Handwriting...

[SnakeCharmer]

My handwriting SUCKS.  Worse than a doctors could ever be.  And strangely, it didn't always be that way.  In the last couple of years, my handwriting has gone from pretty good to flat out awful.  Maybe a side effect of typing EVERYTHING?

Anyone else's handwriting completely piss poor?
Any sort of exercises or such to improve it?

[Strazos]

Who writes by hand anymore? 


Also, my handwriting has also been shit since...forever. And I don't really care.

[Roac]

My handwriting has always been nearly illegible, and I don't think an undeveloped skill can atrophy.

[Lantyssa]

The only way to improve it will be a conscious effort to make it look nicer and continual use to keep in the habit of writing that way.

[Merusk]

Who writes by hand anymore? 


Also, my handwriting has also been shit since...forever. And I don't really care.

Someday you'll get older and have this thing called a "job" where you go to "meetings" and have to take notes.  Unless your company is very special or in the tech sector you'll have to do this on paper, because plebians don't get laptops.

Hell, Corporate Managers don't get laptops sometimes.

That said, no my handwriting is just fine.  My cursive has always sucked-ass, so I print; which dovetailed nicely with having to do so when Hand-drawing was still a reality in my little sector of the professional sphere.

 One of the things I still do when I get bored is an old drafting exercise.  I learned it from classmates who worked for a company that was still drafting in the early 90s and it was the first thing you did every day - to loosen the hand muscles.  You take a piece of paper and fill it across on each line "A" through "0".  Keeps my penmanship fairly nice.

[SnakeCharmer]

The only way to improve it will be a conscious effort to make it look nicer and continual use to keep in the habit of writing that way.

I've TRIED to write better, I really have.  It continually looks like ASS.

I guess I just don't write enough, outside of signing my name.

[WayAbvPar]

I write like a doctor.

[Strazos]

Who writes by hand anymore? 


Also, my handwriting has also been shit since...forever. And I don't really care.

Someday you'll get older and have this thing called a "job" where you go to "meetings" and have to take notes.  Unless your company is very special or in the tech sector you'll have to do this on paper, because plebians don't get laptops.

What's your point? I've taken notes before. Seeing as I'm usually the only person reading my own notes, I don't see a problem.

[Zephyr]

If I am in a hurry my writing is very sloppy, like when taking notes.  Otherwise I grew up in the same time frame as Merusk and started drafting plans by hand, which required good penmanship or a Leroy template to trace.  :P

[Merusk]

Who writes by hand anymore? 


Also, my handwriting has also been shit since...forever. And I don't really care.

Someday you'll get older and have this thing called a "job" where you go to "meetings" and have to take notes.  Unless your company is very special or in the tech sector you'll have to do this on paper, because plebians don't get laptops.

What's your point? I've taken notes before. Seeing as I'm usually the only person reading my own notes, I don't see a problem.

Read again.  Your statement wasn't that your handwriting isn't of a concern to anyone else, but that nobody writes by hand.    :-D

[Rasix]

I used to get Ds in handwriting when they still actually gave grades for it. My 9 year old nephew's handwriting looks better than mine.

[Lantyssa]

I write like a doctor.

I wonder if Nebu writes like a doctor.

[Nebu]

I wonder if Nebu writes like a doctor.

My handwriting is quite good.  If it's not legible, there's no point in writing anything.  My signature... that's a totally different issue.

[Furiously]

Mine looks like a 3rd grader's.

[schild]

I print.

[Strazos]

Me too.

Read again.  Your statement wasn't that your handwriting isn't of a concern to anyone else, but that nobody writes by hand.    :-D

Pfft, what did you think I stuck the smiley in for? 

For reference, I was never one of the Kool Kids who brought a laptop to class for notes; I used my chicken scratch all through college. Lucky for me, my professors didn't seem to have too much trouble deciphering it when we had to write essays for in-class exams. Or they just gave me good grades based on length, without being able to read what I wrote.

[murdoc]

I've done nothing but print for at least the last 15 years. I don't think I could hand-write if I tried.

[schild]

Let's be honest, cursive is for signing your name, wankers, and southern etiquette "instructors."

[Signe]

I have lovely handwriting due to my many, many years of copying out of books during detention.  While attending university I learned the awesome talent of being able to fall asleep anywhere.  My years in the workforce taught me how to look as if I were busy while getting absolutely nothing accomplished at all.  Wherever I go, whatever I do, I learn.

[Tebonas]

I can't decipher my own handwriting if I lose the context (finding the piece of paper again after a few months).

Hell, if I wasn't in the IT business I would be in trouble by now. I take notes with my company Palm.

[kaid]

I found a way to improve my writing. I learned how to type 80 words per minute. Kinda funny I have gone to a number of handwriting classes in a vain attempt to improve my poor handwriting and after every one my handwriting gets harder and harder to read so I just said fuckit and I type just about everything now.

Other than signing checks and what not I really have no call to hand write anything anymore anyway.


kaid

[Yoru]

I print.

I print as well. Poorly. Very poorly.

I can read my own scrawl, fortunately, but it looks like moon runes to most anyone else.

[SnakeCharmer]

I could not write in cursive if you head a gun to my head.  I just tried.  I was one weird looking illegible line. 

My signature is now just a bunch of squiggles after having to sign my name over 500 times in the same day.

[HaemishM]

My handwriting can be generously described as MONKEY SCRAWL. If it was done in feces, it'd be chimp perfect. It always has been that way, cursive worse than normal writing, but it has grown steadily worse with disuse.

[Strazos]

My cursive is too slow to even bother with. I never liked cursive anyway.

[schild]

I take back my comments on using print.

My handwriting is very much the bastard child of poorly taught print and cursive. I run some letters together. I mix some really fucked up cursive letters in there. Like F's and J's. ESPECIALLY the upper case varieties. But for the life of me, I can't even remember how to make a cursive Q. Honestly, some would call handwriting a lost art. I call it a blight on man. Fuck pencils and fuck paper.

[Calantus]

I've been using cursive since the start of highschool when a teacher told me I *must* or I'd never get anything written down in time. So I learned to write fast and wait for all the slow people to finish and got into trouble for talking in class due to boredom. Also really small, which makes it harder to read for people not used to it than the quality of the writing normally would. :P I still do a lot of cursive because anything I spec out I have to do on paper because then I can circle things, draw arrows, underline, and whatever else I want nice and easily. And mentally I can be sitting at a computer not knowing wtf to do and then it all just flows out when I grab the pad. Sometimes when doing that and I know I wont keep it the words lose all meaning because I'm writing faster than my pen can actually go up and down to make silly things like letters that are smaller than "t", but usually it's good.

[Yegolev]

As long as you don't mix case when writing, you are not as bad as my dad.  I write everything in uppercase and type everything in lowercase, unless I am writing something that I will later type, in which case I write in lowercase.  It's like having 52 letters instead of 26.

[schild]

I mix case, but not really. Some letters, I simply don't use the lowercase version of. A, E, I, Q, and G come to mind.

[Sky]

I used to have great penmanship, but I don't really bother much these days. I'm pretty legible if someone else needs to read it, or if it's stuff for work. For notes and personal writing, I have a pretty wild lazy style loosely based on some occult writer I tried to emulate as an angsty teen. I almost exclusively print. I used to draw comics when I was younger (an art major), so my printing got really good during that period.

edit: Lesser Key of Solomon

[Bunk]

I print faster than I write (we call it writing up here, none o' that "cursive" crap). I still actually print fairly fast and neatly. Lots of note scribbling while taking calls at work, combined with a couple years of drafting (pre CAD) in highschool.

How can you identify people who took drafting? We print our eights like snowmen, not figure eights. Never figure eights!

[Yegolev]

Ah yes, that explains why my wife's eights are disembodied.

[Rithrin]

I don't understand how some people can have perfect handwriting all the time. Mine fluctuates, sometimes even between sentences. Amazing, bad, good, okay, bad, and so forth on the same paragraph. heh.

[Merusk]

I don't understand how some people can have perfect handwriting all the time. Mine fluctuates, sometimes even between sentences. Amazing, bad, good, okay, bad, and so forth on the same paragraph. heh.

I've developed the opinion that perfect handwriting all the time comes form a severe case of anal retention.  Nothing I've seen has countered this opinion yet.

Kinda funny I have gone to a number of handwriting classes in a vain attempt to improve my poor handwriting and after every one my handwriting gets harder and harder to read so I just said fuckit and I type just about everything now.

I had a similar problem, until I said, "Fuck it.  It's print, it's legible and it doesn't need to look like fucking san-serif Times."  My writing is decidedly stylistic, but it's still print.. just takes a while to disconnect that "it must look exactly like THIS" part of the brain.


Damit Schild.. I just tried writing a cursive "Q."  I can't remember how the fuck you do it either, or a "G" for that matter.

[NowhereMan]

I stopped writing in print about age 9 or so, I got that same "you'll never be able to write fast enough otherwise". Plus it's apparently how grown ups write! My writing is... legibile. Not sure how else to describe it, it's not neat and it's not got any nice stylistic qualities but I can write fairly quickly and people other than me can read it. As for cases, I capitalise properly. Call it anal but I have to write properly and use correct grammar, with the result that some of my lecture notes have crossing outs and scribble where I've mispely something or used incorrect punctuation/grammar.

Thinking through that last bit again made me a bit sad. I think it's a bit too anal