I don’t often think about writing things by hand, and I do it even less frequently.  When I write something, it’s generally as  a quick note to myself (I’m a fan of post-it notes, even though I carry a smartphone and a laptop almost everywhere… It’s about speed and focus).

I’m pretty sure it was my first-grade teacher that I was addressing when I said “I don’t need to learn to write, I already write fine.  If it’s really important, I’ll just type it.” My comment didn’t go over so well then, but  22 years later, it’s mostly accurate.I distinctly remember in 4th grade when we were compelled to learn “handwriting” aka cursive with the proposed purpose being “to write to your grandmother”.  I believe that I had a similar “discussion” with that teacher, with equally similar results…

Today I wrote the sample at the top of the page and was going to do the same in cursive, but I realized that I don’t remember how to form any letters that aren’t part of my signature (Which isn’t really letters as much as a consistently formed scribble).  I can’t even remember the last time I attempted real handwriting.

Most of the writing I do today is chickenscratch notes to myself, or on a whiteboard (also for myself), and most 5 year-olds probably write more legibly than I do. Thankfully, it’s a rare occasion that anyone else has to read my handwriting.

This post came out of a project I’m doing for a D&D campaign I play in.  My character is a bard and is writing a “history book” about the events of our game-world. Given my lack of ability to write in any meaningful way, each page of the book is being laser-printed in a script font.  This is possibly the only situation in the last 20 years that I’d wished for the ability to “write fancy”.  Had school presented handwriting as an art (Which is how I find myself using it as an adult), I might have had more interest;  Maybe not, though, since it’s only recently that I’ve heard the call to make pretty things, rather than things that “just work”.

On an interesting aside, Jason sent me this article at The Week between the time that my post was written and when it was published.

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Projects by Kevin