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Article On 'library Hand'


johnsi02

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Happened across this article today and found it interesting. I've no plans to start learning it, especially since it is slower than most standard writing styles. But interesting that a specific industry would have it's own designed writing style in the pre computer era.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/library-hand-penmanship-handwriting?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=atlas-page

JS

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According to the article, this hand was proposed and designed as a standardization of card catalogue handwriting. I grew up in the era of hand-written card catalogues and can attest to the difficulty of making sense out of poorly-written cards. That's why type-written cards became the standard.

 

Many industries use standardized hands. I'm thinking of drafting for mechanics, architecture, etc. Standardized lettering is in use in drafting. Not a bad idea. As you say, such hands are meant for legibility above all and not for speed. but do make go subjects for study and advancement of one's knowledge. Thanks for bringing this article to light.

 

Enjoy,

Yours,
Randal

From a person's actions, we may infer attitudes, beliefs, --- and values. We do not know these characteristics outright. The human dichotomies of trust and distrust, honor and duplicity, love and hate --- all depend on internal states we cannot directly experience. Isn't this what adds zest to our life?

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Interesting article. Thanks for the link. Although I had to just take the website to task for posting a link to a different article about how irresponsible they were (there was a story about a raccoon hanging onto the back of a garbage truck, and I had to take Atlas Obscura to task for basically going "Oh, how cute!!" -- *instead* of considering the fact that the raccoon MIGHT just be rabid... :angry:).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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Our local public library had long since moved to typewritten cards by the time I came around in the 80s, but at least one librarian had studied this hand fastidiously and still used it to head the check-out cards found inside each book. I loved the look of them. What a treat to see more of the same hand here.

 

I did a little practice when I first stumbled on this topic last night, and I found that the joiners are particularly cumbersome at speed--which is only partly to say that I just don't have the muscle memory for it. You'll notice that, to avoid unwanted loops and hooks on e.g. a lowercase 'c' (which might otherwise be confused for a lowercase 'e'), joiners tend to tread water on the baseline until just before the next letter starts, at which point they'll climb steeply upwards. The movement needed is precise, not flowing. It does end in a fine hand, though--if a little "copy-book-ish," in the words of my partner.

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I graduated General Motors Institute (Now Kettering University) and all students and staff were GM employees. Starting in 1978 CAD /CAE was in its infancy. We took a lottery who was going to start on the computer or on the "board". I had drafting in HS and lost out and got the board. To pass the class you had to be able to proficiently print all the numbers and letters on an engineering document that matched a corporate template. A typography all its own. It has a name which I have forgotten.

 

Graduates from my era print "identically" and you can recognize it from across the meeting room. For instance the capital Z has the line and the number 7 doesn't. Z to avoid confusion with 2. Number 7 because the 1 doesn't have the beginning hook the FPen and French prefer. No part numbers start with an I and rarely have them in the body of the part number to avoid the confusion with number 1.

 

Funny how those idiosyncrasies stay with us.

Sometimes I think I can taste the colors of the ink through my eyes. That Emerald.....

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A friend brought this article to my attention and I came here to see if anyone had already posted it. Thanks for posting! Very interesting. I'm wondering why they decided to use a slightly backhanded slant rather than either vertical or forward slanted.

 

Doug

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