[Biblebelter]

Both sides of my family were very conservative.

Good handwriting was a matter of pride.

My grandparents were always interested in seeing my handwriting.

When I wrote thank you notes to my relatives for Xmas and birthdays my mother would always make sure that they were in my best handwriting.

I probably worked harder to get an A in handwriting than any other subject in elementary school.

At seventy-five, I still take pride in my handwriting.

[rlmorel]

I could never write cursive. Just couldn't. I didn't have the motor control at that crucial young age (using the thick round pencils and yellow pads with the alternating solid and dotted lines.

I got terrible grades in handwriting, and darn, I tried. Just couldn't do it.

Fortunately for me, my dad didn't ever write in cursive either, he developed a solid block print that was clean, clear, and readable, and when I was in third grade, I began trying to copy the way he wrote.

It is how I have always written, and still write to this day.

Funny story-when I was in the Navy back in the Seventies, I was advised by an older sailor: "If you don't write any letters, you won't get any letters."

I was homesick as hell, and every mail call on the ship was a time of high excitement. So I began to write letters to all my friends back home, and when there wasn't anything going on, no flight ops or we were in port and I wasn't working, I wrote letters. I could write ten letters at a sitting.

Flash forward 25 years, and I was into computers. I found a company that could make a font that looked like your handwriting. My solid block printing style was well suited, and the font (which I still use today) is nearly indistinguishable from my handwriting, with one specific exception:

The font makes the lines too straight. Here is a sample, one is the font, one is my real handwriting:

But I use it for any personal correspondence, cards and such. One of my retirement goals is to write more letters instead of email. (I make my own cards from my own photography) using pictures like this on the front of the cards:

I use the font for all my Christmas cards and such, because I have a hard time writing more than a sentence or two anyway.

I sent a Christmas Card to a gal I used to write lots of letters to when I was in the Navy, and when my wife and I had dinner with her a while back, she said after she got my card: "I forgot how neat and clean your handwriting always was! It looks the same today as it did back then!" (I did tell her it was a font!)

All that said: I absolutely admire people with quality cursive handwriting, and I envy the skill. Too late for me to learn now!

"Ain't nobody got time for that!" (I still laugh when I see that!)