I know exactly why my handwriting sucks…when I was in kindergarten, I was forced to “become” right handed. I had always had left handed tendencies, and I was forced to stop trying to color/write that way, and stop using left handed scissors. My sisters have beautiful handwriting, as does my mom. My writing? Barely legible. I also cannot draw a straight line to save my life. Or cut straight. Interesting…does anyone else remember schools “changing” handedness? Very strange, but true.
An optimist sees an opportunity in every calamity; A pessimist sees a calamity in every opportunity.
I had forgotten this salient question from the OP. Based on the impeccable source of my 83 year old mother, the quality of handwriting is based on how long a kid crawls around as an infant and toddler. I walked at none months, rarely crawled after that, and have readable, but truly ugly handwriting. My mom frequently quoted some study she apparently saw in the early fifties that linked the duration of crawling with the quality of hand-eye coordination and handwriting. (I have never seen any similar study.)
As my husband and I were paying for a meal at the cash register, the cashier asked if we knew how to “write” a capital Q in cursive. Neither one of us could remember how.
here’s my 25 cents (i’m more expensive)
alot of times when i am in a hurry, i use caps and lower-case interchangably (so it looks like ElEeT-0 HaX0r text) not intentionaly, but i guess i’m more used to writing certin letters in caps.
I started drafting classes in 8th or 9th grade and I’ve been printing since. All capitals and very neat and legible. My cursive is appalling, along the lines of a fourth grader, at best. I’ve worked with some very smart people whos’ writing even they couldn’t decipher. Ever see a doctors’ writing on a prescription?
A southpaw in a Catholic school, say no more. Later, I copied my brothers fast print which I got to look pretty stylish. But, I typed most everything and still do.
What scares me is that I’ve seen ‘please present a hand written letter’ on some employment advertisements. I guess some minds are quite made up on the correlation between your handwriting and other abilities. I suppose if the situation popped up again, I should just say, “Look, I’m left handed and went to a Catholic school.” If the interviewer couldn’t grasp what I was saying, I would just hit him with a ruler.
I once skimmed a book on handwriting analysis whose identifying info I have unfortunately forgotten because I’d love to read it thoroughly. It seemed pretty sensible to me. Some highlights, possibly poorly-recalled–
…Signature style indicates a lot about self-esteem: size does matter [for instance, a tiny, illegible signature may point to low self-image while a flamboyant, large-capitaled one denotes ego, healthy or non. John Hancock, anyone?]
…if the left-hand margin gets wider and wider as you go down the page, you’re thinking faster than you write, and if I recall correctly this may point to creativity.
…and there’s this thing called the “felon’s claw” that a lot of people do with their lower-case y’s and g’s that is supposed to indicate a psychotic mind…
I’m still looking for this book; it was large, in workbook form so that you could check out yourself and your friends. If anybody runs across something like it, lemme know!!
I haven’t used cursive since elementary school, and have virtually forgotten how to “handwrite.” I print everything, and the only thing that I ever write in cursive is my signiture. The quality of my printing is related to how fast I need to write. If I have all the time in the world, then my printing is quite neat. But if I need to write fast, like when taking notes for example, my letters resemble some kind of weird “Adam’s shorthand,” and they are absolutely illegible to anybody else but me.
Adam
I don’t know about the rest of you bad handwriters, but in law school, we had a class on the subject. It was titled “Bad Handwriting 150” and promised to make certain that no one could ever read our notes and actually decipher them, let alone manage to actually determine what it was we had scribbled on a signature line. We had several assignments as the semester went by, on which we were graded down if any of what we wrote was able to be read by the instructor. Learning how to write illegibly, yet be able to read our own writing was a carefully cultivated skill, and I only hope that some day I can enter the annual “Shyster and Quack Penmanship” contest and carry the day for our side over those nefarious scribblers of nonsense, the doctors.
I would hotly debate Zyada’s posting. Zy, I have fairly good self esteem. I’m 37…love my work, have found the soul mate of whom we all dream…etc.
My writing is atrocious !!! I never had proper Penmanship Class in school, and…well. I use a computer for almost everything now. I literally cannot write more than a few sentences without making a mistake, or leaving a letter out ( talk about looking illiterate). And, I don’t put much stock in IQ numbers, I don’t know what they really mean. I’m at 148- but, what does that have to do with penmanship?? Or, anything??
Typer
“I know exactly why my handwriting sucks…when I was in kindergarten, I was forced to “become” right handed.”
—Zette
“A southpaw in a Catholic school, say no more.”
—Pooch
Gosh, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one. I’ve always experienced some co-ordination problems because of my “lefty” tendencies. I can still switch back to left hand writing without too much trouble, but lack practice. The nuns believed that left-handedness was the devils influence, or so I’ve been told.
My daughter is left-handed, and she has beautiful cursive, although she usually prints. The teachers tried to “cure” her in kindergarden (1977), but I raised a fuss. So they left her alone. Do they still do this?
Peace,
mangeorge
Work like you don’t need the money…
Love like you’ve never been hurt…
Dance like nobody’s watching! …(Paraphrased)
typertrphy - 'sallright, guess I have to revise my theories! Maybe I just care more now than I used to.
MG, Zette, Pooch - I can’t believe they did this to y’all! Not that I don’t believe you, I just can’t imagine such stupidity! I remember my 3rd grade math teacher (1970) telling us that they did this to her, and thinking how evil & archaic that was.
Here’s another Catholic school handwriting horror story. In third grade, my teacher was so offended by the way I held my pen - in between my middle and ring fingers, rather than between my index and middle fingers - that she made me wear a metal brace on my hand that forced me to hold the pen the way she deemed proper.
It didn’t work, BTW; to this day I still hold my pen between the “wrong” fingers.
Never regret what seemed like a good idea at the time.
