Penmanship

As you know, topics on the future of penmanship have been popping up in the news again lately—a quick Google of "penmanship" pulls articles from various magazines, newspapers, tv news segments, books have been published, blogs—all ranging from this year to a few from the 90s. To read each writing, one gets the impression that some kind of cyclical death of penmanship is happening every other year, once a year. But could this year really mark the start? Hopefully not. I can't imagine what the cards and letters I've received from my mom and grandmother, among others, would have been like were it not for their individual handwriting.

Whatever the case, it reminded me to flip through several books I have on my shelf and even old cards I've collected. In some of the books, I found really interesting samples of handwriting from different states and countries; male and female. Check out some of the things I found.

P.S. In times like this, why not tell someone they're on your mind by handwriting them at note?

Cursive

Photo by Andrew Buck, Courtesy Wikipedia

Remember the endless lessons on cursive handwriting in grade school? Not to mention the special ruled paper and that sample cursive alphabet in lower case and upper case, prominently displayed on the wall of the classroom? I certainly do. One of today's small headlines on Yahoo was about cursive writing, but not on the benefits of it in education—rather, the near death of an era. Here's a screen shot from the Fox clip (see title link for full video).



So here's your reminder! Please write more.