Handwriting: The Lost Art
In the fourth grade, my teacher made us dedicate about 30 minutes a day to learning cursive. She taught us how to write a letter or two each day, and even emphasized how the “m” has three humps instead of two. In college, I was an English major so a few medieval text courses were thrown into my schedule. On top of learning about the evolution of a book, I saw the dedication and delicacy that scribes and illuminators put into a single page. I also consider my father to be an artist. Despite his rants about topics that I don’t agree with and his loud clapping when watching baseball, he’ll tilt any envelope or field trip form and sign his name in a very delicate manner. To this day, my father gets snippy when someone in our family doesn’t hold a pen correctly. To wrap this all up, handwriting is valuable to me.
In high school, I remember classmates and teachers telling me, “Wow, you have beautiful handwriting!” “Beautiful,” I thought to myself. “Isn’t this how we’re all supposed to be writing?” It was in that time period that I started judging my classmates for their messy handwriting. I noticed the way they held their pens, the way they filled up a huge area of the line space on the page, and worst of all, the way they kept their notebooks straight instead of tilting it at a slight angle. Things got even more distressing when I was ending my undergraduate year and officially in the corporate world. I remember having to type up some notes that I had written the day before. I looked at my notes and had a difficult time interpreting almost everything that I had written. Why was my handwriting turning out so bad and why is a big portion of the population headed in the same direction?
Well let’s think about the times that we find ourselves with pen and paper. Right now, I can only think of the motivational quotes that I write on sticky notes, expressing myself in my journal, or signing someone’s petition at the grocery shopping. We use our phones and computers for about everything else. There are few college students who use a notebook in class anymore, and important files at work are typed up and then put into a drive. Even small, daily notes fit into this category like creating a grocery list on our phone’s note app or using an online planner instead of a physical one. We barely write anymore. On top of this, the digital age has made us want everything in an instant. Smartphones were invented to help us be more efficient, not to slow us down. We want to know what everyone is doing, reply at that exact moment, and get a response right after. So when we’re writing something down, a sense of urgency sort of dawns over us. We want that information to be quick and right in front of us, hence the birth of chicken scratch. Bad handwriting is also acquired at a young age. The rise of standardized testing has forced teachers to completely get rid of traditional lessons plans (ahem, handwriting). Teachers simply do not have the time to be showing their students how to write in cursive.
Bad handwriting doesn’t necessarily attribute a negative quality about an individual. It’s just society that doesn’t really have the time to teach us or give us the space to practice this wonderful skill. So, why am I telling you all this information about handwriting? Well, to me, handwriting is a lost art. Looking back on ancient calligraphers and the preparation that it takes before signing your name, it is simply beautiful. On top of this, handwriting helps us in ways that we never thought possible. Teachers are constantly telling us that writing down notes helps us retain information as opposed to typing it on a computer. Now imagine if those notes were neat and organized. Wouldn’t that give you just a little more incentive to look back on them? As someone who dabbles in graphic design from time to time, having a legible and structured draft inspires me to create a visually stunning graphic. It’s just a communication tool that we shouldn’t turn into scribble scrabble.
Now there are a few things that you could start implementing into your daily life in order to start improving your handwriting. Start off by going on YouTube and literally typing “nice handwriting.” That way you’ll see how someone holds their pen and the way they tilt their paper. Another thing to do is order a calligraphy book off of Amazon. Sure it’s a little over the top, but it’ll definitely help you improve your handwriting. Another easy method, that has personally helped me, is to create spirals or connected circles on paper for about 5 minutes a day. I got this trick from one of my high school teachers, and it’s honestly been extremely useful.
The decline of good handwriting is more than evident in this day and age. It’s important to step back and sort of appreciate this communication form and how lucky you are to even know how to write letters. Now let’s just work on making it legible.
