My penmanship was awful...the nuns tried to fix that by knuckle cracks from the pointer. Just made things worse. Though my penmanship is leaps and bounds better than my engineer son (masters) who types everything and hates to have to sign anything.
The loss of penmanship is tragic. Over the 4th of July, I saw the original “Star Spangled Banner” words at the Maryland Historical Society. Even while watching a battle, his handwriting was gorgeous - a work of art, really.