Handwriting. Just a general discussion on handwriting.

[Rhynome]

Handwriting might seem like a somewhat obscure or unusual topic for a thread, so bare with me.

On the internet we very rarely see another's handwriting; the most expression we get in terms of characters is ASCII art (which I hasten to add is awesome) and I remember once the headmaster of my primary school declaring handwriting a dying art, he didn't say it in forlorn terms, just as a factual statement (in fact he seemed quite happy about it...).

Considering that this is an art forum and that many of us sketch it may be interesting to see attitudes towards handwriting, maybe even written examples of it in the form of scans, photos, etc. Are there people here who treat each word like an individual drawing and try and put some flourish into their words? Are there people here who can barely remember the last time they actually wrote something by hand?

Oh, and of course Hieroglyphics and Oriental characters are more than welcome in the discussion, as well as non-Latin scripts (Cyrillic, yay!).

[fukifino]

My handwriting is horrible. I think at least in part because I think a lot faster than I write so I'm impatient to get on with the next letter, word, sentence, whatever. So when I'm writing normal, my handrwriting starts off ok and gets worse and worse. Of course, my "handwriting" is also all capital letters...I rarely if ever write cursive anymore.

[mambo]

Interesting subject. Handwriting is by and large relegated to unimportance in most education systems in the US these days. There is not the emphasis on good penmanship that there once was. One only has to look back the old manuals of penmanship to realize how crude most peoples handwriting actually is. There are a myriad of different reasons for this...

Not the least of which is the advent of the typewriter and onto the keyboard and the computer. Text messaging is de rigeur these days. So we're not likely to go back to an age of decent penmanship in handwriting anytime soon.
People are often shocked when they see calligraphy samples in what is known as copperplate script. To them it's something exotic and complicated... but there was a time when it was considered relatively standard for good handwriting.

[Rabid]

correlation........?




Behold my horrendous handwriting!

[Rhynome]

Yes, Rhynome is awesome!
Or is that Rhynome ß awesome?

Pretty damn interesting contrast, to me at least. Did anyone ever try to get you to write 'properly' or some such or did you manage to escape all that?

[Rabid]

Handwriting cursive was perfect in early grade school but it just didn't take

[FactorZero]

It's interesting how people can be great at drawing yet suck at hand writing. Then again...handwriting is a left brain activity and art is right brain. I still wonder how the hand eye coordination from drawing doesn't carry over into your handwriting abilities.

[Robert.B]

correlation........?




Behold my horrendous handwriting!

you write just like me! you know whats strange i can remember in high school how my hand writing wasnt as bad as it is now, but now its like i have trouble writing because its like my hands wants to be lose and gestural or something?

[Jabo]

When I was in in-training, my design teacher told us all that we would learn how to design things, take good photographs, learn about type and get a good handwriting. He said that handwriting is an important part of becoming a media designer and that your handwriting represents yourself and your work. I was scared, because my handwriting was horrible. It still is, we didn't learn how to get a good handwriting. People who know me tend to come up with something like "no, no, let me write it down, it's easier this way" because they can't read my cacography. I prefer writing on a keyboard.

I write really, really fast, and I tend to cramp my hand while writing until my hand hurts, skipping whole sentences by just some jaggy lines and some vertical streaks. Here's a sample.

[Flake]

My handwriting tends to come in two varieties..

Things someone else will have to read- pretty neat usually. I suspect that's a by product of going to school back when word processors were a strange and expensive new technology and your test scores would be heavily penalised for bad handwriting, spelling or grammar.

Notes for myself- unintelligible scrawlings that make sense only to me.

Since I started doing the majority of my writing on a keyboard my handwriting has definitely become messier though. Use it or lose it, same as most things I guess.

[Moai]

Pretty much the only time I use handwriting anymore is to put the date on my sketches, and to sign my signature. Over the past year or two, my signature has devolved considerably. When I first started signing things like paychecks a few years ago, my name was recognizable. You could tell that it was supposed to say Cory Trego-Erdner. Nowadays, the Cory is mostly recognizable, though the R and the Y have merged together somewhat, but the Trego looks like a severely lopsided M with a long tail off to the right, and the Erdner is just a perfunctory, nigh-unrecognizable E at the end.

[Blahm]

here is a small sample of my hand.

[fukifino]

Pretty much the only time I use handwriting anymore is to put the date on my sketches, and to sign my signature. Over the past year or two, my signature has devolved considerably. When I first started signing things like paychecks a few years ago, my name was recognizable. You could tell that it was supposed to say Cory Trego-Erdner. Nowadays, the Cory is mostly recognizable, though the R and the Y have merged together somewhat, but the Trego looks like a severely lopsided M with a long tail off to the right, and the Erdner is just a perfunctory, nigh-unrecognizable E at the end.

God, don't even get me started on my signature. I hear you on that one. The first letter of my first name is recognizable, and you might notice the T in there somewhere but the rest is all just scribbles.

[Rabid]

here is a small sample of my hand.

Wow, you need to stop using your notes for other duties

[Maestro Andres]

This is a very interesting topic to talk about. Just about reading about handwriting you remind me that in my teenage years, I have to change from writing in cursive to writing in a printed manner. My handwriting in cursive was so horrible that sometimes I didn't even understand my own writing. When I start writing in print (if that is how it is called) it was still bad but at least noticeable.

Also, about the signature, that reminds that long time ago I read about that there was this discipline that could tell people personality based on their signature. For example, just from the signature you could tell if someone was confident, outgoing, etc.

Then again...handwriting is a left brain activity and art is right brain.

That sounds interesting. Hopefully, I am not generalizing since some other people had agree with me on this, but had you ever notice that doctors have such a terrible handwriting? So bad, that I don't even know how the pharmacists can understand what is in the prescription

[central]

Hey I once read that some companies would actually select candidates based on their handwriting if they scored equally well on all other tests. Thankfully as artists I don't think anyone is going to give/refuse us work based on just our handwriting. Improving my handwriting does seem much easier than improving my art though.

I try and write every now and then just to make sure that my handwriting dosen't slip away completely, and also because I enjoy it. I used to write extra big in primary school, teachers told me to write smaller, so then it went the other extreme and was so small it was almost un-readable . Now it's somewhere in-between. I do believe that handwriting can be one way to tell a person's character, although it's not a sure thing IMO.