Topic: How's your handwriting?

[Pandora]

Just taking an informal survey here.

eta:  I'd greatly appreciate everyone chiming in.  There's a reason for asking and I'll reveal that later.

[Alphabet Soup]

nonexistant.

[Pandora]

nonexistant.

Could you elaborate just a tad, please?

[Libertas]

If not for the icky human/organ thingy I could've been a good doctor, my handwritting is that atrocious...sometimes I have a hard time reading what I wrote...so I almost always print my scribbles...

 

But for some reason I struggle with my sisters loopy writing...I thought girls all had fine penmanship...but she's an RN, close enough to a doc to make it seem OK.

 

[Glock32]

Mine is pretty decent. I'm especially particular about print letters, always sure to make them clear. That mainly stems from a background in programming where ambiguity among similar characters can become a major PITA.

What I recently learned, and maybe you had this in mind when you posed the question, is that many school systems are no longer teaching cursive handwriting. That has long been such a fundamental part of elementary education, I can't believe it's being eliminated. I guess they need more classroom time for discussing PC propaganda.  

[charlesoakwood]

I received penmanship awards in elementary schools ::thumbsinlapels:: today, after five minutes, I can't read it.  I print if I can't find something to key it into.

[John Florida]

Sucks!! I have the wife do all my writing for me and I just sign the letters.

[Alphabet Soup]

nonexistant.

Could you elaborate just a tad, please?

I was living in and going to New Orleans public schools when we were being taught cursive writing. My teacher was intolerant of left-handers so she insisted that I learn right-handed. I did my best but it was never very good. At home I would revert to southpaw and so learned semi-ambidextrously (poorly).  (notice he's left-handed)

In high school I took drafting and other Industrial Arts classes and gave up writing in favor of printing altogether. I also took typing class - because that's where the girls were  I didn't do too badly either  I now have to struggle to remember how to form the cursive characters. My writing is limited to filling out checks thanks to the digital age.

I'm at the point right now where I thank the stars for a keyboard - I'd be largely mute without one 

[AlanS]

I take it you're refering to the scribbling that I call cursive. I, too, have dropped to printing for anything to be legible.

[rickl]

I remember using cursive for taking notes in college, but not long after that I switched to printing.  It was a conscious decision, since I reasoned that the purpose of handwriting was communication.  Most people's cursive writing is pretty messy.  They can read it, but no one else can.  The same was true in my case.

My printed letters are not as neat as they used to be, but I think they're still pretty readable.

[IronDioPriest]

My cursive is terrible. I feel like a retard when I try to write it. My signature long since devolved into a capital "P" with a squiggly line after it, but when I need to sign some official document legibly where I spell out my whole name, it looks like a 5th-grader.

I print. It's not pretty, but people can read it.

On the other hand, Mrs. IDP's handwriting is impeccable. Watching her slow, steady hand turn out textbook cursive amazes me. My experience is that in general, women write much neater and more legibly than men.

Also, I'm a three-finger-and-a-thumb typist. Left index finger, right index and middle, and an occasional left thumb. But I can type around 50 words a minute in my own retard style, so I'm only slightly handicapped.

[Glock32]

On the other hand, Mrs. IDP's handwriting is impeccable. Watching her slow, steady hand turn out textbook cursive amazes me. My experience is that in general, women write much neater and more legibly than men.

That's definitely true. It's the same part of the brain responsible for verbalizing and fluidity, and women have more activity there as shown by functional MRI scans (same reason they talk...and talk...and talk ). Most people can immediately distinguish between male and female handwriting with a very high degree of accuracy. Women's looks like professional calligraphy; ours looks like Viking rune stones

[rickl]

On the other hand, Mrs. IDP's handwriting is impeccable. Watching her slow, steady hand turn out textbook cursive amazes me. My experience is that in general, women write much neater and more legibly than men.

That's definitely true. It's the same part of the brain responsible for verbalizing and fluidity, and women have more activity there as shown by functional MRI scans (same reason they talk...and talk...and talk ). Most people can immediately distinguish between male and female handwriting with a very high degree of accuracy. Women's looks like professional calligraphy; ours looks like Viking rune stones

There was one time when my mom was in a nursing home, and I was writing down some instructions given me by a nurse.  She saw what I wrote and was very impressed.  She said something like, "You write like a woman!"  That was my printing, not cursive.  She likely would have been less impressed with that.

[rickl]

Women's looks like professional calligraphy

Way back when, I worked in an office where one woman had a very unique style of handwriting.  The vertical dimension was pressed flat, and her letters were all horizontal.  But it was scrupulously neat, and it looked like Arabic calligraphy.  The baseline was as perfect as if she used a ruler.  It was the weirdest damn handwriting I ever saw, but it was perfectly readable once you got used to it.  But those who had never seen it before were left scratching their heads.

[BigAlSouth]

I have always printed when writing by hand, as opposed to cursive. I was once told by an adult that there was no way that I printed that well, my parents must have done it for me.

My handwriting? Uk-Say.

[AmericanPatriot]

I need a translator to read mine

[RickZ]

I need a translator to read mine

LOL!  At least you could find a translator.  Mine is illegible -- period.

[AmericanPatriot]

I need a translator to read mine

LOL!  At least you could find a translator.  Mine is illegible -- period.

This aaumes I'm sentient enough that I remember what I wrote and the translator isn't just making it up

[Pandora]

Thanks for responding everybody; greatly appreciated.

This is tangentially related to the "Is this the end of handwriting? Indiana schools to teach keyboard skills instead" piece:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012103/Is-end-handwriting-Indiana-schools-teach-keyboard-skills-instead.html

It is my contention that, for a majority of people, "handwriting" is automatically associated with cursive.  It seems the author of the title of the Daily Mail piece makes the same association.

I asked the question the way I did to prompt an instinctive response, rather than a considered one.  Unfortunately, Glock's post made the connection visible and sort of skewed the responses.

The reason I ran the poll at all was I've got a local teacher instructing that all writing by hand, printing and cursive, is "handwriting", and there is no commonly-held perception of the term as cursive, backed up by the "educated" opinion of thirty other "educators", a few of which don't know how to write cursive, and most of them don't teach it.

I've been informed that as I have no education credentials/experience/background, my contention on this is ignorant and therefore incorrect.

Technically, yes, all writing by hand is hand-writing, but, in my uneducated, uncredentialed opinion, handwriting is cursive, printing is writing by hand.

[rickl]

I remember using cursive for taking notes in college, but not long after that I switched to printing.  It was a conscious decision, since I reasoned that the purpose of handwriting was communication.  Most people's cursive writing is pretty messy.  They can read it, but no one else can.  The same was true in my case.

My printed letters are not as neat as they used to be, but I think they're still pretty readable.

I guess that puts me in the either/or/both category.