Kevin's Watch

Penmanship During mulling over other discussion elsewhere, I came across another phenomena buried in the rolodex. The Only class or course I have ever failed in all my schooling,,was Penmanship. I can remember all the wrath and ridicule received from family and even friends..YOU got an F!! There were threats of going to Summer School..if I didn't bring that F up to a C or better.Summer school for penmanship?,,I actually was made to believe that.

So today,, i took a look at everywhere and every time my penmanship is in use. Quite simply,, it isn't anymore. Hand writing is all electronic now. Speak up if you are still using pen or pencil on paper as the main means of communicating other than verbally. I know old ink pens are considered now,," collectibles" and some have reached "antique" status. Yet my memory of getting an F,, my one an only Failure in school,,still dogs me. For those who can, what other failures,, admonishments for failure,,, received thru out Life,, when looked back upon,,now amount to , non sequitor, ?

<-- thanks the g-ds for IEPs, the spreading of knowledge about dysgraphia, and the acceptance of the alpha-smart as a tool written into said IEP...

Nowadays, all that is truly needed is the ability to have a signature.

As far as failing classes, I failed two: Humanities and Biology. Biology because I refused to even enter the classroom at the first whif of formaldehyde, and would sit in the guidance office if I caught even a hint of it, and Humanities...well I just didn't appreciate Philosophy and Architecture. I aced the Music aspect of Humanities, but Philosophy and Architecture were beyond me until long after high school...

Penmanship, or the way one holds a pen is a very important part of a child's development and often overlooked. As a former Special Ed teacher I've worked with Occupational Therapists to correct writing abilities, finger control and even introducing modified pens and pencils--we were very successful, soon the three students that had "behavior problems" that stemmed from their writing inabilities matriculated back into the general population.

I have penmanship problems, probably due to large thick fingers--the "average" doesn't really work with larger people for the most part--I finally found some big fat pens that fit my fingers and with those and a lot of concentration my penmanship has improved dramatically.

I remember being taught basic handwriting stuff at the age of maybe eight or so, but I found the style we were forced to use felt very unnatural, so I ignored it. We were never taught 'penmanship'. For the record, my handwriting is hideous, and quite tiring; I write really heavily, so if I write for any length of time (for instance, when taking notes in a lecture) I get nasty hand cramps.

my mind moves faster than my hand, so my penmanship is atrocious.

wow,disgrahia!!,,so I AM " special".. ...yea,,I have found over time that I have gravitated to the Fat pens when choice is available. They make me slow down and seem easier to control. My penmanship smooths out. I shall endeavor to always have one. Heck just a short while ago, i left a hand written note on a co-workers desk. She went up the aisle asking who the re-tart was that wrote the note...............I could read it!! Email for her from then on.

Balon wrote:my mind moves faster than my hand, so my penmanship is atrocious.

I'm with you brother. My signature is illegible, I have to print in block letters to have my writing understood. I could probably print the lower case alphabet and do upper and lower case cursive if there was a gun to my head.

I'm sensing a trend here.... I believe I got a B in penmanship the year we learned cursive, my only B for the year. I recall my mother buying me a "writing" workbook in order to practice cursive over the summer.

My handwriting is terrible now, due to lack of use. Mainly I use handwriting now for taking phone messages at work (which are then transferred to the computer and e-mailed), making to-do lists for myself, and writing checks (another skill, if you want to call it that, that's becoming obsolete).

My worst classes in jr. high and high school were gym and art. Large motor skills were not my forte (tho I suppose it didn't help that I refused to wear the ugly glasses my mother made me get in 8th grade...). And I believe I've stated before that I'm lucky to draw a stick house with the sides parallel.

Cail wrote:I'm with you brother. My signature is illegible, I have to print in block letters to have my writing understood. I could probably print the lower case alphabet and do upper and lower case cursive if there was a gun to my head.

Crap. No kidding, Cail. All that and more. I've invented a bastardized half-print half-cursive script just so my hand could sort of half the time keep up with my head. The only problem is no one else can pick out anything more than random words.

Wow I don't think I've ever thought about my 'penmanship' before! We certainly never had tests on it, though I remember long boring lessons in primary four (7-8yo?) and maybe the odd competition with prizes for the best handwriting.

I realise now that I have copied the style of my big sisters - very plain, quite rounded. When we were kids I remember buying black sheets of paper and a gold ink pen, and we'd write out the lyrics to Horslips songs (they were like mini fantasy novels) in gold on black, trying to make them as impressive as possible bringing in some aspects of gaelic script, so a t was a c with a tail at the top, nmh all curled down below the line, a was ^ with the curl joining the bottom bits, and various other bastardisations. I suppose since then my penmanship's been very neat. (and illegible writing annoys the crap out of me- chose wrong career, though thankfully most prescriptions are computer generated now).

When I hit 12-13yo and got into D&D and AD&D I became fascinated with calligraphy, from the first page of each letter in the Monster Manual II. I used to laboriously draw the letters til I knew them by heart, then just took great enjoyment in drawing the letters with a biro. My parents noticed and I got various calligraphy sets for birthdays and Christmas, but I found it very difficult to do properly with a nibbed pen, though both my sisters years later asked me to do their wedding invitations and place cards and seemed quite happy with them, I wasn't!

Stonemaybe wrote:I realise now that I have copied the style of my big sisters - very plain, quite rounded.

...snip...

Stonemaybe wrote:I suppose since then my penmanship's been very neat.

I can vouch for that!!

It's definitely much neater than my own.

I'm one of those southpaws whose teacher didn't pay attention to which hand I was writing with, so she would turn the paper to angle to the left, as if I was writing with my right hand. I write with my wrist curved over the top, and more often than not the side of my palm slightly smears what was previously written.

...talk about hand cramps when lots of writing was required...

As far as dysgraphia, it truly is a blessing for Beorn to have the diagnosis of it. His OT says his forefinger-thumb grip would never have developed enough to properly hold a pen or pencil. She tried various grips and width implements, and many exercises for over a year. For him, the alpha-smart is the one thing that enables him to show the quality of work he is capable of, without being penalized for illegibility.

I've always been told that I had good penmanship, as long as I print my letters.
When it comes to handwriting (manuscript writing), it's can be read but it's not as good as I wish it can be.

Well, my handwriting is so atrocious that in primary school, I was given a special dispensation to type all my homework. Today, anything I hand-write is printed, and even then people struggl;e with it.

--A

I can't write in cursive. I just tried to... nope. Looks like a third-grader wrote it. A third-grader who missed half the classes dealing with the individual letters. And that's not even counting upper and lower case.

I haven't had to write cursive since grade school. The last time I remember having to use it was for one of the English teachers at a school I attended briefly in the 5th grade. She took a point off my essay for me not putting the extra horizontal slash in the F of my last name.

In printing (which I use for everything from notes on story ideas to checks), my handwriting's pretty good. Since boot camp (and keeping various logs in the navy), I find myself using all caps a lot. I've also found myself unable to write 8s the normal way, rather than one circle on top of another. The only thing I use cursive for is my signature. Unless it's going on something special, you can generally only make out the capital D, A, and F (with the slash). You can also see where there's probably two t's and an i.

i longhand all creative writing.
that includes essays for school.
i hand take notes in class.

if i'm jotting a quick note to a co-worker
i try extra hard to make it ledgible.

i write in a combination of script and printing.

my signature is all lower-case and fairly ledgible.

i am a pen nut too. i have a kate spade pencil bag
that my friends at work got me for xmas one year.
it's full and can hardly be zipped.
all my handbags have their own special
favorite pens in them so i never have to switch
the pens from handbag to handbag.

in my desk drawer is a box 2.5 inches deep half full
of ink pens (from extra fine to bold), sharpies (autum-colors and
regular black 2-headed which have an extra fine tip on one end
and a regular bold on the other end), and colored vision elite
uniballs.
not to mention the pencil holder on my desk that has no pencils
in it. just highlighters, a tiffany's blue sharpie, a green uniball, a
black 2 headed sharpie, and various other pens, including the
j jill pen i scarfed at the j jill store in denver!

i love writing and i love pens.


everything else in life i have failed miserably at, except making friends,
and i'm not ALWAYS successful there either.

I just sorted through a bunch of pens (and other stuff in various drawers) over the weekend. I save pens from everywhere. If there's a sentimental connection, I save 'em even after the ink has dried up. I have one that was my dad's (cheap clicker pen from some auto parts store), one from the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, one from the Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe, one from the British Museum, one from the Alhambra, one from our apartment complex management folks, and one that I wheedled out of one of the girls after an anime convention (don't look at me like that -- it was a cool pen and she had two!). Plus a bunch of cheap Bics. And two -- count 'em, two -- sets of colored markers, in case I ever have a yen to color something.

Here at work I've got another collection of cheap Bics -- sorry, Papermates -- plus a couple of Uniball Onyx pens and several freebie pencils from the IT Training folks.

I have very neat penmanship and I love to write paper letters and to top it all off I am a total stationary whore.

aliantha wrote:I just sorted through a bunch of pens (and other stuff in various drawers) over the weekend. I save pens from everywhere. If there's a sentimental connection, I save 'em even after the ink has dried up. I have one that was my dad's (cheap clicker pen from some auto parts store), one from the Tattered Cover bookstore in Denver, one from the Fine Arts Museum in Santa Fe, one from the British Museum, one from the Alhambra, one from our apartment complex management folks, and one that I wheedled out of one of the girls after an anime convention (don't look at me like that -- it was a cool pen and she had two!). Plus a bunch of cheap Bics. And two -- count 'em, two -- sets of colored markers, in case I ever have a yen to color something.

Here at work I've got another collection of cheap Bics -- sorry, Papermates -- plus a couple of Uniball Onyx pens and several freebie pencils from the IT Training folks.

i knew i was justified in liking you!!

i have trouble - in printing - with upper case d's and g's. of course i need to use the d.

You don't even wanna know about my signature.

--A