<p>So that thread in College Life reminded me about that part on the SAT where you have to write down the statement about not talking about the test and all that jazz in cursive. I remember each time I took the SAT, a few students asked if they really had to do it in cursive, what the cursive form for some letter was, etc.</p>
<p>I'm sitting here wondering why it has to be in cursive. Anybody have any idea?</p>
<p>Haha, I have no idea why. But I did like, undercase i’s. Soo improper!</p>
<p>^I just write half the thing, scribble the rest and then sign it lol</p>
<p>some people in our room wrote in print and connected the letters to make it look like cursive.</p>
<p>The idea is that the use of cursive makes it easier to verify that it was in fact you who took the test. (In the unlikely case that there is any question about that.)</p>
<p>Yeah they use it for handwriting verification. Print is more easily duplicated.</p>
<p>Though they make everyone do this, they don’t really look at most peoples. Just one or two cases pop up every so often where someone’s test results look suspicious (they happened to go from a 1400 to a 2360) and they might suspect someone else had taken their test for them (yes, I am using “they” as singular, third person, gender-non specific pronoun).</p>
<p>I know right!
And you only get like 2 minutes to write it; I need a good 10 to write the whole thing. For me, the first 6 words are in cursive and then it’s slanted print. :]</p>
<p>Did you know … The “honesty statement” on the SAT and similar exams) — the one where you swear you didn’t cheat — doesn’t actually state “Use cursive”: it just says “Do not print.” And there are a LOT of handwriting styles other than cursive or printing …</p>
<p>I asked the exam’s administrators, not long ago, if they graded that statement, and what happened if you used some non-printing style that wasn’t cursive either. They told me: “Nothing. It isn’t graded or anything: it’s just so that we have a handwriting sample to check against other samples of your handwriting if we ever think you cheated by sending in someone else to take the test with your ID.” </p>
<p>So then I asked: “Then what happens if a perfectly honest student — one of the majority whose writing is actually printing with a few joins where they help the speed — writes the whole thing in cursive because s/he read those instructions saying ‘Do not print’?”</p>
<p>"Ahhh … " — said the public information rep — "if we then had to check that student’s exam for any reason, that student <em>would</em> be in trouble because the writing done in the exam room wouldn’t match the handwriting that the same student used everywhere else. ‘Do not print’ doesn’t mean Use cursive,’ it means “Do not print’! As long as your writing joins a few letters anywhere, it isn’t printing and you have followed instructions — and we can still tell it’s your writing,if we need to.”</p>
<p>Lol…yeah, I remember writing in cursive and then sitting and waiting for another ten minutes until everyone in the room was done.</p>