I have a friend who is moving overseas. While she is technologically savvy, she is also very much a traditionalist at heart and appreciates receiving handwritten letters. Seeing as how my handwriting, when actually placed next to chicken scratch, makes the chicken scratch look like calligraphy, I’m going to pick up a couple of books and try to improve it. If I’m going to go to the time and effort of actually writing letters to her, I figure they should probably look nice.
Frankly, I can’t even really write in cursive anymore. If I ever have to write something that someone else has to read, I simply opt for block letters.
How’s your handwriting? Is it something you’re proud of? Does the handwriting of others make you formulate opinions about them based on their writing alone?
My handwriting is so bad that sometimes I look at it and wonder if I suffered a traumatic head injury sometime during my life that has caused some sort of neurological problem.
It’s horrible. Beyond belief. And two of my older brothers have impeccable handwriting.
I am very proud of my handwriting, thank you very much. And whenever I see that bubbly cheerleader/prom queen type (you know, the type with circles instead of dots?) handwriting, I automatically make assumptions about them. Bad handwriting doesn’t put me off though. I understand we live in a typing world now. It’s a shame.
My parents tell me I have bad handwriting, but I don’t really notice anything bad about it. Sometimes it gets horrible if I’m in a rush or writing on a weird surface, but most of the time it’s readable. But who cares about handwriting. Everything can be typed now and printers make everything pretty.
::hiding head in shame::
I never learned a cursive G, Q, or R properly
My handwriting is readable if I know someone else will read it, although I am trying to improve that. I jump in and out of cursive to print then perhaps some heiroglyphs and back to cursive.
I can’t say that I have ever been able to write in cursive. I certainly can’t write in it now. When I write anything, it’s print. And it looks OK when I write it. But when I go back to re-read, it’s like it has spoiled. And I’m a reasonably intelligent person. (no comments from the cheap seats, please :D)
My handwriting is practically illegible - I have trouble reading it myself sometimes! As one of my freinds at secondary school put it, “It looks like a seven legged spider walked into an inkwell, and then walked across your page.”
My handwriting got an overhauling when I was studying Engineering Drafting, Archetecture, and all that a while back. I suppose I write something like an architect (a bit like the Blueprint fonts), but it only looks neat after a minute of warming up. Cursive has been alien to me since the 6th grade, when I discovered I wasn’t required to use cursive (amid cries of "You’ll fail your assignments if they’re in print!).
My handwriting is pretty dire. It’s mostly legible, however, and I have to write longhand a lot of the time so it should be better, but I don’t seem capable of changing it. This was a mystery to everyone = why can’t I change my handwriting? - until a couple of years ago, when my mother had a go at me for writing on some of her more important papers. I said I hadn’t, and when she showed me, we realised it wasn’t me, it was my grandfather. My handwriting is so much like it’s impossible to tell the difference between them.
Sorry, just had to share that. I’ve never heard of family likeness in handwriting before - I might actually give it its own thread at some point and stop hijacking this one.
My handwriting used to be not ugly, but it has deteriorated from disuse.
I have a question. When you mention cursive, do you mean “Any handwriting style in which most of the letters are joined up, and the pen not lifted from the page to form each and every letter separately” or do you mean “A specific style of penmanship taught in United States elementary schools”?
I can understand not wishing to follow the exact strictures of the handwriting style forces on you by handwriting lessons at school. I certainly don’t write in the joined-up roundhand that was taught in my primary school. On the other hand, I find it much, much faster to keep the pen on the paper and join the letters up.
I cannot do cursive, (except for an illegible signature) and my printing is exceedingly poor. I try to do everything electronically, and mostly succeed.
My handwriting’s pretty good for a lefty, but only when I have patience and a ball-point pen. But overall, it has deteriorated significantly since my high-school days (last year).
I can write neatly and legibly if I need to, but I have to work at it, and my hand cramps up quickly. My usual note-jotting penmanship is a variation on the correct techniques taught in elementary school with some printed letters, and my own shorthand form of some letters. It tends to be cramped and narrow rather than full and rounded as I was taught.
As long as I take my time, it’s not too hard to read, but if I get into a hurry, a lot of it degrades into horizontal lines, especially words ending in “ion.” I’m trying to read a note I scribbled yesterday and the only reason I could is because I remember why I was writing it. The words “protection” and “transportation” look misspelled - OK, they are misspelled on the note, but I know what I meant.
Pretty sad… but not sad enough for me to do anything about it.
I know my handwriting is terrible. I put doctors to shame with it. Even when I try to write neatly for other people to read it comes out illegible (people have trouble distinguishing my 4s from my 9s, for example). If I write something for myself it’s barely decipherable. It doesn’t matter whether I print (which I prefer) or write cursive. While my handwriting has never been very good and penmanship was one of the things I always lost points on in school, it’s deteriorated since I graduated high school. I’ve become less patient with having to write by hand over the years and it makes me glad that I can type out most things on a computer.
My cursive is technically correct, I suppose, but utterly illegible if I get going and write fast. Tends to be one good letter at the start, and then just some variant on a wavey line trailing. Makes it hard to come back and ready my notes.
My handwriting was so bad that I was actually forced to take lessons to improve it. It’s okay now though. Although being left handed doesn’t help, as the ink sometimes smuges as I write.
