational Research, shows that the fastest and most legible handwriters join only some letters, not all of them; making the easiest joins, skipping the rest, and using print-like shapes for those letters whose cursive and printed shapes disagree.

Reading cursive matters vitally — but even children can be taught to read writing that they are not taught to produce. Reading cursive handwriting takes just 30 to 60 minutes to learn — much less time than to learn how to write the same way.

Reading cursive can be taught to five- or six-year-olds, as soon as they have learned to read. The value of reading cursive is therefore no justification for writing in cursive. Why not teach children to read cursive handwriting, along with teaching other vital skills — such as a handwriting style that is actually typical of effective handwriters?

Adults increasingly abandon cursive. In 2012, handwriting teachers were surveyed at a conference hosted by Zaner-Bloser, a publisher of cursive textbooks. Only 37 percent wrote in cursive; another 8 percent printed. The majority, 55 percent, wrote a hybrid: some elements resembling print-writing, others resembling cursive.

When most handwriting teachers shun cursive, why mandate it?

Cursive’s cheerleaders (including those who have quietly stopped writing in cursive themselves) sometimes allege that cursive handwriting makes people intelligent, makes them graceful, or confers other blessings no more prevalent among the exalters of cursive than among the rest of the human race.

When asked to consider acting on what we know about the actual (and non-cursive) handwriting habits of highly effective handwriters, they regard such considerations as blasphemy — as if the users of cursive worshipped that style, or as if they supposed that cursive had magic powers not granted by any other form of handwriting.

Some exalters of cursive claim that their beliefs are supported by scientific research. When they make such claims, rarely do they provide citations or other verifiable sources. So far, whenever a supporter of cursive invokes research, the following becomes evident on examination of the claimed support:

— Either the claim made (of research support for cursive above other handwriting styles) provides no traceable source; or

— If a source is cited, it is misquoted or is incorrectly described; or

— The claimant quotes/cites a source which itself indulges in either of those.

(I leave it to the misquoters and their disciples to ponder why the misquoting is done, and why it is ever uncritically accepted.)

What about signatures? Is cursive needed there?

Questioned document examiners (specialists in the identification of signatures, the verification of documents, etc.) inform me that the least forgeable signatures are the plainest. Most cursive signatures are loose scrawls. The rest, if they follow the rules of cursive at all, are fairly complicated: these make a forger’s life easy.

The individuality of print-style (or other non-cursive style) writings is shown by this: six months into the school year, any first-grade teacher can immediately identify (from the writing on an unsigned assignment) which of her 25 or 30 students wrote it.

Consider, too that whatever you may have heard from their schoolteachers, cursive signatures have no special legal validity over signatures written in any other way. (I could quote legal sources — and lawyers — but that would take more room than a guest column permits. So don’t take my word: ask any attorney.)

Mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring.

Kate Gladstone is the founder of Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works and the director of the World Handwriting Contest in Albany, N.Y.