Posted on 08/12/2005 7:17:04 AM PDT by RosieCotton
I was homeschooled, and my Mom could have done the examples in the handwriting text books - she had near-perfect writing. Mine was lousy - I most definitely inherited my Dad's!
Just recently I decided I wanted to improve it. Silly in this day and age? Maybe. I picked up a textbook called Write Now and worked through it. It made a big difference. Also got me interested in going further and learning some calligraphy hands.
Anyone here old enough to remember "Zaner-Blowser" pens? The specially designed pens that went along with their series of elementary school penmanship books? I always got the lowest grades in penmanship and my handwriting stinks to this day.
Now that I think about it, she was a work of art too.
When I was in grade school -- 1950s -- we were supposed to write with a half dollar balanced on the back of our wrist. I never did learn to do this, although I could write well enough. Legible penmanship is still useful at times. But I think the real issue is that handwriting teaches fine motor skills, and I tend to believe that physical coordination and logical thinking are related.
I spend hours every day at the keyboard and it's hard to motivate myself to pick up a pen and hand-write letters at night. But people love getting hand-written thank-you notes, Christmas card notes, congratulations, etc. Elderly people cherish hand-written letters. They seem to mean something to older people that even a longer computer-generated letter doesn't. Maybe it's because handwriting shows personality so much more than the printed word. So I do try to hand-write some things and make them as handsome as possible.
Funny, my 12-year-old son who loves Playstation and computer games would rather hand-write homework and stories than type them.
I could've gotten into medical school just on the illegibility of my handwriting alone. I literally had a high-school composition teacher tell me that he was going to fail me--despite the fact that I was a good writer and an excellent speller--unless I learned to type, because my handwriting was so bad he couldn't read my papers.
By the end of that semester I was typing 55 wpm, and I got a B+ in the class.
I have to say, I do hate handwriting anything long because my writing is just so terrible. It's a skill that we do need to preserve and I wish I was better at it, but for now, I'll just hammer along on my keyboard at 90-100 wpm instead of chicken-scratching out a letter.
Besides, none of y'all on FR could appreciate my dubious wisdom and bad jokes if I had to handwrite it! :)
}:-)4
Pictures then?
Amen to that. I was 2 years ahead of my peers in school...being held back for poor handwriting would have put me back on track with the kids my age. But, I studied engineering in college, which forced me to adapt my handwriting...nowadays it's mostly a variation of All Caps, in different sizes, according to whether the letter is supposed to be upper- or lower-case.
"Cursive is for sissys anyway."
LOL! Real men write "engineering style". ;)
You should try reading admissions orders pages, ACK!
I get calls "The Dr. wrote an order for you" so I trot over and well, yeah....I see something, but I can't tell what he wants....
So I do what I THINK he wants, then I find out later it wasn't what he wrote. :0
Heh...my Dad's "only" a respiratory therapist, but I swear...the folks in his department are in competition with the doctors. His writing is bad enough, but once in awhile he'd bring home notes from two of the other guys that were...just amazing.
My daughter and her peers have atrocious handwriting, grammar, and spelling. They aren't stressed in school.
I remember getting dinged for my spelling in classes other than English. Now the other teachers don't care how terrible the grammar and spelling is; that's the English teacher's problem.
I used to have an 8X10 on which she had written on the back in her beautiful hand, "You have come to mean more to me than you will ever know".
When I got married I got rid of all pictures letters etc. Now that I think about it, I sort of wish I had kept them.
Thanks, CBS! I didn't realize that Americans were the only people who use handwriting as a means of expression.
Don't be so surprised, RC. There is so much to do during the school day, what with counting on condoms and so forth, one scarcely has time for cursive writing.
I agree, people no write good anymore.
I often look at older documents and I marvel at the beautiful calligraphy. But I can hardly make any sense out of it. For example, try reading the Declaration of Independence in it's original script. Or anything that George Washington or any other one of our Founding Father's wrote.
Personally, I'd rather have everything typed out so I can read it. Though I realize our historical documents wouldn't look quite so impressive if people like John Hancock used a typewriter instead of a quill.
I remember my mom (a teacher) would say that if she can't read my signature or writing no one could. I think to myself "can Mom read this?" everytime I sign my signature.
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