What Killed Penmanship?

[Mercian]

14 hours ago, ridiculopathy said:

Here’s a gift version of the article, if any of you are still interested. It’s nothing new, just follows the course of fountain pens: used to be great, then hit a low due to technology (in penmanship terms, became illegible), and now gaining in popularity thanks in part to a younger crowd who are into analog things.

This post is further up-thread.

 

My apologies to @TSherbs for burying it under my deluge of rants about ITA.

[knarflj]

9 hours ago, txomsy said:

On the subject of ITA. This is my totally subjective and questionable opinion.

 

May I remind you that many forum members grew up using languages whose literal transcription reproduces 1:1 the pronunciation? French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, to name a few, but also many others, are some examples. Maybe a written symbol has sometimes a different pronunciation when in a combination (like e.g. French E, A, O, U and ou or eau) or with a modifier (like an accent, bar, umlaut...), but that combination always translates phonetically to the same sound irrespective of context.

 

I don't think the main problem with ITA was necessarily that it taught a 1:1 correspondence, or that there were too many glyphs (although teachers had for centuries been able to teach children to read English well without adding lots of extra symbols to the alphabet), but that it established as a "law" in the minds of young children approaching the written form of their native language for the first time the ideas that every sound had one and only one way of being represented on paper, and that every symbol always represented an individual sound.  

 

Then suddenly in third grade you were confronted for the first time with the ideas that some sounds could be represented in more than one way, and that sometimes two or more letters worked together to represent a sound--and these ideas contradicted everything you'd been taught about reading for the last two years.  Most of those kids did learn to read (though more slowly than if they'd been taught more traditionally), but most of them never learned how to spell well.

 

And getting back to the original topic, I wonder whether part of the downfall of handwriting at least in my elementary school was helped by the fact that cursive was introduced in the same year that kids were also having to unlearn ITA.

 

I have often wondered when (as least in the US), schools stopped teaching handwriting technique, and started teaching just letterforms.  I had instruction in cursive, but never anything like the instruction in posture, light grip, and emphasis on individual strokes that you see in older handwriting texts, so I never learned (until I found FPN!) how to achieve fluidity and ease when writing.  And I was one of the kids with "good" handwriting!  My mil was an elementary school teacher for years and had a beautiful Palmer hand; she obviously had the kind of instruction that I never did.  I think that transition from teaching technique to just telling students to imitate the shapes of letters was probably where the "death" of handwriting started, but what caused that transition, I don't know.

[txomsy]

Well, judging from training texts, there were always teachers who just advocated plain copying of samples and those who tried to somehow rationalize and explain the details. Yet, kids learned to write in all cases.

 

I tend to feel we underestimate kids.

 

I agree that learning two contradictory systems, sequentially, is most confusing. But I do see kids learning more than one language since kindergarten here nowadays, and they do not seem to have much trouble, maybe it is because they learn them simultaneously and they associate them to different languages. Having to learn two alternative ways to do some thing is discouraging when you are learning, and if one of them is explicitly stated to be useless (in that it will not ever be used or understood later) can be a deal breaker for a young mind who will think that learning is a useless waste of time.

 

As for details in handwriting practice, old manuals did not agree either on a single "best" posture or technique. And some went as far as to say any one you felt comfortable with would be right as long it was not overly and obviously damaging.

 

Sometimes, we overvalue some advice and ignore our own convenience.

 

[inkstainedruth]

21 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

Not to discount your husband's disability, but no wonder he is dyslexic.  One look at that alphabet and I can see how it could create a problem for anyone then having to use the standard English alphabet.  It would for me, like suddenly having to use a Cryllic alphabet whilst writing and reading English.

No the dyslexia is a separate thing.  It probably didn't help learning ITA, but it's not connected, AFAIK (he is also somewhat ambidextrous -- I suspect that *is* connected to being dyslexic -- and didn't really become right-handed until he broke his left wrist in I think he told me 3rd grade).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ParramattaPaul]

10 hours ago, Mercian said:

@txomsy @JulieParadise

I totally agree that ITA is a great auxiliary tool for teaching English to adults who grew up in non-Anglophone countries.

 

They are people who have already learned to control their writing implements to write their own languages, and who are already familiar with the idea that individual glyphs are used to represent individual sounds.

Adults who are learning English as a foreign language need to learn to recognise/write Latin glyphs, and to recognise the English sounds that are intended by the glyphs/sequences of glyphs that are used in ‘standard English’.

 

English is almost uniquely hard to learn fluently because it derives its grammar and vocabulary from at least five distinct ‘parent’ languages.

Its spelling conventions have developed (over centuries) to reflect its many parents - so, as you both no-doubt learned ‘the hard way’ (and, incidentally, have both managed superbly) English uses the same glyphs/glyph sequences to represent many sounds, and several glyphs/sequences of glyphs to represent the same sound.

 

If one is trying to teach English as a Foreign Language to adults, I think that teaching one’s students to recognise ITA’s sound-glyphs, and writing out any new words/sentences that one is introducing to one’s students with the same words/sentences also written in ITA underneath, is a very good idea.

I think that doing that will accelerate adult students’ ability to learn English.

 

But:

If one is trying to teach children, one must use a system that takes account of the following factors:

1- children have not yet learned to associate glyphs with distinct sounds.
One must introduce them to this idea using simple words and then simple sentences, and one must use glyphs that they can easily distinguish from each other.

 

A system that, like ITA, uses a large number of similar-looking/very-hard-to-‘draw’-correctly glyphs is harder to teach to children than one that uses a smaller set of glyphs;

 

2- children have not yet mastered the control of their writing-implements, and also not yet mastered the techniques of ‘drawing’ glyphs distinctively.
In the early stages of learning to write, children very often ‘draw’ the mirror-image of the glyph that they intend to write. This can cause potential confusion when words can be written with either one particular glyph or its mirror image - e.g.s ‘d’ instead of ‘b’; ‘q’ instead of ‘p’ (& vice versa).
I recognise that ITA is partly intended to reduce the likelihood of this occurring, but it also introduces more confusion for children by e.g. using the glyph ‘z’ and its mirror-image.
So the ITA system - inadvertently, but so what? - actually introduces more ‘elephant-traps’ for children who are trying to learn to write.

 

A system that, like ITA, uses even more pairs of glyphs and their mirror-images to convey sounds, and a large number of hard-to-‘draw’-correctly glyphs is even harder for children to learn to ‘draw’ correctly than is one that uses fewer glyphs;

 

3- a system that, like ITA, represents every sound with its own individual glyph does not teach children to recognise that English uses combinations/sequences of glyphs to represent sounds that are not encoded by individual glyphs.

 

The fact that ITA uses some of the glyphs used in ‘standard English’ to represent sounds that are different to the ones that ‘standard English’ assigns to those glyphs is just the ‘cherry on the cake’.

 

After a child has mastered the complex set of skills that is required to become a fluent writer of ITA, s/he must then perform the additional mental labour of un-learning its glyphs if s/he is ever to become a fluent reader/writer of ‘standard English’ using the Latin alphabet.

 

Which is, after all, the actual goal that the school/world is requiring the child to achieve.

 

My earlier comment was rather narrow-minded since they were solely in relation to early education and teaching 4 to 7 year olds whose first language is English to read, and for that must apologise.  I did not consider those adults who have grown up using languages such as the previously mentioned Ethopian and my be learning English as a second language.

 

I will add that as one rapidly approaching his 75th birthday, I was educated in the 1950s and taught to sound out a word based upon the standard English alphabet.  Much the same was true when I studied French, German, and Latin with textbooks nearly as old as I was at the time.  There was no whole word learning nor phonics as we know it today.  Fr me, an 'a', 'i', 'o', etc. sounded a certain way based upon the letters that preceded and followed it.  I suspect that those sounds were learned by hearing them pronounced by those who used them -- parents, teachers, etc. because I can remember looking up words in dictionaries and seeing the pronunciation glyphs and not knowing how to sound them out despite knowing that it was what they were for.  An example (of my stupidity at least) is that it I was surprised to find that paradigm wasn't pronounced 'par - ah - dig - em' when first I looked up the spelling. 

 

Would ITA or a similar system been helpful to me then?  In retrospect, I doubt it.  I'm aware that early learning/teaching is a specialist field in part because the brain -- I may be mis-stating this -- is still forming, and with it, one's cognitive processes. So, for an early learner, ITA may, I believe, be an encumbrance.  The use of ITA is a different matter altogether for an adult speaker of a glyph language learning English for the first time.

[kestrel]

20 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

If I may say so, that's rather myopic of those who focused solely upon standardized tests.  I would remind them that life is full of non-standardized tests, and that people often need to express thoughts, and on paper.  The world may 'begin' in the classroom, but it most certainly does not end there.

 

You did say so and I completely agree with you.  It's hard to argue with the myopia, though, when your evaluation, your job, and your salary depend on how your students perform on a 56 question multiple choice end of course exam (using biology in Florida as an example).  I did fight back and insisted on teaching my students what they needed to learn (biology plus analytical skills, study skills, information integration skills, and writing skills) that weren't directly assessed on the test but I only got away with it because I had a stellar professional reputation as a teacher and enough seniority that administration didn't harass me too much. 

 

Even with all that "wasted" class time my students scored significantly better on "The Test" than students of other teachers who obsessively focused on "The Test."  My charges could also think, reason, analyze, solve problems, and write better than their peers, an advantage in their other classes. 

 

 

[Arkanabar]

On 3/28/2023 at 8:01 AM, kazoolaw said:

[M]y nomination for one of the factors in the decline of penmanship is the

 

ballpoint.

Mine as well, though not exclusively.  In my attempts to improve my own handwriting, I've noticed that the old handwriting manuals I've perused contain many exercises which just don't really work with a ballpoint.

 

I was able to read in kindergarden, better than my brother in 1st grade.  But I also later went to a parochial school where the nuns used old newsprint phonics handouts, and probably Zaner-Bloser exercise sheets.  I wasn't actually taught handwriting so much as just told to trace over and copy what was on the paper.

[TSherbs]

On 3/29/2023 at 9:09 AM, Mercian said:

This post is further up-thread.

 

My apologies to @TSherbs for burying it under my deluge of rants about ITA.

got it

 

thanks

[TSherbs]

Actually, the article is mostly a discussion of Reddit users who participate in handwriting fora of various kinds. And some information about writing tutors, and courses. The article does not really attempt much of an analysis of *why* handwriting may be in decline, nor even much of an argument that it actually *is* in decline (it is certainly not "killed," as the clickbait title suggests). It is likely true that most young persons and adults handwrite less than they used to. That is definitely the result of the availibility and utility of other tools for writing/typing and for recording/saving. But handwriting is not dead, by any means. It will never be (except when humanity is expunged from the planet). 

[Aether]

Do not know what killed off penmanship but do know that video killed off the radio star! 😁

[inkstainedruth]

Of course I'm also now thinking of all the Bob Hope "Road" movies he made with Bing Crosby....

Didn't seem to kill HIS career....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mark from Yorkshire]

Are we going radio ga ga 

[51ISH]

Sorry, a little off topic but.... A new(ish) manager at our office earlier today said .....

'I do like your handwriting'  🥰🥰🥰   It really is nothing special...I kind of got a bit embarrassed and replied 'Thanks, but it's got a bit shaky as I get older. You still have that to look forward to' 🙂

[corniche]

12 hours ago, Mark from Yorkshire said:

Are we going radio ga ga 

No, that was Queen; Buggles was "killing the radio star." I think he got 25-life for that, too, because he was never heard from again.

 

- Sean

[Checklist]

On 3/27/2023 at 2:07 PM, The Duck Hunter said:

This is behind a pay wall for me.  

Late to the party, but if you want around the paywall, use Firefox, and click on the "reader view" icon at the end of the address bar: 

It will not look "normal", but it gets you around the NYT firewall, at least.

[The Elevator]

I wonder if pencils had just as much to do with “killing” penmanship as ballpoints did?

 

The reasons I suspect this:

1: pencils are super narrow, requiring a different grip than most fountain pens.

2: pencil leads easily break if held at a fountain-pen angle.

3: Pencils are erasable, which allows people to make more mistakes with them, and just fix shoddy handwriting later.

 

I personally think that my penmanship was significantly harmed during my school years when I used those standard issue yellow pencils. I was never able to write cursive with them because I would always break them and the grip was too uncomfortable. Now that I have fountain pens, my handwriting is so much better than anything I could have imagined. 

[Checklist]

I think that the article is on the right track with why penmanship has declined: for multiple reasons, people do not write as much as they used to, so they are not practiced enough to write well and quickly.  As a Marine once told me: slow is smooth, smooth is fast; get the muscle memory deeply ingrained, and, once it's natural, you can do it well surprisingly quickly.  If you only write a little, you have to write slowly to write well; my handwriting, even with a pencil or ballpoint, is much better than it was in college, simply because of all the slower writing I've done since.

 

That being said, there is a quite a bit of generalization in the article and in my comment.  My wife writes much less than I do but always has great handwriting, despite us both being "dang millenials".  My mother would have fit well in the article, with her always neat and legible writing, but my father, well....  We exchange letters regularly, and there are still times that I have to work a little to decipher his writing.  Maybe a part of this phenomenon is that people who have good penmanship aren't worried about their ephemera being legible, but those who know that they need to work at it are making more noise.  I can barely figure out the trends in my own household, so my musings should be taken with a large block of salt.

[51ISH]

17 minutes ago, Checklist said:

I think that the article is on the right track with why penmanship has declined: for multiple reasons, people do not write as much as they used to, so they are not practiced enough to write well and quickly.  As a Marine once told me: slow is smooth, smooth is fast; get the muscle memory deeply ingrained, and, once it's natural, you can do it well surprisingly quickly.  If you only write a little, you have to write slowly to write well; my handwriting, even with a pencil or ballpoint, is much better than it was in college, simply because of all the slower writing I've done since.

 

That being said, there is a quite a bit of generalization in the article and in my comment.  My wife writes much less than I do but always has great handwriting, despite us both being "dang millenials".  My mother would have fit well in the article, with her always neat and legible writing, but my father, well....  We exchange letters regularly, and there are still times that I have to work a little to decipher his writing.  Maybe a part of this phenomenon is that people who have good penmanship aren't worried about their ephemera being legible, but those who know that they need to work at it are making more noise.  I can barely figure out the trends in my own household, so my musings should be taken with a large block of salt.

 

20 minutes ago, Checklist said:

I think that the article is on the right track with why penmanship has declined: for multiple reasons, people do not write as much as they used to, so they are not practiced enough to write well and quickly.  As a Marine once told me: slow is smooth, smooth is fast; get the muscle memory deeply ingrained, and, once it's natural, you can do it well surprisingly quickly.  If you only write a little, you have to write slowly to write well; my handwriting, even with a pencil or ballpoint, is much better than it was in college, simply because of all the slower writing I've done since.

 

That being said, there is a quite a bit of generalization in the article and in my comment.  My wife writes much less than I do but always has great handwriting, despite us both being "dang millenials".  My mother would have fit well in the article, with her always neat and legible writing, but my father, well....  We exchange letters regularly, and there are still times that I have to work a little to decipher his writing.  Maybe a part of this phenomenon is that people who have good penmanship aren't worried about their ephemera being legible, but those who know that they need to work at it are making more noise.  I can barely figure out the trends in my own household, so my musings should be taken with a large block of salt.

 

I have been exchanging letters at Christmas time with a lady I met in 1986 while on holiday in the Canaries, she is well into her '60's now, her handwriting is just as beautiful today  as it was back then.

🥰😍🥰

[amberleadavis]

On 3/28/2023 at 5:10 AM, kazoolaw said:

Attended a Catholic elementary school which taught the Palmer Method.  To my mother's everlasting shame, I was the only student in two grades not to get my Palmer certificate, despite one entire summer of daily drills.

Then ebay arrived:  bought 3 Palmer pins.  Award problem solved, though nearly illegible penmanship remained.

 

LMAO

[max dog]

I would say the BIC Crystal and all cheap disposable ball point pens.