A Subject Close To Our Hearts

[columb]

This article in the UK Guardian Newspaper says what many of us have been saying for a while. The story was also featured on this morning's Today program on the BBC

Ceci n'est pas une signature
Columb Healy

 

[sbudzynski]

Handwriting is important with regards to speed and taking notes at lecture. If students are not able to keep up with the lecturer or not able to read their own "chicken scratch" then their grades will suffer.

Even with being taught handwriting in school I still suffer from chicken scratch from time to time.

hmm chicken scratch might be stereotyping all chickens to have bad handwriting! Shame on me!

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[Trevoke]

My problem with this was my good memory. I would remember most/all of what I wrote down, so I had no incentive to improve handwriting. Now it looks worse than a doctor's.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[KenCunningham]

Slightly off thread, but why is it that Doctors are always cited as the epitomy of illegible handwriting? I have to say that my ex wife agrees, being a pharmacist and she says thanks be every day for computer gernerated scripts.

 

[sbudzynski]

I wish I had memory like that, but my horrible memory and horrible handwriting lead to tough times at school!

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[columb]

I found, when I worked at a job where I had to do a lot of handwriting, that regular use leads to a decline in standards. Or to put it another way, the more I wrote, the less I bothered about how it looked.

Doctors used to have to write hundreds of perscriptions, often for the same drugs, day after day after day.

So why are they considered a special case? Well, we, the customer, gets to see the result, and the poor pharmacist has to make literally life or death decisions on the strength of the doctors scrawl.

On a similar line, my father, a professor of statistics at London University, employed a secretary almost entirely on her ability to read his handwriting. He commented that she might not have been the most efficient, or the best typist, but at least she, unlike most others, could read his scrawl.

Ceci n'est pas une signature
Columb Healy

 

[sbudzynski]

I know a great deal of you can agree with me but I CANNOT STAND handwritten CD Keys. Unless of course the person is nice enough to cross their sevens and zeros.

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[gbaughma]

Well, you guys all know I usually keep my mouth shut, and have very few opinions on anything... ;P

re: doctors - Keep in mind that doctors also use abbreviations that to an untrained person don't make any sense.... I can read prescriptions fine, but I also know the medical jargon. For example, my daughter is on Trileptal 300mg BID (BID meaning twice daily, TID would be Three times daily, PO means "Per Oral", etc.)

re: Handwriting
I agree 100% that handwriting isn't taught like it USED to be. I remember seeing a "little rascals" episode where the kids are sitting in class, and the teacher has them making circles, first clockwise, then counterclockwise, that should touch the top and bottom lines of the paper, and be of an equal roundness. Over and over. That's the kind of stuff that it takes to have good handwriting; is training the brain to make the letters consistantly and properly.

When I was about 19, after I was out of high school, I realized that I couldn't read my own handwriting, and made a conscious effort to improve it. Believe it or not, I did pages and pages of those circles, practiced making my ampersands (&) (can you make one of those consistantly writing? and then worked on my printing as well.

I'm not saying my handwriting is perfect, by any means... my mother had BEAUTIFUL handwriting, but she came from that generation where it was taught in school, but I'm saying it's legible. It's funny, because now, people with sloppy handwriting comment on how lovely mine is.... lol



Just my 2¢

"In order to start solving a problem, one must first identify its owner." --Me
--Greg

 

[sbudzynski]

My mother has beautiful handwriting too! Maybe it's a mother thing All I know is she writes in full CAPS and it looks very professional, I tried to re-create but it looks very juvenile!

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[sbix]

gbaughma,
I don't know doctors in your country but I can assure you that in Italy a doc with "an almost readable hand-writing" is something to treasure.
It doesn't count if the doc is a genius or a moron!
At least if he prescribes a pregnancy test to a man, with a good hand-writing you can understand that he's completely drunk!

 

[sha76]

We spent hours doing "patterns" at school, before we started doing letters. Yes, I did the circles, and more, slowly building complexity. No, I have don't problem with ampersands (weird, this just suddenly brought back the memory of how I learnt to write an ampersand: I recall spending ages copying one off a big, brown packaging box until I got it right every time. Not sure how old I was but pretty sure that was many years before I actually started using them). So do I have good writing? Nope, it's absolutely shocking! Maybe I'm the exception that proves the rule?
I also know that, for me, it's lack of use causing a decline in standards. (Not that my standard was ever very high!)

"Your rock is eroding wrong." -Dogbert

 

[KenCunningham]

For some reason known only to the teacher, we were taught italic script in junior school (ages 8-11). Transferring this to secondary school's greater demands on note-taking ability proved a bridge too far for many but it did lead to an interest in calligraphy later in life.

 

[bekibutton]

We did handwriting exercises at school (lines of joined up 'o's and 's's) but the style of handwriting I was taught is not really that pretty. I like the French handwriting style myself, all those looped 'l's and 'h's.

Incidentally my chickens have perfect handwriting ;-)

 

[sbudzynski]

Thus proving my stereotype is indeed fowl

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[Trevoke]

Steve : Do you mean 'foul' ? A fowl is an animal, if I am correct.

"That time in Seattle... was a nightmare. I came out of it dead broke, without a house, without anything except a girlfriend and a knowledge of UNIX."
"Well, that's something," Avi says. "Normally those two are mutually exclusive."
-- Neal Stephenson, "Cryptonomicon"

 

[sbudzynski]

I did mean foul, but I did mean fowl

If you catch my drift.. ;-)

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[mjldba]

Many years ago I was surprised to learn that my daughter was learning cursive writing in 1st grade and manuscript writing (printing) was not being taught at her school.

When we moved to a new school district, she was placed at a distinct disadvantage in 3rd grade because she was not allowed to use the cursive writing skills she had learned, she was forced to print and she did not know how.

 

[IknowMe]

sbudzynski: your 'Fowl' pun was awesome, deserving of a vote in my opinion.

I do find the topic interesting, I was never exposed to a "Wax on, Wax off." approach at handwriting. In the third grade I did get the 'opportunity' to spend my summer break trying to improve the speed of my handwriting, but style was not an issue.

Wow, I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time.
I think I've forgotten this before.

 

[sbudzynski]

thanks mr. wilson! a vote would be eggscellent!

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[sbudzynski]

milson forgive me!

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"