The Evolution of Penmanship

This past Sunday morning I saw a lead-in for a segment of the CBS Morning Show that stated that the average American's quality of penmanship peaks at the 4th Grade Level.  Surely, that can't be right...er...(that's not right or write) is it?

Is penmanship a dying art?????

Let's take a look at a signature on a document from 1776. 

I think we could all read that signature.  In fact, that particular signature is so famous that even today, there is that cliche of "putting your John Hancock" on a document.  Back in that era, people could make a living teaching penmanship.  It was an art form. Prior to the last 100 years, there were professional penman.  Men like Platt Rogers Spencer, one of the first American penman, even has a style of writing named after him.

The Spencerian Script




 I guess we can assume that most people prior to the last 100 years or so exceeded the 4th grade level of penmanship. 

With the advent of the typed word and more recently the computerized word we seem to be heading in the "our written word looks like hen scratch" era.  With 294 Billion e-mails and nearly 5 Billion text messages sent EVERY DAY (according to the CBS report) we just aren't practicing our writing skills.

Here are a couple of signatures from more modern-day writers.  We have made great strides in our penmanship. Can you tell me who these signature belongs to.  No?  Me either and no one seems to know.  They were listed as examples of bad penmanship.

or



I know for a fact that my 4th grade cursive sucked.  I lived with my grandparents that FIRMLY believed that being left handed was a choice.  A bad choice according to their way of thinking so I was only allowed to write with my right hand. I think that was a pretty common thought among people in general in that era. Left handedness = WRONG way of doing it.  This is what my writing would have looked like as I struggled with my right (or in my case, wrong) hand.

If my 4th grade writing was the best I would ever get...I would,
indeed, be penmanship challenged.  Luckily, it improved.

However, with some of today's technology, there is NO POSSIBLE way to have pretty cursive.  I might as well of stayed writing with my right (or in my case, the wrong) hand.

There are times that I get to sign my signature on those little boxes that swipe my credit card in various stores, banks, government offices and the like.  Gosh, even the guy that came to do my bi-annual HVAC check had me sign a little electronic tablet showing that he completed the work.  The little tablet will send me a copy of the work order to my email.

The problem with these little card swiper things for a left handed person is that when I sign one my signature is totally unrecognizable.  I surely could sign as Bugs Bunny or Batman and no one would be able to tell the difference.  AND have you noticed that half the time you swipe your charge card now, they don't even want your signature.  How unimportant I have become.

Still there was a time that we practiced our cursive to get it near perfect.

notice our good posture!! OMG there is a lefty in the bunch!!!

So it comes down to all the time and effort my generation and the generations before me that worked for hours to perfect our perfect cursive letters, pretty much wasted a lot of time. The quality of your penmanship is not going to be appreciated....or required...or read.

Sincerely,

So what are your thoughts?  Do you miss people actually writing letters and cards to you?  Do you ever get love letters from the special people in your life?  Do you care how legible your writing is?  Does it matter?

Here is a video where someone is anxiously waiting for a letter.

The Good for the Day.... We still know what a pencil and ballpoint pen is.

The Bad for the day....That letters and card to no longer part of our lives.

The Weird for the day....Prior to the 1920's children were never taught to print.  They only were taught cursive.  Who knew? According to Tamara Plakins Thorton, a history professor at the State University of New York who is an author of a cultural history of handwriting in America, President Abraham Lincoln never knew how to print.