Handwriting

I was once voted person with the nicest handwriting. To be fair, there were only four of us present. (And we are a group of friends who will derive more fun inventing a complex voting systems to decide which DVD we’re going to watch, than the actual watching of the DVD.) One of us has mad handwriting (HPoP) and you should see the way she holds the pen; one writes like a serial killer (TA) and Husband is left handed. Enough said really; I only won by default.

I used to write long, long letters to pen friends. It was the same as liking the sound of your own voice, only in writing… (Hey, blog readers, you’re free to come and go; my poor pen pal had to read them and answer!) I used to love the way the texture of the paper changed when I’d filled it with writing – particularly biro words. The pressure of a biro does something delectable to the paper and it goes all crinkly. Life just isn’t the same with those modern gel pens.

Sometimes I come over all traditional and get my ink pen out. I’ll start writing and about four lines down, my handwriting will disintegrate into a hideous murdered spider sprawl. Thinking about it, there are three doctors in my family… do you think I could blame the handwriting genes which surely come with the doctoring gene? You've seen those prescriptions, right?

I have a friend who has recently left me handwritten notes as she hands over a job to me. She is from Louisiana and is twenty five odd years older than I am. Despite being from different continents and of different generations, we both write in Roman script and yet I can’t read her writing. I mean, it’s almost illegible to me. Not because she's untidy, or like me has lost the ability, but because of the style she was taught.

So this article, on the death of handwriting, had me hyperventilating. The idea that in a hundred years we might need an expert to decipher early 21st century handwriting actually makes me feel a bit sick. And I can see how that might come true.