OPEN SESSION: The Moleskinerie Open Thread Discussion

Welcome to a OPEN SESSION:  The Moleskinerie Open Thread Discussion.

Moleskinerie invites you, our visitors to share your thoughts on a special topic.

Today it is: "Penmanship"

A man's penmanship is an unfailing index of his character, moral and mental, and a criterion by which to judge his peculiarities of taste and sentiments.
      - 4th Earl of Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope,
        in "Letters to His Son by the Earl of Chesterfield on the Fine Art of Becoming a Man of the World"

Image:"Shakespeare's Testament" from Wikipedia  

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Comments

[JohnA]

Oh, I have the worst penmanship. I find that desk height, writing surface, and pen type make a difference, but I have always had rotten penmanship. It's one reason why I bought my first C64 computer in high school, to cut down on my need to write papers. Writing for a task, like work or school, I always prefer typing.

But when writing for pleasure I like a good pen and my handwriting be damned. I can always read it and I don't care if someone else can read my own journal.

[Cyril]

People can laugh and excuse the chicken scratch that they call their own handwriting, yet at this time we still do appreciate examples of good, and sometimes even beautiful, handwriting.

What will handwriting analysts do when nobody can write longhand anymore?

[bogiesan]

I look back at my 40 years of journals and find that my handwriting has always been poor but, sheesh, it's gotten just awful over the last fifteen years. When I do essay questions for test, I have to write very small or it's simply illegible. Professors hate it anyway because it's so tiny.
Anyone else have their penmanship go totally to heck as you reach the bottom of a molie's page?

david boise ID

[K-eM]

I often find that handwriting and it's readability can be directly related to the amount of time taken to do it. I know that when I write fast and without thought, it gets bad. When I slow down just a bit and pay attention to what I'm doing, it improves immensely.

People blame bad handwriting on the advent of the computer, but I say it has more to do with the expectations of instantaneous that we have developed. Of course, a good teacher helps as well.

[Sophie Brown]

They say Obama's signature shows a constant need to be the center of attention.

This may be true for women in particular, but young girls tend to have very similar, curly writing and it's interesting to me which of us shift into something else. I have a friend and her writing is still hard to differentiate from a 7th grader's.

How many of us have handwriting that changes drastically over time?

I love looking at different handwriting samples, old and new.

[Sophie Brown]

Ben Franklin: "But on the whole, though I never reached the perfection I had been so ambitious of obtaining, but fell short of it, yet I was, by the endeavor, a better and happier man that I otherwise should have been if I had not attempted it; as those who aim at perfect writing by imitating the engraved copies, though they never reach the wished-for excellence of those copies, their hand is mended by the endeavor and is tolerable while it continues fair and legible."

We complain about bad handwriting but people then (and even my grandparents) actually used to PRACTICE. It stands to reason that if we also practiced we could settle on what we want our handwriting to look like and work on it and it would probably turn out just great!

[Carl]

Sophie's right about practice. K-eM is right about slowing down, but if I slow down much it stifles my train of thought. I find my writing (printing really) varies a lot depending on the time of day, my alertness, and my stress level.

[Melanie]

I found that since I use a computer for almost everything, that my hand actually cramps when I have to write. I agree with Sophie though we should practice more and I think we need to step away from the computer sometimes.

[Darrell]

I practice my penmanship every chance I get. It's always short "snippets" of time and meant to accomplish something else. When people see my writing I get comments like "it's so pretty," or its "looks like a computer did it." I use an Italic nib fountain pen and practice the Italic style of writing. It's all about the tool used and amount of practice. There's many web sites devoted to handwriting improvement if one is really interested. I've tried different inks for my moleskines and feel Aurora black or Noodler's "Bullet-Proof" are the best. Just use a sheet of absorbant paper as a blotter when turning the page in a hurry.

[Joyce]

I think poor penmanship is just laziness. I also blame society because you can scribble anything on a check or a signature line and most banks and organizations will accept it..even if it looks nothing like your name. Hell, in most cases you don't even need to write in long-hand, you can print your name.

I also think the school system should still teach penmanship. When I was in grammar school they taught penmanship and if yours was good enough your papers would be hung in City Hall and this made us very proud and we continued to practice our handwriting.

I also think that the way people scribble their name today, makes it so much easier for their name to be forged.

[Joe P.]

I, like many, was required to learn cursive in grammar school as part of our curriculum. We started in second grade (1992 for me) and at the time I hated it. I remember how happy I was when I advanced through school and the teachers no longer required us to write in script. Trading in my pencil and cursive for a pen and print.

As I got older though, beginning in college, as my interest in writing instruments grew, I began to write again using script. At the time it was quite poor, but I practiced. I bought a marble notebook (like the one I used in second grade) and I practiced. Today, I am glad to say, my penmanship it not too bad. Certainly much better than my friends, family and coworkers, and I take pride in my writing. A little nod to the past when things were simpler and little things like good penmanship were important.

Sadly, children today are not taught penmanship and if they are, very little time is spent on it. In today's world of computers, internet and blackkberrys it is indeed a dying art.

[Elisa Bartels]

I remember when I have looked at old manuscripts or even the penmanship of the last generation I have thought 'how beautiful'. It is sad to think that typing and text is taking the place of penmanship. I try to promote it in my house, making my step-son practise his writing so that it improves. It seems that in a world which moves quickly the slowness of writing will make it redundant. I put it to you all out there that writing allows us to slow our thoughts and think about how we wish to express ourselves. Think how many hastily typed emails have been sent to the detriment of the sender.

[Emily]

I have no fewer than seven different "types" of handwriting. Sometimes it's a subtle difference in the shaping and forming of letters and words, based on my mood or if my hand is tired from writing, or the pen I'm using... other times it appears as though a few different people have written on the pages. I can consciously use any one of them, or I can let myself just write and watch it drastically change over the course of a few pages. It's interesting, and makes me think what a handwriting analyst would have to say about my personality upon seeing that.

[Lanzman]

When it comes to my signature, I very consciously try to do it differently each time - protection against forgery, no matter how minor. In general, my cursive handwriting tends towards the unreadable unless I go very, very slowly. When I write in a journal or whatever, I print everything. It's not great but it is at least legible.

[Creep]

For the longest time I printed everything when I wrote. Just a few years back I started writing in cursive and found that I could take more in depth notes while not sacrificing time. Not too long ago I started using a Lamy Vista and decent paper and here I am posting on a blog about moleskines in a thread about penmanship. I am a changed man.

[GrannyKass]

The other day I switched pens from my normal everyday fountain pens. When I started writing I found the pen more suited to my cursive hand than my typical connected printing. As I paused to think on the subject I was thinking about, I looked at what I had writen and was taken back. What I saw was so much like my mother's Palmer version cursive hand writing. It was shocking to see how my own hand writing has progress through time. Yes, I was taught the same method of hand writing as most every other kid learning to write in the fifty's, but for so long have merged other styles and methods into my own hand that I had forgotten about the cursive I had learned. I was very pleased with the results of the hand writing that I placed on those pages in a lovely cursive hand. (The pen I was using helped a lot.)

I do believe that with time and practice everyones hand writing can be improved. I have been disheartened by the stance educators today take about the penmanship of our children or should I say lack of penmanship! I think a persons handwriting say a lot about a persons personality, their character, and their own self image. Penmanship is a subject that ought to rank up there with spelling and math skill in the educational systems of the country (US).

I'm please to see this thread of discussion reopened. I missed it when it was first posted.

[Ali S.]

I find it fascinating the many ways that some folks write and how they achieve writing in a beautiful fashion. My own penmanship is at best quite clean looking with a mix of cursive and script, however, when I am rushing or my brain is firing too fast for my hand to keep up my penmanship suffers greatly! I think I may need to get a pen that'll force me to slow down as I use a ballpoint pen in my moleskine journal writing. I have been looking at getting a foutain pen to force me to practice and write slower.

[Bob]

When I write with a fountain pen I tend to write faster and becomes more unreadable.

[Jack M]

I've always felt I had good penmanship. But every Christmas I get a card from my dad and I am reminded just how artistic writing can truly be. It's scary - and humbling - how beautifully my dad writes.

[Joy]

I think it's better to have sloppy handwriting or "unique" handwriting. That way, you make it harder for an eavesdropper to read what you have written.