Writing by hand

BBC News: The slow death of handwriting.

Christmas cards, shopping lists and what else? The occasions in which we write by hand are fewer and fewer, says Neil Hallows. So is the ancient art form of handwriting dying out?  A century from now, our handwriting may only be legible to experts.  For some, that is already the case. But writer Kitty Burns Florey says the art of handwriting is declining so fast that ordinary, joined-up script may become as hard to read as a medieval manuscript.

"When your great-great-grandchildren find that letter of yours in the attic, they'll have to take it to a specialist, an old guy at the library who would decipher the strange symbols for them," says Ms Florey, author of the newly-published Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting.

On hot sunny days in the summer holidays I remember being kept inside and made to practice my handwriting.  People over a certain age have much more uniform writing.  Once upon a time, we were taught how to form letters and drilled to follow the rules.  The article says teachers now are more concerned with content than presentation, so long as the handwriting is legible.  A lot of my communication is either by phone or email, but my organiser is paper, my diary is paper, and my writing ideas notebook is paper.  There's something about writing on the first page of a new book, and you can't always get wireless access.

The follow up BBC Magazine article features pictures of handwriting for the sentence "How quickly daft jumping zebras vex."  The variation is striking.  Bonus points for spotting the spelling error.  One looks like calligraphy (Richard, 74 years old), some look like mine (drunken spider tracks), some look like I wish mine looked.