Yup! I've been using the computer to write practically everything since 1980, so the only way my handwriting is legible is if I use a handwriting font ;-)

" I have a theory that my handwriting is deteriorating because I do so little of it"
Yes indeed! Typing is so much easier. I used to have nice writing but now it looks terrible and my hand gets tired after a sentence or two!

I was discussing this with some folks just the other day. My handwriting is atrocious. I'm 48 years old, and some days my penmanship is like that of a 90 year old -- all shaky, like letters we receive from DH's grandma. ;-) My handwriting used to be quite nice, so I too can only surmise that it's lack of practice that's made it what it is today. Well, maybe. I can't quite explain that "old lady shaky quality" it has. Maybe I'm just old and can't face facts.

Ditto! I used to have pretty handwriting. Was even forced to do my sister's wedding invitations when I was Senior in HS.

Mom fusses at me because you can't read my last name. WTH do I care as long as the bank processes the checks?! (Self-employed/work, I rarely write any personal checks.)

Worse yet, it's actually physically difficult to write! So weird. Don't mean to say that I'm arthritic or something, and I too am only (ONLY) 48, but writing just doesn't feel natural. That must impact on my penmanship!

I went from using cursive to printing everything about 30 years ago. When I have to sign my name it feels very strange.

My mom still had beautiful handwriting at 91. It's a dying art form.

I have never had beautiful handwriting, and it changes from day to day, hour to hour and pen to pen. I have friends that still have beautiful handwriting. I don't think that any of my family members had particularly nice handwriting, so that's my excuse - I lack the gene.

I do think the type of pen makes a difference in how my writing looks. I happen to really like writing with ultra fine point sharpies because the line is thicker. (Ha, now I'm thinking back to those jumbo crayons they have for kids.) A pen with a fine tip looks the worst for me. I've always thought that.

Not only is it a dying art form for those of us who once knew how to do it, but someone told me it isn't taught in school at all. Is this true?

Yes, graywings, recently I read that they were going to stop teaching cursive. I guess printed signatures will be the norm. They can eliminate that 2nd line below the signature line on forms "print name here".

My handwriting has always been a combination of printed & cursive. Actually my writing looks very similar to 2 of my sisters. Not terribly neat or messy, somewhere in between.

My left handed sister has, by far, the nicest writing. My mother insisted that they turn the paper instead of making her adjust to the paper angled for a right-handed person. It paid off with nice writing and none of that hand & arm contortions some lefties do to write.

My DH's handwriting is fabulous. Neat & legible. People always comment on it. He is a very neat, tidy, dare I say anal-retentive type and it reflects that. In a good way.

They can eliminate that 2nd line below the signature line on forms "print name here".

Often that "printed" name is just as illegible as the cursive one!

To learn that they are eliminating cursive makes me feel so old, and sad, too. I can remember how hard we worked on our Palmer method cursive in school, and how proud I was of my penmanship. My FIL's handwriting was absolutely beautiful, so precise and flowing that it looked like a woman wrote it, but he was a big, burly type male. I used to love reading his notes on the back of the photos he took in our photo album.

Speaking of things becoming non-existent, keeping photo albums are another thing that no one seems to do anymore! It's all online!

Nanny, that's so true. When I first started taking digital photos I'd get the ones I liked professionally printed and put them in photo albums. I haven't done that for about 3 years now. Recently spent a couple days going through boxes of film photos that never made the album cut and got rid of a bunch, but I still have six storage boxes full under the bed.

Have to admit looking at someone's photos on their phone isn't quite the same as the real thing.

No. I cant' believe it. Seriously? Not teaching it anymore? I read some studies that said that it somehow makes you smarter to write instead of typing. I think it was as a child. I am flabbergasted.

I've always had awful handwriting. Teachers would get so upset with me for not writing in the Palmer script, or whatever it was we were taught as kids.

I also get a ton of grief for my signature. Some people say I can't sign my name the way I do...I admit, it's unintelligible, and I write only my first initial and last name, but seriously, it looks like a check mark or something.

Even my printing is awful!

I am a teacher and every student in our school (over 900 kiddoes in an elementary school) works on penmanship using a program we selected. It is required by our school as it is in most of the elementary schools in our district (one of the largest in the US).

I haven't noticed my handwriting deteriorating, but I do still write letters and thank you notes pretty regularly. As a teacher, I also write a ot, so maybe that is why.

Wow, I haven't heard some schools are doing away with cursive penmanship. I think that's sad.

Here's an interesting Washington Post article on the place that teaching penmanship has in schools. It is from 2006, but I imagine things aren't much different in 2011.

Btw, teacher Miss Debbie should say, "We *couldn't* care less," but that discussion is for another thread!

Here is a link that might be useful: penmanship & priorites

Interesting responses!

Auntjen, I too have been wondering if my worsening writing was actually a function of age.

And I too am somewhat saddened by the possibility of cursive someday not being taught or used. It strikes me as another level of depersonalization in our 21st-century world. Hmm. . . Do we suppose people similarly mourned the loss of handwritten letters and documents when typewriters first came into use?

Penmanship styles change greatly over the years. I have personal letters written with fountain pens in India ink by men and women in my family dating to the 1860s. The penmanship is all the same until about the 1930s. I'm guessing that's when the Palmer method became the norm because that's when the styles changed in the letters from family members of that generation. Palmer must have remained at least until the 1970s-80s, because my kids handwriting, and that of all the people I know of their generation, is very different from mine.

My children and grandchildren all learned to print when they were 4 or 5, refined their printing until it became legible. Now the eldest gkid is almost 8 and has been experimenting with her signature simply by linking the letters together. It looks great!

My husband was tortured while being taught the Palmer method, always received poor grades in Penmanship, and earned his living as a reporter who can print beautifully as fast as anyone can talk, but you can't read his signature. To this day he feels awful about his penmanship, says he tried really hard to learn to write well but just couldn't.

Another thing - I remember the change to ball point pens in the 1950s. That made writing so much smoother and easier, and a lot less messy. No blotters, no smeared ink; a lot of ball point pens leaked in my father's shirt pockets in those days, but they were better than bottles of spilled india ink! We treasured our "writing instruments" then; now, I must have 50 pens in the house.

My handwriting? Still perfect Palmer method. I'm 63. And I do not lament the loss of perfect penmanship. Linked printing works just fine, and the time spent teaching penmanship is better spent on something else. The same old green Palmer cards that were posted on the bulletin boards above the chalkboards when I and my kids were in school are still posted in my gkids classrooms today. They'll learn.

Whew! I guess my teachers taught me how to write my cursive well, but I must have missed the sessions on brevity!

Yes -- awkward, slow, physically uncomfortable. The shocker was when I took a class two years ago. In college, I took notes at the speed of light, my notes being the key to getting good grades. But in the class two years ago, taking notes was a hindrance. Handwriting was sooooo slow (& so was the ol' brain, unfortunately!)

Slow, very awkward and most uncomfortable!

Can manage some printing.

And I do try to stretch and flex my hands and fingers every day. (as if you are putting on tight gloves plus stretching out my fingers as far as I can and then clenching a fist for a moment or two ...)

My mum and sister have gorgeous writing/penmanship skills! Sigh. Yet another proof of my "low dip in the gene pool" LOL!

Oh thank you! I thought I was the only one, and wsa attributing it to age( or at least arthritis) It makes more sense that using the computer for everything makes the fingers less nimble with a pen.
I will try to do more handwritten stuff probably help the muscles in my hands too.

I used to enjoy reading about handwriting analysis and thought it was an interesting way to "read" someone. I wonder if graphologists will be looking for a new line of work soon?

My handwriting now? Atrocious! But it wasn't that great when I was a kid either.

30+ years ago when I was starting out in drafting and design got into the habit of printing just about everything. I still print everything, I'll just use cursive to sign my name.

Gotta say that I can print very quickly and it's legible and has style.....looks a lot better than my cursive does!

Handwriting is a lost ART unfortunately. My children were taught to "cursive" write with "monkey tails" and just link the letters together - not the same! Their papers were all submitted processed so they never had to learn how to properly write. My oldest son said my youngest received a lower score on his SAT writing because his writing was poor! My own writing, which was good, has taken a taken a definite hit in this processing age. I barely recognize my own signatuire.

My writing has failed a bit too, but still fairly nice. Although I tend to write a note/letter and rewrite to make it look better.

Interesting "Hireno", I too mix cursive with printed letters and my oldest son does the same. Are you artistic? I keep thinking this is why I do this and sometimes even change the way I write.

My husband always signed docs with his initials...forever and on important papers. He had wonderful, unique writing, was left handed.

I too heard about the schools dropping cursive writing. Have no clue why and wonder if it is to add some other topic for teaching time. Of course I never thought the average would yield to reading books, news, electronically either. And my background is IT from way back. Guess I'm getting too old to adjust.

I love good handwriting!
Mine....not so much!

When I write "Faron", I make a large/quick "7", then a quick horiz. line left-to-right thru the stem of the 7, and then into the "aron". Long ago, I saw "F"'s done that way, and thought it looked so cool! I never like the "proper" 3-stroke F's...yukk.

My Mom's name starts with a "J". I always laughed when She'd start writing her name! She makes a few quick loops without touching the paper, then on a downstroke, launches into the "J". Result...two beautiful J-loops. Her writing is so pretty yet today! She's 81 now!

Faron
(with a "7")

I use to have pretty penmanship. But I noticed as I looked at my shopping list in the market yesterday, it was child like.

I still get cards from my aunt, who has beautiful handwriting. She tells me how's she doing, what she cooked for dinner, it's so sweet.

Jane, although my mom is gone I'm fortunate to get occasional cards and letters from her former neighbor. She's 84 and has beautiful handwriting. That reminds me ... I owe her a letter, but it won't be handwritten. ;)

This thread caught my eye as I work as an OT in the public schools. Since this is an area I assess and work with quite a bit, I also have some sad feelings as I see handwriting instruction falling to the wayside. Our district still teaches printing and cursive, but the amount of time devoted to it isn't sufficient. As teacher's have had more and more curriculum added to their plates, the handwriting instruction has progressively taken a back seat, and ends up being 5 minutes here and there. I anticipate that the cursive will be dropped from instruction at some point. Handwriting is really a very complicated motor task, and needs a lot of practice to become proficient with it. Our children simply don't get that amount of practice. I really agree that it is a dying art form. On the other hand I work on genealogy, and looking at my gg-grandfathers recordings in the family bible (around 1850-60s), looks like elaborate script from a typeset printer. It is hard to believe it is handwritten! A progression with the onset of technology....I think it is sad to lose it.

As I read it in this thread, some people have beautiful handwriting, some people don't. Some of us have it for life, some of us lose it as we age. It's just like everything else....art, cooking, decorating, music, voice, athletic ability.....we all have our talents, but we don't all have beautiful handwriting.

As I said above, my gdtr is teaching herself cursive by linking her printed letters together. Her new signature is actually quite pretty! But she is a very artistic little girl and likes practicing it. Not so for everybody. As wigardenwewannabe (did I spell that correctly?) said, it's a progression; we've all seen the progression from earliest scribes when only a few were able to write - I personally find it very difficult to read Olde English script - to the present, when we all can. I just don't agree that it is a lost art, and I think time spent teaching and practicing penmanship is better spent on other things.

I scribbled a shopping list for myself and when I got to the store I couldn't decipher a few things. And I wrote it earlier in the day! Clearly, or maybe not so clearly, I need to take an additional second to write a bit neater.

I thought about what I planning on cooking and that helped me with one line. The other item I did finally interpret but couldn't remember why I wanted it. I bought it anyway figuring it would come to me eventually.

What a combo: sloppy handwriting and a bad memory.

I've always had terrible handwriting, and really don't care at all that I do. I can read it. I figure a really distorted signature means it's harder to copy.