Read a post about handwriting on Night Hawk’s blog. He mentions a post from a teacher bemoaning the fact that her students are less and less able to write or even read cursive handwriting. I have no idea how handwriting is taught in schools nowadays. Is it even taught? Or do kids get taught how to use a keyboard instead? I’m not surprised kids these days have difficulty reading cursive handwriting – it takes practice, but how much practice can you get when almost everything is typed these days?
I think M and I will have written hundreds, if not thousands, of emails to each other over the years. (We still do, most weekdays.) I’ve tried to save most of them and I still have the first emails M ever wrote me, including the one that really started off our relationship. If we’d met earlier, before email became so commonplace, would we have handwritten notes to each other instead?
Like Night Hawk, I too do make it a point to write as much as I can every day. This means that I have a paper diary, maintain a journal (apart from this blog! The paper journal is quite different in tone from the electronic one; I make no comment on the quality of the content, however!), and I am always writing notes during meetings and seminars. I try to write letters whenever I can, too. Writing during meetings has a dual function for me – it usually means I stay awake, because if I am going to note what people are discussing I have to pay attention. Night Hawk doesn’t mention the sort of pen he uses for his writing (probably a ballpoint pen of some sort?) – I always use a fountain pen, one from my collection.
Handwriting: Change by T. Chapman
Originally uploaded by CW.
My love for handwriting is sort of interfering with my use of the Tablet PC at the moment. I’d like to use the Tablet a lot more than I do, but whenever I go to meetings, my desire to hold a pen that has flowing ink often gets in the way and I succumb to pen and paper instead. The stylus pen and faux electronic ink just doesn’t grip me the way a smooth fountain pen feels on paper…
Categories: writing, handwriting, fountain pens
7 Comments
CW, your handwriting looks very neat, which incidentally was an unmentioned selection criteria I had to pass in order to get my job!
Does your handwriting change depending on what you are writing? At work the multitude of writing I have to do (writing titles and other information on motion picture film) is done entirely in uppercase, and it looks feathery and sometimes ‘masculine’, but in my (pen-driven) journal my writing is fast and furious, cursive and very untidy, like a doctors!
Hiya Anna, I have never heard of handwriting as a selction criteria!! How did they test it?
I don’t think my handwriting changes all that much when I use a fountain pen, but it is completely unpredictable if I use a ballpoint. I have less control over the pen, or something…
CW, they told me that after I’d finished the interview and left, they went to the front desk where I’d been signed into the building, and had a quick inspection of my handwriting (I had written my full name, address and reason for visiting). They offered me the job later that afternoon!
All I can say Anna is Hooray for handwriting! 😛
Apologies for the gender confusion! Thanks for pointing it out.
No worries, Warner 🙂
Thanks for reading! (Warner linked to this blog on his
blog.)
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