Who writes in cursive?

[KCat]

i was in the American School of London in 3rd and 4th grade. It was the early 70s. Everything was very "laid back" at that time. You could work on your school work at a table with other kids, or lie on the floor and work on it. or sit on the floor I suppose. I never remember hearing the term "Palmer" method - just "Cursive" and while my teachers complained about my penmanship, i don't remember spending much time on practicing it in school. I think our school was suffering from the 70s "freedom" approach to everything. We didn't have classrooms, we had a single large room with dividers. "Mods within Pods." The Pod was the entire room, the Mod(ule) was the divided class. i wonder how much of this accounted for my lack of desire to improve my handwriting.

 

i could blame my sister who was an artist and at the time already writing in perfect and beautiful handwriting - just to shame me.

[Keith with a capital K]

When I give primers to people on improving their handwriting one of the most important things is encoouraging them to develop their own style while ensuring that the resulting handwriting remains legible.

 

Anyone who has seen my handwriting would know that I am not a fan of or bound to using any particular form and I break a lot of rules. I write like I golf... the form isn't technically perfect with either but my writing and my game are pretty good anyways.

 

I drove my teachers crazy as they were always telling me I couldn't do this or that when I was writing and for the sake of getting good grades I learned how to stay within the lines, so to speak.

[kjervin]

When I was in 9th grade, I thought my printing was awful. Inretrospect it was legible, but ordinary. So I wrote out evey form of every letter I could think of ( a row of different lower case "a," a row of "b," etc). and then i circled the ones I liked and those became me official letter set. I then practiced those until it seemed natural and voila! I was done. Unfortunately, some of the more boring letters crept back in , so I sometimes use more then one form of several letters, but I don't mind as much. Anyway, Keith comment about finding one's own style reminded me of that , so I shared, for what it's worth.

KJ

[KCat]

for girls in Junior high and High School, it was important to have "pretty" handwriting. I didn't and don't. But I did try to alter my handwriting my Junior year in what I thought was a "unique" fashion. It had somewhat an "Uncial" look, probably not by chance but due to the influence of a Platignum calligraphy set. It's still apparent when I write with certain kinds of nibs. Straight up and down with fat letters.

[ElaineB]

I have a minimalist half-joined, half printed hand that developed during my late teens (late 70s). I was a really prolific letter writer and my handwriting evolved into a very economical script that used the minimum of strokes possible, for speed reasons. I had done a lot of caligraphy by that time, and while I rarely use Italic letterforms, you can still see its strong, insistent rhythm in the way I formed letters into words.

 

I kept writing alot during early adulthood (easily 10-20 pages a day) and with all that practice my hand got very fluid and regular. I look back at some of those manuscript pages now and can't believe how clean and even my handwriting was. Since computers came along and I do most of my writing by keyboard now, my handwriting has suffered. It's still legible but kind of uneven, and I make a lot of mistakes.

 

ElaineB

[Titivillus]

I'm a situational cursive writer. For personal letters it's definitely cursive but at work it's a mix. Being an engineer the requirement for clear and sometimes small writing sort of forces printing especially on drawings. I'd say I have a modified Zaner Blosser writing with most letters being similar but my lower case 'f' having the lower loop backwards.

 

Kurt H

[Moondrop]

i could blame my sister who was an artist and at the time already writing in perfect and beautiful handwriting - just to shame me.

Interesting that you would say that, because in my family I'm the one who draws and paints and my sister (who claims she can't even draw a straight line) is the one with the nice handwriting--the opposite of what happened with you and your sister.

[Gerry]

for girls in Junior high and High School, it was important to have "pretty" handwriting.  I didn't and don't.  But I did try to alter my handwriting my Junior year in what I thought was a "unique" fashion.  It had somewhat an "Uncial" look, probably not by chance but due to the influence of a Platignum calligraphy set.  It's still apparent when I write with certain kinds of nibs.  Straight up and down with fat letters.

Methinks KCat doth protest too much.

 

We have traded ink vials and have both put in short notes. Hers are smooth and flowing - a 'pretty' cursive writing, unlike mine that I have to labour over just to make readable. I need to slow down. My problem is as time went on, there seemed so much more to be written down, and the hurriedness led to almost totally illegible writing.

 

Now, I keyboard most of the time, and miss the practice I could have since I don't need to be in so much of a hurry.

 

Oh, well. Another life perhaps.

 

Gerry

[KCat]

what you don't know, Gerry is that in my brief notes I made as great an effort as possible to sloooooow down so as to limit my embarrassment.

 

And of course, it's all in one's perception. It should be becoming clear that I am not entirely enamored of myself or my abilities on any front.

 

being rushed is what does most of the damage to our writing, I think. Though Mr. Pickering and others have said that their informal calligraphy is of sufficient speed for daily writing, I imagine it is still at a slower pace than most of the stuff I jot down. I tend to write like I'm still in college furiously taking notes in Biochem II. Unless I know someone will actually need to read it - then I can focus a bit better.

 

truth is, I envy my sister and the writing of many others who have posted their samples here and elsewhere. Corien, Adam, Antonios, Viv, etc. But it's hard to complain too much when I don't make any major efforts to practice.

 

KCat - Jill of all Trades, Master (mistress?) of None.

[KendallJ]

Rob, you have piqued my curiosity. Could we see a sample???

[Cam]

Here here!!