What does your handwriting look like?

[tolbs17]

This is mine.

Just random work

jokes

[Max Rockatansky]

Crap, but it used to be halfway decent.  I've broken my hands several times playing sports over the years and had some nerve damage that affects my handwriting sometimes.  I suppose it worked out that I can type over 100 words per minute and rarely have to write documents anymore.

[tolbs17]

Crap, but it used to be halfway decent.  I've broken my hands several times playing sports over the years and had some nerve damage that affects my handwriting sometimes.  I suppose it worked out that I can type over 100 words per minute and rarely have to write documents anymore.

Same with me. My handwriting has always been bad

[webny99]

I actually have decently good handwriting, and always seemed to get compliments on it at the most awkward and embarrassing times during school. It's only good when I want it to be, though. I can scrawl as messily as the next guy if I'm the right (or wrong?) mood.

Since graduating, though, I've hardly handwritten anything, certainly not anything that a lot of people are going to be seeing.

[GaryV]

Worse as time goes on.  Not that it was all that good to begin with, but at least my wife could read it.  Now ... not always.

[jeffandnicole]

Handwriting, as in cursive:  I don't even remember how to do certain letters anymore. 

Handwriting, as in regular letters:  Bad.  Real bad.

[WillWeaverRVA]

Very neat unless I have to write fast. I used to write in all caps for some reason, but I put a stop to that about 10 years ago.

[kphoger]

I print in all-caps.  I can do lowercase letters is I have to, but I rarely have to.  Haven't written in cursive for years.

[Rothman]

A mixed case mess.

[hbelkins]

Mine looks awful. When I was a newspaper reporter, I did it the old-fashioned way. I didn't tape record interviews or meetings. I took notes. My shorthand chicken scratch totally corrupted my handwriting.

[gonealookin]

I never envied the TAs who had to decipher my scrawl in Blue Books in finals at Cal.

I don't write anything in "cursive" anymore except my signature on checks, which I only write maybe once a month with everything else paid electronically.  Aside from an occasional handwritten birthday or Christmas card or something, where I write in "printing", everything is electronic.

[zachary_amaryllis]

I print in all-caps.  I can do lowercase letters is I have to, but I rarely have to.  Haven't written in cursive for years.

i don't think they even teach it in school anymore...

i'm your exact opposite -- i print in all lowercase unless its for something 'official'

[formulanone]

Here's a clip of notes I took down in 2005. Usually, I'd doodle or scribble while listening to voicemail of people complaining about their car. I included a self-portrait.

I cropped out names and numbers, but left the word "spigoted", which a customer used to describe a water leak in their car. Also, the directions for Hiragana and Katakana are an error sign, please don't bother reporting it to the FNDOT.

[oscar]

My "handwriting" (not cursive), and my signature, are usually illegible. Sometimes I can't read my own writing, unless it's something I've scrawled within the last day or two.

I blame that on my hanging out with doctors, in my previous profession as a lawyer whose practice focused on health care.

[1995hoo]

Largely because I have typed almost everything since the 1990s, my handwriting gets harder to read every year. If I need to make something legible for someone else, I will print in all-caps; in fact, that's how I wrote my answers to the bar exam in 1998 because I was afraid of what would happen if they couldn't read my writing. (To clarify: While typing the bar exam was an option, you had to bring your own typewriter. Not a laptop or similar, a typewriter. I didn't have one available. The "typing room" would no doubt have been a noisy one, too.) If I print in mixed-case, it's hard for anyone else to read because my writing is small and I sometimes run some of the letters together.

I haven't regularly used cursive, other than for my signature, since the mid-1980s. In elementary school, once we learned cursive in the second grade the teachers required we use it for everything and I always kind of resented that, especially because I felt the style we were required to use looked too effeminate with the little curlicues and loops, so I stopped using it when I reached junior high school. Now if I try to write in cursive, other than my signature, it looks a bit like a kid practicing his letters only not quite as neatly-written.

This looks like the style of cursive we were supposed to use. I always wondered how "Q" turned into a floppy "2." The teachers were required to grade your handwriting based on your complying with the examplar, so (for example) it wasn't OK to omit those pointless and useless stupid curly loops at the top of the capital "D" and the capital "O":

[formulanone]

This looks like the style of cursive we were supposed to use. I always wondered how "Q" turned into a floppy "2." The teachers were required to grade your handwriting based on your complying with the examplar, so (for example) it wasn't OK to omit those pointless and useless stupid curly loops at the top of the capital "D" and the capital "O":

That's Zaner-Bloser handwriting, which was taught to me when I went to elementary school. I had 2nd and 3rd grade teachers who were sticklers for that stuff, so I stuck with it until tenth grade. By that point, having to write faster to take notes meant a lot of my words looked like a bunch of lower-case "r", "n", and un-dotted "i"s mashed together, so I went back to print. I personally find that writing in mixed-case is faster than all-capital letters...your mileage may vary. My handwriting has become more and more tiny as the years go on.

Some schools are using something called D'Nealian writing which is a blend of cursive and print, but more bubbly but less loopy. As you can imagine, some schools get mixed feelings similar to how Clearview is interpreted among our hobby. Apparently some teachers had their own ideas or had to deal with a few students who learned D'Nealian (or vice versa) and get them to practice the Zaner-Bloser way.

There's still a grade for handwriting in most Alabama Public Schools.

[1995hoo]

....

Some schools are using something called D'Nealian writing which is a blend of cursive and print, but more bubbly but less loopy. As you can imagine, some schools get mixed feelings similar to how Clearview is interpreted among our hobby. Apparently some teachers had their own ideas or had to deal with a few students who learned D'Nealian (or vice versa) and get them to practice the Zaner-Bloser way.

There's still a grade for handwriting in most Alabama Public Schools.

I recall my fifth grade teacher* saying that we students were of an age where we should be "getting off into your own style" of cursive writing and being mildly apologetic that she had to grade us based on how well we adhered to those exemplar letters. The weird thing was, though, I remember my fourth grade teacher gave me an "A" in handwriting. My writing did not change one bit, yet my fifth grade teacher gave me a "C" in handwriting. (I would call her a complete bitch for various other reasons that had nothing to do with my handwriting grade, except that "bitch" would not be not a strong enough word to convey the depths of my dislike for that teacher. Among other things, she had double standards and openly played favorites in the classroom. Of course every teacher likes some students better than others, but you have to try to hide that in front of the students to the extent possible. She didn't even try.)

*I was in a split classroom of half fifth-graders and half sixth-graders.

[webny99]

i print in all lowercase unless its for something 'official'

Same here, even for proper nouns.

[jeffandnicole]

In 2nd Grade, our teacher wanted us to make our cursive small k's with a large bottom loop.  If you look at the k in the chart above, the bottom part resembles a cursive r.  This teacher wanted the bottom to resemble more of a cursive o.

We'll learn whatever we're taught, but the problem with this is there were 2 second grade classes.  One was taught the normal way, we were taught a different way.  When we got to 3rd grade (same school, just down the hall), those teachers expected the k's to resemble what they're supposed to look like, so we had to relearn how to make a k.  This undoubtedly had gone on for several years.

[Big John]

If allowed to write slowly, I can print rather well or cursive barely legible.  If forced to write quickly, my printing quality goes down and cursive is illegible. So I got poor marks on my penmanship. There were a few cursive letters that were pure torture, the worst being the upper case F.

[kphoger]

i don't think they even teach it in school anymore...

Our kids are home-schooled, so they learn it.  Of course, they wanted to learn it, too.  Were excited to.  Kept trying to start before they were ready.  My ten-year-old's cursive is better than his print, in fact.

Personally, I don't care if my kids know how to write in cursive, but I do care if they know how to read cursive.  I can only imagine a new employee being handed a note from his or her manager at work and having no idea what it says because it's in cursive.

[webny99]

Personally, I don't care if my kids know how to write in cursive, but I do care if they know how to read cursive.  I can only imagine a new employee being handed a note from his or her manager at work and having no idea what it says because it's in cursive.

This is something that never occurred to me until reading your post. I wonder how many adults there are that can read print, but not cursive. It seems like it should be mostly intuitive even without having learned cursive, but... maybe not?

[kphoger]

It seems like it should be mostly intuitive even without having learned cursive, but... maybe not?

Just from watching my own kids...  Most letters are fairly intuitive, but some are not.  Learning cursive also allows you to read it faster–that is, without having to 'figure it out' on the fly in the first place.

[formulanone]

i don't think they even teach it in school anymore...

Our kids are home-schooled, so they learn it.  Of course, they wanted to learn it, too.  Were excited to.  Kept trying to start before they were ready.  My ten-year-old's cursive is better than his print, in fact.

Personally, I don't care if my kids know how to write in cursive, but I do care if they know how to read cursive.  I can only imagine a new employee being handed a note from his or her manager at work and having no idea what it says because it's in cursive.

We've done the same. I picked up reading it from a young age, and my daughter did too. My son still needs to read cursive things very slowly and stumbles a little.

Understanding from context helps, too...after all, most of the cursive writing which they they see in handwritten cursive comes from the cards and letters their relatives send them.

It seems like it should be mostly intuitive even without having learned cursive, but... maybe not?

Just from watching my own kids...  Most letters are fairly intuitive, but some are not.  Learning cursive also allows you to read it faster—that is, without having to 'figure it out' on the fly in the first place.

I think some letters like "s" or "f" or "v" aren't terribly intuitive, but by understanding that cursive stems from the need and ability to write without lifting the pen off the paper, it all makes a bit more sense.

[Scott5114]