Fashion trends and handwriting

i remember in the early 70's we had to practice writing in school, but there was no specific grade attached to it, where as my father (in school in the 40's) had to study penmanship and was graded on his abilities

when i've seen writing in my mothers yearbooks (again the 40' - 50's), i noticed a marked similarity between all the hand writing, probably due asi stated to having to learn the art, where as in my yearbooks there is no uniformity whatsoever

basically i'm saying i don't know how much writing has changed in the last little while but i think our attitudes towards it have

At least in this part of the world, you can almost tell what generation a person belongs to, according to their handwriting.

Older people were taught Palmer caligraphy, they used fountain pens since they were small, stress was put on an orderly, "nice", handwriting.

My g-g-generation (40 to 55) was rebellious. We were also the first ones to use biros (boligraph, "atomic" pens). It's typical of us to combine cursive and script letters (I just checked: wrote a cursive and a script "o" in the same word), and to write straight (vis a vis the slanted, usually to the right, letters of our elders).

The next generation -25 to 35 year olds- was taught to write everything on script letters. Caligraphy lost importance. Many of them separate each letter a lot.

The younger ones are a little back into cursive letters, since it's taught again at schools (since 1992). They found out that people with scarse schooling had trouble reading messages written on cursive or palmer (like a letter from their mom).

We are yet to find out what permanent changes in handwriting are brought by the growing use of keyboards by children.

My mom has beautiful handwriting - I think she said it was the Palmer method - they had to write endless lines of loops and peaks as practice.

My siblings and I all have very different styles of writing despite an age difference of only 6 years. Clearly there was no "method" to penmanship being taught.

Still, when I look at each of my siblings handwriting I can see evidence of their particular personality traits: The busy guy, the perfectionist, the neurotic and the artist.

Anyway....

I love to see handwriting. I came across some of my father's handwriting not too long ago and it was really the first time I cried hard since he died.

I have to have the right pen, and it's just got to be a good day for my handwriting to rock. if these conditions are met, i always get compliments on my handwriting.

wrong pen plus 'not-happening' day makes me irritable. i like things to be neat and will waste several sheets of paper until the pen and I glide together the right way.

no question that i'm weird. I don't know how to explain it, just that I can tell from the first word I write whether it's a neat or ugly day.

I notice a lot of men go the all-caps route b/c their handwriting is THAT bad.

Boomerang,
You reminded me of something interesting. My father died when I was only eleven years old (that's not the 'interesting' part). I, of course, still had a child's handwriting.

Many years later, at least fifteen years, I came across a file full of my dad's various works. These would be address books, university notes, letters, etc.

Much to my astonishment, mine and his handwriting are remarkably similar! I was stunned, since I didn't really know his handwriting style, so I'm sure I didn't model mine after his.

Of course, maybe most men write similarly anyway (that combination of cursive and printing mentioned above).

General

I had a freaky employer who wanted a handwritten writing sample before he employed me. He was big into reading personality traits from handwriting. I think it's mostly bull, since there are all kinds of factors that can influence handwriting (other than personality) - but he hired me and he knew how to sign his checks correctly so I didn't mind .

That is a great story, General!

I love that kind of happenstance.

Being so computerized these days I sometimes worry that I won't leave any handwriting to be discovered beyond an old grocery list.

My daughter is in kindergarten and they are starting cursive writing now. At first I thought it was a bit much for such young children, but the school's thought is that cursive writing is expected in elementary school when writing papers and such so starting early is helpful. I was worried that it would be too much for my daughter, but she is doing fine with it so who am I to argue. Not sure what style of handwriting it is, but I have noticed that the method of writing (how you actually go about writing the letters) is slightly different depending on the letter from the way I was taught.

Portal Star- At one time I dabbled in handwriting analysis, and I am convinced that there is something to it. After all, if you take a class of students who learned to write the exact same way, their handwriting will NOT be the same, even though their may be some similar characteristics, because of how the writing was taught.

I think that each person puts a bit of his own personality into his handwriting. After all, the act of writing is a situation where messages from the brain determine how the hand creates the writing.

I thought/think Sozobe's handwriting thread is interesting - so many individual patterns revealed. I wish we could get more people to post samples there.

Well, I learned to write incorrectly, and I also have a strange (and mild) form of dyslexia. I also have a double jointed thumb and hold my pen sort of funny. So, my letters are very unusual - but I see that more as a reflection upon my learning and physicalities than personality. There's some truth to making assumptions (big, fancy letters, all caps, etc.) But this guy seriously thought he could... Predict what time your pipes were going to freeze that winter, and determine if you were prone to marriage problems from handwriting.

Just a quick comment, I've noticed that Asian girls have the cutest handwriting. Like ME!

I think that the guy is taking it a bit TOO far, but there ARE certain characteristics that pop out at you even though you may not know anything about handwriting analysis.