Your handwriting is atrocious!

I did well in school. I enjoyed learning and tried hard on all my assignments and tests. However, in elementary school, there was always one grade that was not very high. That was the handwriting grade.

 

Remember when we used to get graded on our penmanship? Everything we did in school was paper and pencil, so the teachers wanted to be able to read what we wrote. This was an area in which I did not excel. I think we got checkmarks on our report card in elementary school if it was an area of concern. I’m pretty sure there were two checkmarks by handwriting for me at times.

 

And now penmanship is becoming almost extinct. Many people in the past would always be able to take pride in the beauty of what they wrote. Once we all learned cursive in second grade, there was a desire to really loop some of the letters and make them stand out. But when you had to use that special lined paper - you remember, the one with three lines, one of them in the middle - you’d better stick to how the letter was supposed to look.

 

Many of us would practice signing our autographs for when we became famous athletes. You might have done that too, whole pages of a notebook with autographs galore, trying to find the coolest looking way to sign your name. Harmon Killebrew of the Minnesota Twins famously would tell budding stars to always sign your autograph so people can read it. I have a baseball signed by many players, not all of whom took Killebrew’s advice.

 

I’m bad at writing things by hand. I’ve gotten to the grocery store and not been able to read something I have on my list. I tend to be in a hurry when I jot something down. I tell my students that if I write something on the board, it must be pretty important. I just don’t do it if I don’t have to. 

 

I have notes by my computer with ideas for future columns. You might find me squinting at them sometimes, trying to figure out what my chicken scratch says. I’ll write on a post-it note at school so I can remember to do something. That can be hit and miss. I do try to make sure the first letter of something I write is distinguishable so I can maybe figure it out later. I do that in my gradebook too - if I’m writing in a vocab unit, you can recognize the V. Michelle often has questions about numbers I write in the checkbook register; I’m especially bad with my 3’s.

 

Handwriting really is a lost art. Students are barely taught the basics of cursive in schools these days, and there is some loss in this. If schools were replacing that time with typing skills, an important ability in today’s world, it might be okay. But there are those times when technology fails us and we need to write on paper. 

 

I used to joke that kids might not need to learn cursive as much. Does anyone really look at your signature on a document anymore? Half the time, you’re signing on a screen, and it’s impossible to make it look nice anyway. But I do worry about those times when our Chromebooks in school don’t work or the power goes out. We need a back-up plan, and that involves writing by hand.

 

There is some scientific research about handwriting using parts of our brain that are important to develop. That seems like reason enough to continue to try our hand (ha ha) at handwriting. But many schools across the country shunt that aside since they have to teach to the almighty standardized tests.

 

There is concern that students who can’t write in cursive also can’t read cursive. Looking at some of our founding documents in this country, such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, might look like a foreign language. Of course, kids would just use Google Lens or some other high-tech gadget or app to translate it for them. 

 

There is something amazing about good penmanship. My mom has tremendous handwriting. She also knows shorthand from her days as a secretary. We used to see alien-looking squiggles on the pad by the telephone, but that was just Mom making notes while taking a message. Even those had an elegance to them.

 

My own writing has devolved to some combination between printing and cursive. I connect some letters while leaving others alone. My signature might show an M and a D with some lines in-between. If I autograph a yearbook or one of my novels, it’s a printed version of my name with a much larger M and D. My handwriting is not something I’m proud of.

 

I know I can do better. At times, I write things on my board at school that are entirely legible. But I’ve fallen in with the ever-growing crowd of people who don’t write much or neatly.

Ah, who am I kidding? I’ve never been part of the neat group. 

 

Word of the Week: This week’s word is lentitude, which means slowness or sluggishness, as in, “What seemed like lentitude out of the student was simply his trying to write neatly.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!