Handwriting...

[Johny Cee]

I can still write in cursive,  though I print  mostly.  My hand writing is atrocious.

I'm a righty,  but I grip the pencil like I'm a lefty.  Which means my right hand curls all the way around it and I look like I'm writing backwards.  Not too mention this drags my hand through the lines I wrote a couple lines above,  leading to nice ink or pencil dust staining.

For years in elementary school they kept putting those triangular block things on my pencils to get me to use a proper grip.  Screw that.

At the office,  all the old folks use dictaphone machines and get the secretaries to type up their letters.  Most of the young folks find it quicker just to sit down and type it up,  then let the secretaries know where the file is stored to take care of formatting.

[Calantus]

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 

Don't feel bad, I do that too. I just know that if I go back and read it the mistake will jar in my mind so might as well fix it now so it all flows later.

[schild]

Whenever I end up handwriting something, I'm always amazed when I make a perfect 'f' or 'o' or something. At one point in my life, my signature looked like a rabbit. It was uncanny.

[Trippy]

My handwriting's awesome :-D but I print rather than use cursive. I perfected my cursive in 6th grade but it was very stylized (nice and spiky, sort of like my hair) so it was tough for my teacher to read (or more so than your standard "rounded" cursive). So I switched over to printing in Jr. High and kept practicing and evolving it through college. Like some of the other people here I've lost most of my cursive writing abilities since I never use it except for my signature and I never write that the same way twice and I'm constantly leaving out letters and stuff. At the rate it's degrading in another decade or so it's going to look something like this:

|____| |___

Of course back in my youth, we actually did lots of handwriting since computer printers were not ubiquitous like they are for kids today. I remember when my best friend's mom got one of the first HP laser printers when we were in High School -- it was like "oooh, aaahhh" compared to the dot matrix (or FSM-forbid thermal) printers we were used to (and those of us who even had access to some sort of computer printer were the exception), though of course it could only print in Courier (extra fonts required expensive font cartridges) and the quality wasn't as good as an IBM Selectric.

It helped a lot that there were a group of us in elementary school that used to "compete" to see who had the best handwriting though we didn't have formal grades or anything like that. In Jr. High a friend and I used to compete to see who could legibly print the most number of lines in between the lines of college ruled paper. We even had 0.3mm mechanical pencils just for that task (I used 0.5mm normally). Yes we were that nerdy even back then.

As Lantyssa said if you want it to look better you have to practice at it. It's like the exercises you may have done in early elementary school where they made you trace letters over and over to learn how to write. One thing you can try is to learn some simple italic calligraphy. It won't necessarily directly make your handwriting better since many of the strokes are different but it will force you to think about the mechanics of drawing letters in a way that's not as boring as printing letters over and over again.

[Selby]

I stopped writing in print about age 9 or so, I got that same "you'll never be able to write fast enough otherwise".

You know, they say this.  But I've just practiced and practiced and write print quite fast.  I can keep notes up in the meetings I get to sit in all day long.  I personally write like mad because my professors said that was the way it was done in the engineering world as proof that you came up with an intellectually copyrightable idea when you say you did: write it down and date it in your notebook and keep a system.  I go through one notebook every 4-5 months and have a giant stack at work now.  I write down everything.  Mostly because it keeps me from being bored during the slow parts at work, and it's also great to be able to whip out what someone said and call them onto the table for trying to lie about it.  If I write slowly, it's legible (albeit VERY small) and if I hurry it can cause me problems reading.

[Strazos]

One key to being able to take notes in print quickly, even if cursive would be quicker, is to Not take notes in complete, proper English. Hell, sometimes I even toss in symbols and arrows and shit to save time.

Oh well, it worked for me.

[Triforcer]

My cursive, although ironically more legible than most people I know, always got me yelled at in my school years.  I am a lefty and a minority of left-handers write with the pencil roughly 90 degrees, straight up and down- it looks almost like I just make a fist around a pencil.  Of course, third grade teachers who had taught 40 years would have none of that 

[Quinton]

I write only in all-caps blockprint -- generally single-stroke glyphs when possible.  Pretty hard to read, even for me.  Borrows a bit from the old single-stroke graffiti input method from palmos.  It's a distinctive hard-to-read though and almost every whiteboard in the offices of people on my project at work seem to have some bit of Brian-scrawl, usually alongside some kind of boxes-and-sticks datastructure or software component diagram.

I'm about 50/50 on longhand note taking vs laptop notetaking in meetings.  I lean towards laptop for meetings that I'd rather not be in and will be catching up on email or writing some code during and notepad for the more important stuff.  Unless I know I'm going to be taking *lots* of notes, then laptop it is.

Company SOP requires detailed interview feedback after interviews and to make this work for me I take notes longhand (usually scrawling all over the resume of the person I'm talking to).  Using a laptop for note taking in an interview just seems rude to me.  This does necessitate writing my feedback ASAP afterwards, while I can still figure out what the hell my scribblings mean.

- Q

[Quinton]

I personally write like mad because my professors said that was the way it was done in the engineering world as proof that you came up with an intellectually copyrightable idea when you say you did: write it down and date it in your notebook and keep a system.  I go through one notebook every 4-5 months and have a giant stack at work now.  I write down everything.

I really, really want to develop this habit.  A coworker of mine is totally anal about writing down *everything* (and as a result of doing this religiously, forever, has pretty insanely tidy handwriting).  I've in the past stopped by and asked him "hey, Dave, why did we do X for Y" and see him find the notebook from when we were working on that issue, flip through it and find his notes on it, and be able to tell me *exactly* why a decision was made. 

It's a remarkably useful habit in general, and yes, invaluable for patentable stuff -- I'm pretty opposed to software patents in general, but the reality of the industry is that you end up having to patent stuff, if only for defensive reasons.

- Q

[Sky]

At one point in my life, my signature looked like a rabbit. It was uncanny.

Signatures are another thing entirely, imo. I have a 'doctor's signature', apparently. I developed it when I was an art major, I stole Jeff Dee's 'D' and went with some scrawl from there. It's kinda funny, and very wild. I'm always marking up counters when I sign receipts.

On journaling. I tried it during a creative writing fling. Decided I didn't like having such incriminating stuff around and burned it. I used to live a very odd lifestyle. I'm much more boring now.

[Paelos]

A big heaping "Who Cares" from me about handwriting. The only time you ever use it is on applications, to-do lists, and random notes during meetings. Only one of those things has to be understood by other people. Personally I look forward to the day when voice recognition software becomes so mainstream that typing will become a lost art.

[Furiously]

Here for everyone that forgot!

[Soukyan]

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

Hmm... well, I suppose I'll pick wanker as my category for now, but if I move to Austin in the next year or so, I'm switching to etiquette instructor. ;)

[Trippy]

Here for everyone that forgot!

Need the caps version too.

[Strazos]

Seriously, caps is where it gets all zany.

[Furiously]

There ya go.

[Nebu]

It's a miracle I ever made it through the 4th grade!

[schild]

THE GODDAMN 'Q' STILL LOOKS LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING '2.' AND THAT UPPER CASE 'G' IS BULLSHIT. BULL. SHIT.

[Sky]

AND THAT UPPER CASE 'G' IS BULLSHIT. BULL. SHIT.

General Mills disagrees with you.

[HaemishM]

Q as a letter in and of itself is retarded. Fuck you, Q, you don't need your co-dependent spouse U everywhere you go. Let U have a U's night out or something, you're smothering U.

[Ironwood]

Nyquil, Nyquil, Nyquil, we love you, you GIANT FUCKING Q.

[Furiously]

The label should just say, "Don't make any fucking plans."

[Johny Cee]

"Capital N, little y, big fucking Q!"

Dennis Leary says some funny shit.

[WayAbvPar]

"Are you drunk?"

"No, I have a cold."



"I'm high as a kite and my teeth are green, Merry Fucking Christmas!"

[SnakeCharmer]

I wonder if I'm the only one that printed those out and actually tried tracing them....

[Trippy]

I wonder if I'm the only one that printed those out and actually tried tracing them....

I would recommend working on your printing rather than your cursive.

[Chimpy]

My handwriting used to be abyssmal, but I found that when I switched to printing as my main form of writing it is at least legible.

But that really comes from having to take 3 semesters of drafting classes in college (the old way).

And I guarantee you all, after reading 8000+ responses to 8th grade tests last month, handwriting has gotten no better. Girls still use the big loopy letters with circles or hearts to dot their i's and boys tend to make reading heirglyphics seem like see spot run.

[rk47]

...that tracing guide is horrendous, if everyone writes like that I probably can't differentiate quite a lot of letters.