Mine is atrocious. I can recall, many years ago, in elementary school, I tried very hard to please my teacher, but I don’t think I ever succeeded. I’ve always admired elegant handwriting and wished that I were capable of it.
I may have a legitimate reason for my failing though, my father had terrible handwriting and my brother and I seem to mimic him. I’ve discovered that it’s a palsy type syndrome that may be hereditary. It gets worse if I’m under physical or mental stress.
I do recall my grandfather telling me that banks kept a special file, especially for people whose signature was illegible. This was in the fifties and that information impressed me, I wanted to be in that special file. I think it led me to be somewhat flamboyant in writing my signature, which, combined w/ my already poor handwriting skills, only made my signature even more of an indecipherable scrawl. I print anything that I must write, but even then it’s often difficult to read, even by me.
So how is your handwriting?
My handwriting is okay. So’s my printing. Certainly legible, which is better than when I was in elementary school; then, my writing looked like shorthand.
My signature, on the other hand, has devolved into a meaningless squiggle; I had a job for a few years where I had to quickly sign my name hundreds of times a day, and it became a wiggly line that takes a fraction of a second to complete. I can write my name legibly if I concentrate, but then it doesn’t feel like I’m actually giving my signature.
Mine is normal, but one of my coworkers writes like he’s in the first grade. The letters are varying sizes, the spacing in between letters is all wrong and awkward, and the shapes are almost always wrong somehow, like drawing b without the bubble at the bottom. He’s otherwise a perfectly normal, intelligent person, but if you read something he wrote you would assume he was 6 years old.
Mine was literally illegible through about 4-5[sup]th[/sup] grade… when I was forced by teachers and parents to take some penmanship lessons.
End result – My handwriting is so neat and legible that people refuse to believe it’s really mine unless they see me writing things out. “It’s so neat, it’s a girl’s handwriting!” :rolleyes: Um, no, last I checked learning how to write properly was not an el-cheapo gender-change operation 
Legible now. I did have a period around 15 years ago when you couldn’t tell my s from my g. Same goes for my signature. You can read my name in it.
It’s better than it seems like it would be, based on the way I hold my pencil. But it’s hardly nice. It is legible, though.
Does being asked if one is a doctor remain the minimum standard for being able to claim atrocious handwriting?
I get it regularly. Esp. when people see my signature. It was bad, before I went into the service. Afterwards, when I’d learned how to sign my unique signature in about one second, flat, I really started getting the comments. Now it’s common for me to mention that, “Yes, that’s my legal signature.”
My printing is legible, but not precisely easy to read, nor pretty.
The fun thing is that I can, when I wish, do calligraphy quite well.
I’ve been complimented on it before but it tends to vary wildly depending on my mood, what I’m writing, and to who. My signature is heavily stylized, though and you can only really make out the first couple lettters.
Mine was never stylish, but it was legible. Now I type so much more than I write that it has deteriorated.
Mine is pretty horrible, so I print most of the time when not using a computer.
Way back when I went to school, they had something called the Palmer Method Penmanship. It really bugged me and perhaps that affected my writing. Or not.
If I write slowly and methodically, it is legible. Because have printed all my life, can actually do that faster than cursive.
Mine is pretty bad, although I guess you can read it. I recently asked a person if she could read it and she said that she could, but wanted to know if I were left handed. (I’m not.)
Mine has deteriorated since I also type so much. Also, my handwriting has multiple personalities, and always has. Hand-written journals or other works from my pre-computer days show neat handwriting, spiky handwriting, printing in different styles.
We are getting to the point, with everybody printing, that in order for something to not be easily read, all you have to do is write it in longhand.
I do write in longhand at work, just to try and keep my penmanship from deteriorating further.
People in the Old Days could certainly write a fine-looking letter. I have fonts on my computer that aren’t as pretty.
Terrible, mine looks like a 12 year old boy writing a note to pass to his buddies in class…nearly illegible but the point get’s across.
my writing is like a drunken spider crawl,and my puntuation and grammer leaves everything to be desired 
One reason why one of my nicknames is DrDeth.
And I blame the school system. Teachers are just so damn excited to stop teaching nice legible printing and go over to the “real writing= cursive”. They should no longer teach cursive, except as an election (and how to read it, of course!).
If I take my time, I have passably decent penmanship. But it’s not my favorite thing. And the more I write, the scragglier it gets. It’s never been a priority in my life.
I have what my friends call “copper-plate schoolteacher” handwriting. When I was younger I liked to imitate my teachers’ handwriting (so every year my handwriting would change) - I didn’t settle into my own style of penmanship until college. I usually write somewhere between printing and cursive, especially when I’m in a hurry.
I’ve always been complimented on my handwriting. In 7th grade, Mr. H- was a stickler for handwriting. If you could “land a helicopter” on your cursive r’s then it was circled and you got a point deducted. So I learned correct penmanship, which is kind of pretty. It’s a lost art because few write in long hand anymore, including me. But you still can’t land a helicopter on my r’s no matter how rushed I am.
I also learned calligraphy, which I still use when addressing my Christmas cards and formal invitations.
What does that mean?
Mine is fine, if I slow down a bit – when I’m really rolling, though, it can get pretty bad. Most of my underlings have learned to read it fairly fluently, though they’ll occasionally have to ask for a translation – which I sometimes need to reconstruct my thought process to provide.
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one wondering that, twickster.