How’s your penmanship?

[T-Bone]

How’s your penmanship? Mine sucks! But it hasn’t always been that way. Back in grammar school when we used fountain pens and ink blotters, I consistently received A-pluses in penmanship on my report card.

I changed all that - it was around 1968 – my high school freshman year. I could take two city buses or a city bus and an elevated train to school. I was reading one of those interior ads on a city bus. I don’t recall exactly what the ad was for – maybe some handwriting analysis service – I don’t know. But that was the inspiration for my ingenious scheme.

The great value of harnessing a goofy imagination is the importance of entertaining oneself. Since the freedom of information act, numerous files have been declassified about my double-life. On family road trips I was a secret agent in the backseat of my dad’s red and black Oldsmobile Super 88 – wearing my dad’s fedora and ‘smoking’ a pretzel rod on one side of my mouth. Yeah, I was cool – even back then. Several times we flew to Nova Scotia to see my grandpa – and when I say we flew – I’m including myself in the flight crew – since I could copilot the aircraft with the multipurpose device that some passengers used as a dinner tray. Alas - - we’ve gone too far in the way-back machine…recalibrating the space-time continuum to a 1968 city bus we're back to me viewing an ad about handwriting.

My scheme was not as diabolical as the Norman Bates character in the film Psycho  at the end of the movie Norman sits in a jail cell – aware of a fly landing on him – we hear his internal voice saying he’ll leave the fly alone – to convince others he wouldn’t even hurt a fly…There was something in the city bus handwriting ad about if you printed or wrote in cursive – it would reveal something about your personality. I decided to thwart anyone’s efforts to analyze me by adopting a combination print-cursive handwriting style.

It was hard to affect the style at first – like chewing gum and reading – but I stayed with it. Lay teachers and Brothers in high school were a lot more tolerant of oddball students who seem to have a penmanship problem. The downside was I might get a lower grade on something because they couldn’t translate the print-cursive-hieroglyphics of my essay…some teachers tried slow torture techniques (more agonizing on them than me) …instead of grammar school nuns making me write something over – some high school teachers would ask me to read my essay or book report to them. I feel bad about that now. Here they were – teachers who cared enough to find out what I was saying – and I enjoyed the extra attention and felt like I was getting away with something. Shame on me. I am truly sorry, all you teachers out there - past and present who really do care and love to teach.

 

In college I was a fine arts major – so hey – penmanship schmenmanship (autocorrect take that! )– have you ever been able to make out the signature of an artist? I rest my case.

 

When I got involved in security technology I felt I had to whip my handwriting into shape. Making technical notes for installation documentation or simply an end-user ‘manual’ – I forced myself to print neatly and became so anal about it I used a ruler or a makeshift straightedge to keep all the letters straight across – whether or not there were actually printed guidelines on the paper. This got to be a lot of work – if you consider doubling back on lower case letters like j, g, y that go below the bottom guideline. Rather than move my straightedge away when making a j or y I would only write the top portion – so my j looks like an i or my y looks like a v - until I’m done with the whole line of words – then I remove the straightedge and go back and add the lower part of the j or y…Sometimes I’d miss one which would yield weird instructions like “remove iumper 5” instead of “remove jumper 5”, or “vellow wire goes to terminal 25” instead of “yellow wire goes to terminal 25”. Fortunately, in later years with laptops and word processors common in the work place my whacked-out handwriting was put to rest.

 

But still – If there is some form I have to fill out by hand – say at a doctor’s office, I have to get a credit card or magazine to serve as a straightedge for my print-cursive ‘format’. Old habits are hard to break. Computers have me spoiled – with autocorrect and online dictionaries. I enjoy writing, and the hours will just fly by.

 

I got Penworks’ latest book  From the Porch to the Page: A Guidebook for the Writing Life | Charlene L. Edge (charleneedge.com), and she has a chapter that encourages one to write by hand instead of typing. So I started doing that with a few of my writing projects. It’s a fresh and stimulating experience. I’m going at it freehand (no straightedge ) and trying to keep it all cursive without cursing. I try not to get hung up on the correct spelling of a word – and sometimes don’t even bother correcting a mistake - the flow is exhilarating. Reminds me of driving a 1974 Ford Econoline Van 3-speed-manual at 90 mph on a country road – it feels like driving a boat. It’s difficult to control the quick movement of ideas. I’m thinking of the Forrest Gump Breaking Leg Braces  scene...I’m breaking out of confining habits – moving faster – though not as fast or graceful as Forrest Gump. 

 

~ ~ ~ ~

 

So, what’s your feelings about handwriting?

Do you like to write things down – or prefer to use a computer or some other device?

Edited February 16, 2023 by T-Bone
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[waysider]

I think there is more than one question to be addressed here. For the first question, I'll state that I prefer to write grocery lists and such things on a piece of paper. No particular reason. It's just what I'm used to.

The second question, it would appear, is whether printing or cursive is preferred. I can't write in cursive to save my life. Never could. I practiced and practiced to no avail. My hands are just kinda dumb like that. I think it's important to, at the very least, teach kids what cursive looks like and be able to recognize the stroke order/process. That way, when they encounter it in the wild, they'll be able to read it. I've seen a lot of people on-line bemoaning the demise of cursive instruction. Personally, beyond the basics, I think it's a waste of time that could be better spent teaching them the precious art of buggy whip making.

[GeorgeStGeorge]

My cursive isn't as good as it once was, but I still write quite legibly.  My printing is better; I use that almost exclusively when writing in lab books.

My understanding is that children for the last decade or two have not even been TAUGHT cursive.  If you ask them, "How do you sign checks?" they just stare blankly.    I believe, though, that cursive is making a comeback; and I think that's a good thing.  (Of course, I still have a flip phone and a cathode ray tube TV.)

George

[penguin2]

If I want to write something i don't want my youngest daughter to know, I write in cursive.  She might have had a couple of days of cursive  in elementary school. She can't write or read it.  I have to remember to print any important information.

[Twinky]

Really?  Kids can't read joined-up handwriting??????   So strange!

Kids in the UK are taught a handwriting style that has serifs, so that they quite easily and naturally start making joined-up words.

I know a few people who can only write in block capitals.  They seem unable to write in lower-case letters at all.  But that surely is much harder work?

 

I prefer to write script, joined up writing, and if circs permit, it's quite neat.  A little less neat now than it used to be, but I just got some glasses so I can see better.  I write less and use my laptop more. I just had a long holiday, journalled every day, and yes, it's all cursive.  80 pages of it, well, perhaps 70, a few blanks at the back, to write my later thoughts and reflections.

And yes, my shopping lists are cursive and on the back of random old envelopes, too.