It seems the correct English term for what I meant is “cursive” rather than “longhand”, but I can’t change the poll anymore.
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I’ve heard it called both, though I did need to rely on the contrast with block print to confirm what was meant by “longhand”
I generally use cursive, but I use print for certain cases, such as writing pseudocode (but not comments, those are cursive, after the print # or //), or an email,
or password
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I use block letters for filling out a form only.
I found strange your observation, I was thinking that most still write the cursive way.
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My children are learning cursive in school
@gennan, is your poll meant to see how people typically write in their day-to-day life, or what style they were trained to write in school? In day-to-day life, I write a sloppy “print” or “block letters” style, but I often blend some letters together. However, in school, we were trained to write cursive, and even required to do so in many assignments.
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I meant writing in day-to-day life, as I assumed that most still learn cursive in school.
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I learnt cursive at school, at some point I used block letters, then I came back to cursive because it’s faster, except for math letters like b, p, r, s. But I kept writing math letters 𝒻, 𝓁, 𝓍.
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I print single letter math variables, but use cursive for things like log or sin
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It seems that “longhand” is correct also:
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I voted “Born before 1960, longhand” but it actually depends on what and where I am writing.
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We were taught block letters, however at some point - literally overnight - some of my letters ( π, λ, μ, δ, ρ, σ/ς, some instances of α, etc ) turned to cursive. I have no clue how that happened, but when I write normally it is a combination of those. I have to pause at every letter to complete writing a word with only box letters. I find that “evolution” very weird, because I did nothing to make it happen…
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It would be nosense to me to give up the cursive writing because the goal is still legitimate: write with more ease and velocity.
Anecdotally Chinese has their cursive way to write too, which I didn’t know before going there. But looked a bit less standardized. But anyway when I asked anything written on a piece of paper, it was written with this cursive way, and… indecipherable for me!
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It takes extra effort to write in a formal way (工整字), and if someone didn’t practice from a young age, they tend to be even more difficult to read. There is a reason why calligraphy (書 literally means the way to write) is one of the four Chinese classical arts.
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I thought I used block letters, but after writing something out I’ve realised that I do some bastardised combination of both.
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Poll context
I went to train on my own at basketball today and at the school grounds there was a kid playing there that was almost exactly my height and weight, so instead of just mucking around on my own we went 1vs1 for around 90 minutes.
The kid was more talented and skilled in most areas of the game than I was (dribbling, shooting, pivoting, driving), but it was plagued by the effects of the “new style of basketball” which is very sketchy on defense (playing defense or facing defense) and overly relying on the opponent getting taken in by those excessive dribbles.
On the other hand, I am “old dog” with a severe lack of skills and talent in basketball, but by using the simple fundamentals of the “old style of basketball” (basic moves without risky dribbles, simple shots, focus on defense and rebounding) I was able to easily win all the games by a wide margin against a better and younger opponent.
This got me thinking and while I was showering my mind ventured towards a Go parallel for that.
Is it possible that the two main styles of playing, territorial and influence, are a bit like the “old basketball and the new basketball styles” where the territorial style is simplier, more rugged and more easily applied and defended, while the influence style is more flamboyant and requires good knowledge of attack, defense, tesuji, life and death, reductions and invasions? 
So, two questions:
a) Which of the following you believe is more accurate:
- The territorial style is more simple to learn and play with.
- The influence style is more simple to learn and play with.
- It is just a matter of personal choice and both styles are equally simple/difficult depending on the player’s propensity.
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voters
and,
b) Given two players with equal knowledge and skill on the game, would you say that the player that chooses to focus on playing with the territory style is more likely to win or, at least, have an easier path to victory?
- Yes.
- No.
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voters
How does one define or distinguish “territorial style” vs “influence style”? Are there potentially other styles than just these two?
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Hard to answer, it may depend on the level of the player. A beginner doesn’t understand the concept of influence, so being territorial makes most sense. But as you improve, you learn to appreciate influence. But then you still have to think about territory, because in the end you need to have more points than your opponent.
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I think you need to be clearer on what this means. One definition, the one I assume, is that these two players have equal rank. By definition, the answer to the question “who is more likely to win?” is “neither”.
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There are quite a few styles, apparently:
…and some players are listed as “influence style” players. To be honest I always assumed that those two terms were quite standard (even if not formally defined), but I never checked it out.
The territory oriented style has its own link:
The influence style does not have its own page, so I guess we can extrapolate from those two that it is a style of building moyos and trying to defend them or build walls and attack the opponent or win more points the center (like the cosmic style).
If you read the poll context you will notice that this is exactly what brought about my question.
If you were to rank me and that kid, I’d be lower ranked on most objective metrics of that game.
If you were to turn us into “gaming cards” in some “basketball simulator” and just say “player A vs player B” are going 1vs1, the odds would have been stacked against me, but in reality I won all the games because of my different style of play.
Let’s face it, I didn’t somehow become younger, faster and better by some miracle, for 90 minutes. 
It is just that the new style of basketball that kid was trying to play, requires a significantly higher margin of skill, ability and talent to overcome a player of the old style of basketball, thus my question is whether this might be true for those two Go styles, as well.
Whether the more simple approach of gaining solid territory early with simple joseki and solid moves, getting ahead early and then forcing the opponent to fight it out in order to get back close in points actually gives those players an advantage against similarly skilled players that try to play a “harder to apply” style.
Therefore, if you want an example, would I be less likely to win against another player in my rank if I tried to play “influence style” or would I have to play against players 2-3 ranks below me to successfully apply the influence style which is more complex and requires more skill and attention to pull off?
Unlike basketball, in which I almost definitively know the answer to that issue, in the case of Go I am not sure about this at all, which is why I am asking for more opinons. 
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Missed this the first time around
I think my question still stands in the context of Go. What objective metrics would you use to measure go players? For me, the answer is simple: rank.
Based on this, i guess we agree rank is the objective metric. In which case, I think the answer is “it doesn’t matter which style you play, as long as it’s the one you’re comfortable with”
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I know too little to answer this. But I always thought that the former is about making base first, and the latter orients toward the centre quickly.
Usually, whenever I saw texts about “territorial” and “influence” style, I also saw “flexible” as a third option.