I have bad handwriting. I am sure part of the reason is that nowadays I have little need to write things by hand. But it was always this way, even back when I was in school writing essays and doing homework. What really bugs me though, is I know it could have been better.
In early years of school, I wrote in print letters, like most kids, because you needed to learn how to make the shapes right, and that’s easier doing each letter individually. It wasn’t amazing handwriting, but it was at least legible. Later in school I distinctly remember the day when the teacher decided we would learn to write using cursive. That’s when everything went wrong.
I just couldn’t get it. Not only was it difficult to read joined up writing, but it was impossible to write! And this is how we were meant to write from then on? My handwriting took an absolute nosedive. It got to the towards the end of primary school that I heard a teacher suggesting there was something wrong with my writing. If I didn’t improve I would need to start typing up my writing. The school had invested in a number of digital typewriters – a keyboard with a tiny 3-line LCD display at the top. What an awful suggestion.
Eventually when we switched years and got another teacher I decided to give up on cursive writing and went back to print lettering. Nobody chastised me for it. I should have protested sooner. Only now I was out a school year’s worth of practice. My handwriting was left worse than it was before we were forced to start doing cursive!
Eventually through practice it got a bit better and more legible, but it was never great. And then, computers started becoming a thing and in high school every major report I did was typed. Now as an adult for anything other than shopping lists or jotting something down quickly, I’ll type it out. So maybe it doesn’t matter that my handwriting was bad.
But I still imagine to this day my handwriting have gotten really good if the teacher had just let me keep developing it. Instead of insisting on a mode of writing that had fallen out of use even in the early 2000s. It’s easy then to wonder… what else did I spend time ‘learning’ that just held me back?
@lonm cursive is basically wanna be steno – all the downsides with no reasonable benefits
I am a mix of cursive and print now, whichever feels comfortable in the moment (changing within words even)
and I actually write a lot in morning pages, but those aren't meant to be read – and as a result my hand writing is getting worse every day xD
Yes, I struggled to see any upside to doing it.
My handwriting (never prize winning) took a dive with the advent of computers, especially MS Word and its predecessors and imitators. I got lazy. There used to be a letter writing community in my family, spread as we are all over the world, but that died out with the older members. I tried to resurrect it a couple of years ago, and sent carefully handwritten letters – I had received two fountain pens for my 70th – and got not a single reply (except a couple of emails and Facebook Messages). I still find that incredibly depressing!