Handwriting

[codyg1985]

Wait, wait... you WRITE on a bar exam? I thought all certification tests like that were all multiple choice. The FE/PE and CEM exams are, at least.

The new Structural Engineering certification exam (a 16 hour, two day exam) has a written portion on it.

[Duke87]

I used to get terrible grades in handwriting;

You got grades in that?

Back in primary school there were a good number of essays that I got Fs on simply because the teacher could not read my handwriting or would not put in the effort to decipher it. Early on, some of my teachers would not accept typed homework, insisting I needed to practice my penmanship. Later, as home computers became more ubiquitous, it started being accepted and even expected. Of course, typing an assignment I had to do in class was never an option, and when I was younger I hated typing because I was so slow at it that it took forever (as I got older and started spending more time on the computer and on the internet, my typing speed improved greatly).

Even without that, I have also had teachers and professors take points off of assignments that were legible but still perceived as sloppy. This was much to my ire in college because I had to do a lot of assignments on engineering pad paper, with a pencil, and with a straight edge, compass, and french curve to make diagrams. The amount of time and effort I spent on making the assignment neat easily equaled and sometimes exceeded the amount of time and effort I spent actually solving the problems. It was ridiculous. Especially considering that in over three years of working I have had to present to someone calculations that I wrote out by hand... exactly once, and that was an odd case. I do all of my calculations at work in Excel.

At secondary school we were required to write with fountain pens, not roller-balls or similar (and certainly not biros).

I have never in my life used a fountain pen and without Googling it I wouldn't have any idea where to even obtain one. They are completely unheard of in the US these days, if you had one people would look at it as an odd relic rather than something anyone would ever use.

[agentsteel53]

I have very neat printed handwriting, and can make elegant cursive but it's about as tough and deliberate for me as any other calligraphic font...

I cannot for the life of me use a fountain pen.

[agentsteel53]

This was much to my ire in college because I had to do a lot of assignments on engineering pad paper, with a pencil, and with a straight edge, compass, and french curve to make diagrams. The amount of time and effort I spent on making the assignment neat easily equaled and sometimes exceeded the amount of time and effort I spent actually solving the problems. It was ridiculous. Especially considering that in over three years of working I have had to present to someone calculations that I wrote out by hand... exactly once, and that was an odd case. I do all of my calculations at work in Excel.

how old are you?  I'm 32; went to college 1999-2004, and I definitely was allowed - in fact, encouraged! - to use a computer to facilitate my work as much as possible.  the professors generally knew what was out there; so using google wasn't considered cheating, and in fact not using google was viewed as wasting one's own time.  we were just asked to cite our sources.  fortunately, so many of my classes had cooperative projects that "Joe derived this formula; see his problem set" was a perfectly valid citation.

furthermore, in the electrical engineering department we all had to take a programming course as a prerequisite to the rest of the curriculum, so something like "write a short program to brute force through N000 cases" was not viewed as an unusually demanding task, and an elegant Matlab diagram was the logical time-saving choice over straight-edge, compass, etc etc.

[1995hoo]

I can't use a fountain pen, but my father loves them, especially Mont Blanc. Most decent pen stores carry some kind of fountain pen, even if they don't sell as many these days. But you pretty much have to go to a pen shop or a place like Levenger if you want to find one.

BTW, the comments about getting graded on handwriting in school makes me remember how my fourth grade teacher gave me an "A" in handwriting and then the next year a different teacher gave me a "C" for exactly the same cursive writing. 

[kkt]

I have never in my life used a fountain pen and without Googling it I wouldn't have any idea where to even obtain one. They are completely unheard of in the US these days, if you had one people would look at it as an odd relic rather than something anyone would ever use.

Completely unheard of?  I have a fountain pen, and I'm in the U.S.  Most art supply stores have them.

[formulanone]

BTW, the comments about getting graded on handwriting in school makes me remember how my fourth grade teacher gave me an "A" in handwriting and then the next year a different teacher gave me a "C" for exactly the same cursive writing. 

Heh, been there too. Funny, because for years, people usually commented on how legible and precise my writing appeared (usually when sharing college notes or lists).

Took a few computing courses several years after graduation, one of which required actual writing, and I found my wrists couldn't handle multiple paragraphs. After years of just writing a sentence or two at a time, relying on typing on keyboards likely weakened them. To this day, its appearance shows if I don't take my time.

[Dr Frankenstein]

The handwriting I use to write down notes is halfway between print and cursive. When I write something that I intend someone else to read, I print. If I really put myself into it, it can look elegant. Otherwise, it just looks average, or slightly worse.

[Duke87]

This was much to my ire in college because I had to do a lot of assignments on engineering pad paper, with a pencil, and with a straight edge, compass, and french curve to make diagrams. The amount of time and effort I spent on making the assignment neat easily equaled and sometimes exceeded the amount of time and effort I spent actually solving the problems. It was ridiculous. Especially considering that in over three years of working I have had to present to someone calculations that I wrote out by hand... exactly once, and that was an odd case. I do all of my calculations at work in Excel.

how old are you?  I'm 32; went to college 1999-2004, and I definitely was allowed - in fact, encouraged! - to use a computer to facilitate my work as much as possible.

25 and in college 2005-2009. We used computers plenty but when it came to solving problems for homework assignments in engineering classes we were generally expected to write all the work out by hand and show all the steps, on engineering paper. We were allowed to use fancy calculators to do the necessary math but this was how we were required to present our work. Why? Well, because that's what we were told is proper and professional.

To be fair, there are plenty of jobs you could end up in where doing work on engineering paper is still normal - any job where you might need to calculate things in the field without access to a computer, for example. And plenty of older people still use engineering paper to run through problems in the office when it would be just as easy to type everything purely out of habit - an older gentleman I share an office with frequently uses engineering paper, a pen, and a calculator to do stuff that I would just do entirely in Excel.

I think the issue, then, is that I was taught with a philosophy of doing things the traditional way except using modern technology, rather than with a philosophy that takes the full implications of modern technology into account.

[empirestate]

I write down music much more quickly by hand than in the computer. Even in college (through 2000) I wrote out a lot of orchestra parts by hand, as notation and printing technology was not yet quite reliable except at the professional level. Today the systems are reliable but still not quick, so I scratch out ideas on blank paper, then when it's all worked out it's a simple extra step to input into software for printing and distribution. At that point it's essentially data entry, whereas while I'm creating my brain is much better wired to a pencil than a keyboard, but there are many people who compose more easily in software too.

[1995hoo]

20-some years ago during my junior year of high school my calculus teacher was perfectly fine with our using a computer to do the problems as long as we attached a printout showing what we did. I wrote a BASIC program once to solve a problem, so I simply attached a printout showing the program I wrote and my answer. I would have gotten full credit....except I made a typo entering one of the exponents (I think I squared something I meant to cube or something like that–details are foggy many years later). I rather appreciated him allowing that kind of thing because I'd had other math teachers who insisted you write everything out in pencil.

[sammi]

[...] I'd had other math teachers who insisted you write everything out in pencil.

All my math teachers had students write in pencil, but I was always different and always wrote with a fountain pen. It was on every test: "Use a pencil!" Just having graduated from high school, I don't think I'll ever have to deal with that again.

[agentsteel53]

All my math teachers had students write in pencil, but I was always different and always wrote with a fountain pen. It was on every test: "Use a pencil!" Just having graduated from high school, I don't think I'll ever have to deal with that again.

for me, that's just asking for trouble.  I make enough mistakes that I need a pencil!

[hm insulators]

anybody else cross their 7's or z's?

Me here, although except for my signature I always print rather than write cursive. I do do one rather unusual thing: To punch up a word or phrase, I will write in italics. Anybody else know how to write italics with pencil or pen?

[sammi]

Me here, although except for my signature I always print rather than write cursive. I do do one rather unusual thing: To punch up a word or phrase, I will write in italics. Anybody else know how to write italics with pencil or pen?

I tend to write in italics to emphasize, or when writing scientific names or titles of books (everyone else usually underlines). But it just doesn't work as well in cursive.

[national highway 1]

I tend to write my lower case K's with a loop for the top diagonal stroke, capital J's with a hook at the top, cross strokes on my I's and capital E's which look like a backward 3.

[apeman33]

Does anyone use the classic cursive S or do they just make a regular S? I do the latter because I always had trouble making the cursive S (And my first name being Scott, you'd think I'd get that down). I showed someone why I don't do a cursive S a couple of years ago and they told me it looked more like an ampersand. Now that's bad.

I also don't do the cursive Q. I haven't met that many people who do. I'm inconsistent with the use of a cursive capital A. Sometimes the loop, sometimes not. Same with cursive G. My cursive T's are really just regular T's with a slanted bar going "southwest to northeast" versus a true vertical one.

My 1's have a cap. My 4's are closed. My 6's and 9's look similar to those in this typeface. I put slashes through zeroes when I need to make sure it's not the letter 0, such as in a serial number. And someone noticed in high school that I make my 5's from the bottom up. I still do that sometimes and I notice that if I'm hurrying, I occasionally make an S from the bottom up.

I don't put bars on my I's, but I notice I do occasionally put one on my J's.

I was once told I had nice handwriting "for a guy" but as my right hand has become more arthritic from all the writing and notetaking I do when I'm covering games, it's gotten sloppier. I have to concentrate now in order to maintain a neat stroke but if my hand starts to ache, I can't maintain it. The 4's, 6's and 9's will also get sloppier looking but I make a 1 with a cap no matter what. I'm so compulsive about that that I'll go back and add the stroke at the top if I notice I didn't make it while I was hurrying to get something down.

Also, because I drew cartoons in middle school and high school and signed the strips with just my last name, my first name and last name (Nuzum) in my signature evolved differently. It's a decent-looking "Scott" followed by a poor-looking N, a curl, then a line that's supposed to be the "um" (which is not connected to the curl that's allegedly the "Z").

And if you think that would be fun to read, you ought to hear me trying to spell my last name to someone over the phone. 

[Duke87]

I tend to write my lower case K's with a loop for the top diagonal stroke

Interesting, I've always thought of that as something girls do more than guys. But it looks weird to me either way.

I draw both my upper and lower case ks as three straight line segments - first the vertical from bottom to top, then the top diagonal from the intersection up and to the right, then the bottom diagonal from the intersection down and to the right. Yes, this means I pick my pen up three times every time I write the letter. Inefficient in traditional schools of thought but it works for me. And again, this was a methodology I devised myself, so it differs from any way it's typically taught.

and capital E's which look like a backward 3.

In a science or engineering class this might become problematic as that is what a lowercase Greek letter epsilon (ε) looks like.

[empirestate]

I tend to write my lower case K's with a loop for the top diagonal stroke

Interesting, I've always thought of that as something girls do more than guys. But it looks weird to me either way.

I had an ex once who used to use miniature capital R's where you'd normally expect lowercase ones. I wonder if this is because her name begins with R?

I draw both my upper and lower case ks as three straight line segments - first the vertical from bottom to top, then the top diagonal from the intersection up and to the right, then the bottom diagonal from the intersection down and to the right. Yes, this means I pick my pen up three times every time I write the letter. Inefficient in traditional schools of thought but it works for me. And again, this was a methodology I devised myself, so it differs from any way it's typically taught.

Hmm, I do the vertical from top to bottom, then the two angled strokes as a sideways V (a single, two-part stroke).

In fact, I do all verticals from top to bottom except capital F, M, N, and P.

[1995hoo]

I tend to write my lower case K's with a loop for the top diagonal stroke

Interesting, I've always thought of that as something girls do more than guys. But it looks weird to me either way.

....

Funny, I've always (going back to the second grade when we learned cursive writing) thought of cursive writing in general as looking effeminate with all the stupid little curlicues and loops we were required to make (we were graded on whether we complied with the exemplar letters hanging above the blackboard).

[paulthemapguy]

This thread is ancient, but I wanted to talk about handwriting.  I find that the way I write certain characters is based on Highway Gothic (or FHWA), a font chosen because it is designed to be easily decipherable from afar.  All of the digits I write are based on how they look in FHWA, other than my 1's and 8's (I like to make an S before closing it up--it's hard to make 8's look like FHWA when you write them this way).  Does anyone else get inspiration on how to write letters, numbers, or symbols from the way they appear on road signs?

[kphoger]

There are two numerals for which I think I have an uncommon way of writing them.



For the 8, I start off almost like a 2.  The beginning and ending points meet at the middle (approximately).  I started doing this years ago, based on something handwritten I saw in a museum once.

For the 5, the curve and downward line are separate strokes.  I write the bottom curve first, then I write the other part by going up and to the right.

[formulanone]

After years of just writing a sentence or two at a time, relying on typing on keyboards likely weakened them.

In the past two years, I've kept an "analog backup" of work performed and travel notes to maintain my writing. It's helped a bit.