Does this handwriting look readable to you? Because I would’ve barely understood a word if I didn’t know the context. And still I can barely read a half of it

"On the other hand, I met this poor bastard Gray boy - BEAU - and his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature I have seen down here. Suddenly, I’m marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Mrs Calhoun amused me. I don’t know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast." -from "Red Dead Redemption 2"

This is the most legible cursive I have ever seen. You probably just need to get used to reading it. This would be no problem to a native speaker/reader.

I can read it, but I wish you'd given us more pixels.

Hate to say it, but I could read it without a problem. The handwriting is very clear

I wish my own handwriting was as legible as that. It is not.

It is clearly readable.

I think it's a practise thing, OP. If you haven't ever read cursive before, then it will be difficult.

Yeah I can read most of it.

I would have struggled with "marching" without the context, but mostly pretty readable.

I can read it although I'm a bit confused about people going on about kids not learning cursive: handwriting being hard to read has always been a standard in general. In this case I don't think it's as clear as I would like. Moreover as we're in English Learning maybe the OP isn't a native speaker, which would definitely make it tougher.

If you're having trouble reading it, I suggest looking into learning Cursive. A lot of different stuff was written in cursive, like America's Declaration of Independence. Cursive is just another way to write English letters that people used more often when printers didn't exist.

I can read it, but it takes some effort lol

I can read it. But if english was not my first language i would absolutely struggle!

Not only is it legible, I would say it’s very clear cursive penmanship.

I find it very legible and have no difficulty reading it (and I’m normally someone that hates reading cursive and often finds it difficult.) Did you grow up using cursive in school?

Whut it’s the rare case when English cursive is readable

The handwriting is readable but it's actually not because you uploaded a 3 pixel wide fucking image. Too damn blurry to read. But to answer your question, yes, it's legible and believable enough that someone actually wrote this.

Pretty readable. I had to re-read "looks" a few times (on the 6th line down from the top), but overall it's ok. I understand how it would be difficult for a non-native english speaker/reader, and even for a native english speaker/reader without a history background (suffragettes were the political movement arguing for the right to vote to be extended to women), or unfamilar with relatively common with English names (Calhoun or Calhoun, it's one of those).

it's just cursive, legible enough

Honestly, the only thing that hinders readability here is the lack of pixels and I can still read it.

Better than my own handwriting.

perfectly legible. git gud

r/Unexpectedreddead

I can read some of the words 😜

I had trouble with “marching” but the rest no issues.

That is a very clear hand.

I can read the whole thing quite easily, yes.

Readable.

this makes me feel old for only writing in cursive

I had no problem reading it.

Entirely readable

I can read it although the low resolution means I have to squint a bit harder.

The handwriting is pretty clear, but the picture is a bit out of focus

This is lovely handwriting. It’s perfectly legible.

You, sir, are a fish.

It's a little hard to read but I can still scan it pretty easily. However I definitely had to learn how to read cursive script as I grew up even as a native.

Yep, easily.

I can read it, but it takes effort and there's one word I'm not sure about. I would imagine that despite all these people saying they can read it effortlessly, a fair number of native English speakers would have to concentrate to make it out.

Yes, it's perfectly legible.

It’s entirely readable to me.

I think the font is readable but the image is blurry which makes it a bit harder.

Native speaker here. Yeah, it's pretty easy to read. Cursive can cause problems, but this is neat and legible. I'm quite jealous. My own handwriting is dreadful.

That's quite cute handwriting. I don't have any trouble reading it.

The writing is totally legible. The diction is old timey but that’s it.

Yes, I can read it, no problems.

Image is blurry, but completely readable. My handwriting is terrible in comparison, but my great-grandma used to write me letters and cards frequently, so I have no problem reading standard cursive.

Great work bro I appreciate you you keep it up.

I assume any one of us older than 30 learnt how to write in cursive at school, so should be able to read this even if we don't write like that anymore. Otherwise reading cursive handwriting is a skill and can be practiced. I've been reading a lot of old family letters from more than 150 years ago, and along with writing in cursive they all had terrible spelling and grammar. That stuff was hard to read at first.

Very legible

I could read all of it, but I certainly struggled on some words.

I can read it, though it's not the clearest handwriting, so it's a little slower than I'd read print or very clean script.

Yes, very readable.

Curious why you're asking, because to anyone who reads cursive, it's beautifully clear.

I can read cursive fine, but the resolution of the image made it a bit difficult

no effort.

With a lot of effort i can make it out. The image being kinda blurry doesn't help.

yes, but i'm also old enough that they still made me learn cursive in school

Entirely readable.

Totally readable to me.

Between the blurry image and the cursive, it definitely took me a minute to read it all, and there are still a few words that I’m not totally sure about. I had to learn cursive as a kid, but I haven’t used it myself since probably junior high school, and I’m also very out-of-practice when it comes to reading it.

This is a specifically American style of cursive, so may be harder to read for those unfamiliar with the shapes.

It's standard handwriting.

Yes. Are you familiar with cursive writing? It's not really taught as much anymore so I know younger folks might struggle with it. But for the most part, anyone over the age of like... 25 probably learned to write cursive in school (at least in the US). I stumbled a bit over "suffragette" cause it looked like it was split into two words at first. But beyond that everything was perfectly readable.

I can read it. But some native speakers have trouble reading handwriting. We see it pretty rarely in everyday life compared to print writing so a lot of the younger generation never learns it at all.

Could you have sent it in a lower res?

its legible, but for the future you can hit the square button and the game will show the same passage in print

A lot of the capital letters are wack, but still legible.

It looks so close to my handwriting that I feel it necessary to state that I did not write that. The S is a bit elaborate but the other capitals are formed very similarly to mine.

Easily readable.

It’s cursive

As a native speaker who learned to read and write like this 40 years ago, I only stumbled on 2-3 words.

I'm one of the last classes that did mandatory cursive writing and reading at a young age. This is legible to me. However, if you're newer to cursive or were just never taught, I can understand why it is confusing

I have written in cursive since I was 13 and I would say I can read most of this and if it was a cleaner screenshot, I could read all of it

I find it easy to read, even with the blurry photo

As an English teacher and A-Level examiner I find it legible - and very neat!

This is very much readable without context though I admit I would prefer to see it in person rather than a phone screen. The letters seemed fairly distinct to me, but cursive is not nearly as commonly seen as it used to be.

Yeah, but cursive is hard, and you’ll probably find a lot of younger English speakers probably can’t read it. They took teaching it out of US schools a while back.

Seems very readable to me. If I question a word, immediate context sets me straight.

Yes, I learned to write cursive in the 1980s and they style used in this picture is very similar to the style I learned, so it's easy to read. I suspect my kids would have trouble reading it.

It's very legible, but I also grew up in a time when cursive is still taught and I study Old English and read old manuscripts like Beowulf where some of the letters look barely different from one another. I think the Millenials were the first generation that weren't taught cursive, though the older ones were, so if you weren't born in the early to mid 90s it's not uncommon to not be able to easily read it.

I can read it fine. It’s very neat. But I learnt cursive, and still write in cursive. A lot of the lettering style is not commonly used anymore, even in “modern cursive” (joined up writing, as some schools call it). So if you’re not used to seeing letters printed like that I can see how you wouldn’t recognise the f’s and I’s. Some people get a bit weird about handwriting as a lost skill. But it’s a bit moral panicky to me. It’s still important for kids to learn how to write legibly and efficiently but doesn’t really matter if the style changes. A lot of older people can’t type fast, but younger people can. Different skills for different times.

Perfectly readable.

It is completely readable.

Are you just asking to see if native readers can read it out of curiosity? Bc you can hit "read", looks like square, and it will write it out in a legible font for you in the game. But yes, most people over 25 were taught cursive in school idk if it's as common now.

Yes.

Yep, it’s cursive. It’s neat and perfectly legible.

native speaker. i can read it with some effort. im also gen z.

Easily readable if you're used to that style of writing. 

Very readable to me. I also still write cursive! (I'm in my late 30s.)

It is very legible neat handwriting if you can read cursive.

I can read every word. Melt down due - that kids can't read cursive anymore.

Not the worst I've seen but as you get more context it's pretty understandable.

I can read half of it, I learned cursive back in 1st or 2nd grade like 20 years ago

I can read it, but I have to go word-by-word, since I probably see cursive longer than a one-word logo about once a year (24, for reference, can write in cursive without thinking)

I can read cursive at about 0.2 speed. I don't really read it, I decipher it. I fucking hate cursive.

This fully readable. This all seemed to be very consistent d’nealian cursive to me. This is the cursive I was taught in school in the 90’s.

It’s not difficult for me to read this, but I’m a native speaker and this looks like my grandma’s writing

Yeah totally readable and i’m 20

I’m not a native English speaker but this is easy to read. Arthur doesn’t have a bad handwriting.

100% legible to me. Did you learn to write/read cursive?

I can read that perfectly.

Completely legible, although I had to reread a couple words due to resolution.

It's quite legible If you can read cursive

The only thing that makes it slightly less legible is the fuzzy quality of this picture, not sure if this is what it looks like in-game or if this is just the result of the screenshot. My cursive is pretty similar to this, and this is quite clean compared to most people's cursive handwriting. I think anyone who knows cursive would be able to read this easily. Cursive and print are basically different alphabets so it's just something you have to learn if you want to read it. It's not a very useful skill in the modern day but if you ever intend to write a lot by hand, it can be easier to write in cursive than print because you won't need to lift your pen from the paper as often and the letters flow together. "and his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly, I'm marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Ms Calhoun amused me. I don't know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast."

In France we still learn with the cursive alphabet, so easy reading 😅😉

Yes, that is totally, perfectly, readable; it's very easy to read.

My handwriting looks like this Never be afraid to learn. Cursive is important to many languages and political bodies' founding documents.

i can read it all just fine

This is completely legible provided you know cursive and are familiar with the words being used.

Yes, it is very clear

Completely understandable. And I am not even native. If you want to see a really bad cursive, check out German Sütterlin.

I'm reading this from cellphone. Didn't go fullscreen and understood most of it

I can read it, but then again I'm old compared to most Redditors.

Seems to be pretty legible cursive to me. The image is kind of blurry, but that seems to be an issue with the screenshot, not the writing.

Yes. Easily read, but I’m 50+ yo and frequently read handwritten historical letters and documents for school and work.

Yeah, that's not half bad penmanship. Especially for something like a journal/diary that's not really meant to be ready by others, it's quite legible. Cursive script isn't taught that much anymore, though.

100% readable to me.

It's readable. A lot slower to read than print, though.

Slightly annoying that it's cursive, but it's perfectly legible. Despite what the boomers say, cursive is antiquated and pointless if you're writing to anyone besides yourself.

It is readable... but I'm from US and they taught us cursive writing to a pretty high degree when I was in middle school... When I try to learn foreign languages, particularly reading the writing... different fonts and writing styles can really throw me off I can see why this would be a problem for someone learning ESL

Such a beautiful handwriting! I wish I could write like that.

Definitely readable even if some of the individual letters are questionable, though the resolution is a bit low so it's iffy.

That's very readable for cursive. Also this is unrelated, but some of the characters in that game speak with poor grammar, so be aware of that.

Just don't lean on her, man, because you can't afford the ticket!

It is not easily skim readable in the way print writing is, but once I'd glanced over a couple of words to attune to the style it's pretty straightforward.

If this helps, english is my first language and no, it's not completely readable to me. Although I never learned cursive properly. I've played rdr2 aswell and I could never understand what it said inside of it

The top section has too much compression and not enough contrast to read 100%. But that's a function of the image and not the handwriting. The rest is readable no problem. >and his forbidden love - MISS Penetope - \[quiter?\] the most alive creatures we have met down here. >Suddenly, I'm \[marching?\] as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Mrs \[Calhonas?\] amused me. I don't know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. >World is certainly changing fast.

Yes, it is neat and is very legible.

Some parts are hard but I can read it

This is very legible and neat handwriting haha

yall got any pixels

Yep! Totally readable.

There are a few words I had difficulty with but all in all it's very readable.

100% legible and not very difficult for me. I did struggle in a couple places but that was mostly because of the grainy screenshot, not the handwriting itself.

Not only legible, but pretty. A few letters are slightly off, but otherwise this looks like it could be a model for cursive, if the language wasn't higher level than when kids learned cursive (2nd/3rd grade where I grew up)

Bit blurry to me, but if the picture was a bit better - easily

It’s very readable to me… but I know Red Dead Redemption II’s story better than my family history. If you’re not an English speaker or struggle to read cursive I can see how this would be hard to understand.

I wish I could draw pictures as beautiful as Arthur Morgan

Perfectly legible

Yes, but I could see it being a problem if you’ve never learned cursive. There are plenty of examples of young people posting pictures of their great granny’s recipe that’s written in cursive asking people to help decode it. I (31) learned cursive in elementary school and then haven’t used it since. I’m not sure if they even teach it anymore. When I took the GRE (graduate school entrance test) they made me write a paragraph in cursive swearing that I wouldn’t cheat - that was harder than the actual test!

Shi pretty asf

i can read like 9/10 of it, it's readable

100% legible

OP, what's your native language? This is completely legible to me, other than the image resolution making it tricky towards the top of the page. It looks like very neat, clear, but pretty normal handwriting to me and not a million miles away from the way I write. It does have a slightly "old fashioned", "fussy" feel to it, due to the extra flicks and loops on some of the initial capitals, but otherwise it's pretty unremarkable. Context: I'm from the UK and in my early 30s. I find the whole American movement against "cursive" really odd - surely you're not all taking the pen off the page for each individual letter? And surely even if kids aren't taught to produce writing like that themselves in school any more, they're still seeing notes and birthday cards and things from their parents and grandparents and are used to reading those? I also feel like when Americans discuss cursive they talk about it as this really elaborate, formulaic script which has very strict rules for beginning and ending letters etc. From my memory of school in the UK in the '90s and '00s, we were taught a standardised method to start with (just because that's easier to teach to a big class of kids), but once you were past the actual "learning to form letters" stage, nobody really cared as long as it was legible. I ended up developing a style that was as much based on my parents, grandparents, teachers, etc., plus laziness in not wanting to lift my arm up, as anything we were formally taught. But the expectation was definitely that you join your letters together - printing here is associated with very young children or people who struggle with literacy. (I'll maybe write a very brief note in all caps if it's absolutely crucial that it stands out and there's no room for misinterpretation.)

Absolutely readable to me, but yes, world is certainly changing fast.

just press the "read" button and have it displayed in a computer font :P I consider myself bad at reading handwriting, but I can make out about 90% of the words here. That being said, it's not modern formal English

and his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly, I'm marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Mrs Calhoun amused me. I don't know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast.

For anyone that needs a transliteration, the text reads: "and his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly I'm marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Mrs Calhoun amused me. I don't know much about good causes nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast."

Very nice legible cursive.

That’s a beautiful cursive. And yes, it’s totally readable.

if you learned and can read english cursive, then this is essentially just a below average/ messy handwriting, although still almost entirely legible the only thing that consistently confuses me is his e’s vs his o’s because sometimes he makes them both just a tiny loop, making them resemble each other and many other letters. for example in the last word of the 6th line “looks”, the 2 o’s are written quite differently making it almost look like lorks or loiks. but from context you can easily understand what it should say as a native english speaker. these sorts of problems are cursive exclusive and poor handwriting is just as common in print r/handwriting for more cursive practice and exposure if you want that

i’m my first play though i always would press x to read the transcript, but i wanted to be more immersed so actually used arthur’s journal as an opportunity to learn to read cursive (as a 19 year old). i can now read any cursive comfortably and am working on writing in cursive too. red dead 2 gave me a whole new skill/ hobby

Yeah, easy. Red dead?

It's better than my handwriting.

I can read it well enough, I think.

Readable to me.

I think some of the commenters here have not noticed what sub this is.

I'm terrible at reading cursive (or so I thought). This is easy to read

It's maybe a little sloppy, but perfectly readable to me.

Readable

Totally legible (a better word than “readable”).

After "suddenly, I'm" I can't read that word, but it looks scuffed or blurred to me. I can read the rest of it though. I think it is alright handwriting.

If you can read cursive, then yes it’s readable. In fact it’s about as good as you can get. But to someone who doesn’t know how to read cursive, it’s gonna be hard to read cursive writing. Many letters look the same as standard print, but many don’t

Yes entirely readable

Some people’s cursive is baffling, but this cursive is fine. However, the image quality makes it difficult to read.

This handwriting is very clear and legible. Letters are consistent and readable. Very nice style too.

Cursive and English are basically 2 different languages

I can’t actually read cursive. Learned it in school but I just guess I forgot because outside a few months in the third grade I’ve never used it

It's readable to me. Also the game does have an option to read it in text format. Just click the box thingy. (I've never used a console)

I learned cursive and I can read all those words. I've turned in hand-written essays that look pretty much like this.

I had no trouble reading it. It’s pretty standard cursive handwriting “ his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly I’m marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader, a Mrs Calhoun, amused me. I don’t know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is changing fast.”

it’s legible

Yes, it’s very readable with a lovely artistic flow.

Hello, cursive! I see you’re becoming a secret code.

Not only readable but also decent. Most europeans I met still write like this.

Mandarin is my second language. I started studying with a private tutor when I was ten, and kept learning until I was 18 and then about four and half years in China. One of those years was spent studying Chinese full time at a university. I could read a fair amount of Chinese, but couldn't decipher any handwritten Chinese unless someone wrote with great precision specifically for me.

If your not a native English speaker, and you learned English solely in its print form it’s going to be hard to read.

Yeah, I can read it. Hope you're enjoying Red Dead!

It looks like the cursive script I was taught.

Readable, perhaps a little hard a few places but no biggie.

Image is pretty low quality, I might not be able to judge since I don’t do well with handwriting esp cursive

Really legible, the lighting makes the top a bit harder to read, but still doable

Totally readable to me, and I'm not even a native speaker.

I've got no trouble reading it, it actually kinda looks like my handwriting, Then again, my manager has complained about my notes before

Dyslexic English only speaker to me, I can't make out a word

It's completely legible.

Super readable despite terrible picture quality.

its just cursive

OMG! Things used to be different!

it's readable, but not easy

I can read %90 of it.

it’s easy to read for me. however, if you notice in the bottom right, there is a “read” option if you press square. most games will have this for hand written things, if you press that, it should switch to Printed text to be more legible for you.

It is completely readable for me, except for parts in which the focus of the image isn't that good. But the handwriting is gorgeous

This is beautiful!

I will try to type the most of it that I can read, the image is a bit low resolution but I think I can get most of them right. "and his forbidden love, MISS PENELOPE- quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly, I'm mending(?) as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leaders - a Mrs Palhoun(?) amused me. I don't know much about good causes, not the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast."

Foreign speaker here - i can read it. though the quality of the pic does not do the handwriting any service. I think whether you can read it or not is entirely dependant on your knowledge and exposure to cursive. Where i live, cursive is taught as a default, from the age of 4 or so

No problem at all....easier than an awful lot of writing I had to decipher. "And his forbidden love -- Miss Penelope -- quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly, I'm marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader -- a Mrs. Calhoun amused me. I don't know much about good causes, more the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing \_fast\_."

Perfectly readable. It's close to my own handwriting.

Absolutely readable. It's just cursive. So sad how young people can't even read it anymore. btw, I'm in my 30s

I didn't have any difficulty reading it.

It's wholly readable?

Absolutely legible - rather a nice hand, in fact.

Yes, it's very legible. It's not *aesthetically* good handwriting, but each letter is distinct. You just need to get used to the script.

Not bad. Just cursive, legible though!

I think it helps when you are familiar with English words, so that you can pick them out from shape despite the letter forms being used, as well as when you have some experience seeing those specific letter forms. It might be daunting to a learner seeing the letter "s" written as "ↄ", "*𝓈"*, "ʃ", or "ﻣ", if they're not familiar with how different letters can be drawn in different ways. Similarly, the word "I" written in cursive, as in the example image, might be taken as a "J" if the reader does not know that "J" is not a word by itself. All in all, the solution to this is simply practice. In no time, even the strangest handwritings may become legible.

Yes. It has a style that’s a little older

Completely legible. Very nice handwriting actually

It’s very readable. Nice handwriting

Seems like pretty standard script, not even fancy

Yes I can read it, it's fine... Then again, I learnt cursive at school and the old german script for fun to read the old Karl May books my granddad had...(Switzerland, at school in the late 90ies to 2013)

Very readable

Perfectly legible No real need for cursive nowadays

Perfectly

Fully readable.

It's readable. It's somewhat difficult, but i expect that's mostly the low quality image blurring it a bit

Its called cursive, where instead of lifting your pen off the paper between each letter like print, you use a different set of letters designed to flow into eachother so each word is written without lifting your pen. Cursive had fallen out of fashion and is no longer mandatory at most schools, so a lot of young people (myself included) struggle to read it. Otherwise that is incredibly neat and clean handwriting.

Perfectly legible to me. Handwriting is actually better than my own!

It's pretty legible to me, though I suspect, being a video game, they did their best to make it the most standard legible variety of cursive possible. Actually Existing Cursive with all sorts of shortcuts or variations or simply bad handwriting that I'm sure wasn't as big of a problem when people were more used to reading cursive, though is basically chicken scratch to me.

Yes, but I’m old enough that I learned to read cursive before I was even doing much writing myself. My parents and grandparents and all their acquaintances wrote lots of notes and letters in cursive. And with long distance phone calls being expensive, people wrote letters frequently. It’s entirely understandable that this would fall out of use, we all prefer calling loved ones or texting in real time.

Very readable to me, but I'm old enough that cursive played a good part in my schooling. My kids each had 1 year of script in 2nd grade, and I'm not positive either could read it (both high school grads now).

Definitely legible.

Absolutely legible. Do you not understand cursive styles?

it's just cursive which can be really hard to read if you're not a native speaker, or never learned it says this: "and his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly, I'm marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Mrs. Calhouen amused me. I don't know much about good causes, nor the joys of democracy, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast. "

It's very easy to read if you're familiar with or write in cursive. Which is something that isn't uncommon for native speakers to struggle with, so if you weren't taught it as a child it's understandable that it could be difficult to read.

"and his forbidden love - MISS PENELOPE - quite the most alive creature we have met down here. Suddenly, I'm marching as a suffragette. The looks of loathing on the faces of the locals delighted me while their leader - a Mrs Calhoun amused me. I don't know much about good causes, but I enjoyed my little experience riding alongside them. World is certainly changing fast." I was taught cursive when I was a child in school, back in the '90s, but I don't know if it's common in education anymore. I know a lot of young people around where I live who probably couldn't read this. It reminds me of when I see Japanese hiragana and katakana written in their cursive, and while I can read it in plain text like in a book or online, I have a significantly harder time reading it if it's written decoratively, like on a banner.

I had trouble with "marching" until I read "as a suffragette"

No problem and nice cursive, too - better than mine, which, to the dismay of my students who have my red-inked writing all over their papers, I often cannot read!

Totally legible