My signature has been pretty illegible since I was about 15 or 16, which I have always attributed to being forced to write with my non-dominant hand (my printing is pretty atrocious as well). More recently, I’ve started to use a hanko (Japanese personal seal) alongside my signature.
Do you mean like Visa or Master Card slips? Are those still a thing in the US?
I sign the screen at Dr’s office or Dialysis check-in with any number of curly lines, Xs, dots, sometimes I write out Yoko Ono. Nobody has every questioned it.
I tried it at the pharmacy but the device said: Nope not good, try again. With a 
If you’re thinking of the old ker-chunk machines and the 2 part carbon or carbonless forms, I’ve not seen that in 15-20 years. But …
More like a cash register tape comes out w a sig line at the bottom. Sign it & give it back to the clerk. Most, but not all retailers have moved to chip to pay or tap to pay terminals. Maybe 80% of what I now encounter.
Many (~50%?) restaurants still do that paper cash register tape charge slip drill, not tap to pay on a remote the waitstaff carry. So you’re also computing & writing the tip below the goods+tax total, then doing the mental math to sum up the grand total & write that down.
Restaurants are re-equipping w the terminals for order taking & paying. Most chains are that way now. Mom’n’Pops not so much.
The vast majority of my use of a pen in the last decade has been these kinds of purchases. Both breakfast and dinner today were that way. My nightcap stop will be tap to pay.
Such is life in my primitive and beastly country. Sorry.
I have a Gerber multi tool that I find vastly more useful than a simple pocket knife. I don’t carry it 24/7, but it’s usually in my car or in me when I suspect it could be useful.
My signature is cursive and 100% legible. It’s one of those things I take care when doing. And I have to sign things multiple times a day for my work.
I’m a Boomer who grew up in California, and didn’t go to school with Okies and Arkies. My father did, though. I was born in 1957 and grew up in the Bay Area. He was born in 1928 and grew up on a farm in Ontario, California.
Sounds a painful way to carry it.
Is printing not acceptable as a legal signature? Does it have to be cursive?
I’m the same basically, except I haven signed my first name in decades. It’s just my first initial followed by my last name (think “JSmith”). The J and the S are recognizable, but my last name is just a series of small loops ending with a flourish.
Several years ago I was hanging out with some neighbors. One of them was a really smart girl who I think was in middle school at the time. She was holding a book, and one of the adult neighbors asked what she was reading. She held it up so he could see the title, which was “Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. The adult asked her, “Did she ever write anything else?”
The adult was an engineer who worked as a manager for a major corporation. The girl is now a math major at Stanford.
Huh? I’m a boomer, barely, and I never heard anyone called an Okie in real life in my life. Maybe someone born in the 40s but I was born in the 60s.
I have one in my car. It’s a knock off, not a Gerber. But it’s good. I got it at an x-mas gift exchange. It’s been used a few times, mostly my knife will take care of things.
Oddly, the last thing I used it for was the saw. I was in the middle of moving and had to cut a one inch dowl. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
I have no idea and it’s not the point. The kid should know how to sign his name. It was shocking to me that he didn’t.
But he does, “signing” your name is just a matter of writing it on paper, you can do it in cursive or in print.
What is it exactly that he doesn’t know? Does he not know how to write his name or does he specifically not know how to write in cursive? Because I’d be really surprised if a kid old to enough to get a learner’s permit doesn’t know how to write his name at all , and a signature doesn’t have to be in script or look any particular way - many people have a scribble as a signature and print is acceptable as well.
My daughter and I were just talking about this last night. We were both saying how whenever we are required to sign one of those screens, we basically do a first initial and the rest is pretty much curves and swishes if you will.
My grandfather, born in 1900, had the most beautiful copperplate handwriting. But he was a very slow writer. A short shopping list of 7 or 8 items would take 15 mins for instance and he always insisted on writing them out himself. He would never just tell me what he wanted so I could write it down quickly. I always put it down to his handwriting being a work of art and you can’t rush art creation. But after he died we cleared out his house and found his marriage certificate. He had signed it with an X and someone had certified it as his mark. Turns out he didn’t learn to read and write until after he got married. My grandmother taught him and learning late in life meant he never picked up the speed and muscle memory that was drummed into us all at school. That added a lot of pathos to those shopping lists, each one was clearly a personal victory for him.
Wow. Thanks for sharing that story.
Same for me, but SoCal.
My parents came to L.A. from Chicago in the early 1950s. And spoke derisively of Oakies (and Hoosiers) through the 60s as I was a kid & tween.
Perhaps some of my contemporaries in school were descendants of Dust Bowl migrants. If so, those kids’ grandparents were the migrants and the kids’ parents had been born here in CA or at the oldest been carried to CA as small children.
Far more of my contemporaries were offspring of young adult migrants enjoying the post WW-II boom and moving to the shiny new wonders of California with all its opportunity.
My bottom line: The Dust Bowl and Oakies in California are ancient history to today’s kids and young adults. Just like the '49er gold rush migrants were ancient history when I (and most Dopers) were that age.
He’s never been taught to write in cursive, which I always thought was a given, even in today’s electronic age.