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!)
Hahaha, I’m a little slow tonight, and just realized as soon as I posted, that by using that sentence “The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Brown Dog!” I was providing the world with the exact letters they would need to replicate my handwriting perfectly!
My forehead still hurts from where I just smacked it!
I had to edit the image to remove it and wrote “Ooops!” instead...
Your struggles with handwriting made me think back to my own struggles.
I was pretty much a reader when I entered the first grade which in the rural school that I attended put me way ahead of everyone else.
But although I could read, I couldn’t tie my shoes as I had issues with left and right.
Back in the day, parents didn’t want their kids to be left-handed.
Later in life I jokingly accused my parents without evidence of slapping my hand when I did things as a toddler with my left hand.
Even today I write with my right hand and I use my left hand for a computer mouse.
My hand eye was very good to write although I wasn’t fully writing cursive in the first grade as I remember I could sign my name in cursive.
But when recess in the gym came around I couldn’t tie my shoes even in the second grade.
I’m sure the other kids made fun of me behind my back but not to my face.
I was one of the biggest kids in my class and such a confrontation might have caused them some pain as kids in those days routinely exchanged pushes, shoves, and punches.
It was a good and humbling lesson learned early.
I never felt “superior” because I could read and I never felt “stupid” because I couldn’t tie my shoes.
I learned early on that everyone has a different set of strengths and weaknesses.
For the record sometime in the second grade I kinda figured out how to tie my shoes.
It takes longer and the process looks awkward, but when I’m through my tied shoes look like everybody else’s.
I still tie my shoes every morning the same way.