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The text face used here (as well as elsewhere) is Broadsheet. The home page letters are set in Emily Austin & Lamar Pen. All typefaces referenced on this website Abigail Adams, American Scribe, Antiquarian, Antiquarian Scribe, Attic Antique, Austin Pen, Bonhomme Richard, Bonsai, Botanical Scribe, Broadsheet, Castine, Douglass Pen, Emily Austin, Geographica, Geographica Hand, Geographica Script, Houston Pen, Lamar Pen, Military Scribe, Old Man Eloquent, Remsen Script, Schooner Script, Terra Ignota & Texas Hero (as well as all other fonts in the Handwritten History Bundle)are the intellectual property of Three Islands Press (copyright ©19942015). For site licensing contact: Three Islands Press P.O. Box 1092 Rockport ME 04856 USA (207) 596-6768 info@oldfonts.com |
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Posts Tagged ‘cursive instruction’
Sunday, July 18th, 2021
Lately I’ve been thinking about all we’ve been missing with the extinction of writing by hand. The conspicuous losses jump first to mind: handwritten letters in hand-addressed envelopes, sticky notes on refrigerators, a cursive greeting in a holiday card penned neatly in a familiar hand. But there’ve been lesser, unintended losses, as the digital devices we’ve rushed to adopt have brought solutions to problems we never knew we had.
Now that so many of us are connected by wires (or wirelessly), communication is virtually immediate. Apps like Zoom, FaceTime, and Skype can let us simply chat with one other—although that solution does require some scheduling. A quick email (my personal preference) can be dashed off anytime, to be read at once or later, depending. Approval can be communicated via a single emoji 👍. And we can choose these days from gazillions of memes to share more complex, subtle, and/or humorous thoughts.
Think of those littler details that once amused and surprised us: the note stuck under a windshield wiper, the words of love on a folded scrap of paper snuck into a jacket pocket, the doodled self-portrait or sketch of a cat in the margins of a handwritten letter that appears in our old-timey mailbox.
But Now We Have Phones
The iPhone hit the market a mere fourteen years ago, and already billions of us keep smartphones ever within arm’s reach. Why mess with pen and paper? Why monopolize the use of multiple fingers when you can simply use two thumbs?
What are our excuses for missing out on such things? The witchery of new technology? Lazy bones? A fixation on saving time?
Take, for instance, cursive or hand-lettered fonts that replicate real script. (Guilty as charged.) We need not even wield a writing instrument—no hand cramp, no inky fingers. Just specify a font and tap for a while on a keyboard, and you can pretend to have taken the time to respect your correspondent by composing a letter in longhand.
Oh, the irony. 😉
Miscellanea
» Turns out handwriting does seem to lead to faster learning in kids.
» Hallmark introduces Sign & Send™, which lets users hand-write their own messages—then upload photos of those messages. (Why not just do it the old way? 🤔)
» In the olden days, some folks used handwritten postcards the way these days we use phone texts. Back when we weren’t in such a hurry.
» A handwritten message in a bottle gets delivered after nearly a century (sort of).
» Cursive instruction is still happening out there, as uplifting stories like this will attest.
» It seems the practice of writing by hand (like a lot of topics) can whip up quite the debate these days.
» Keeping a journal is good for your mental health—and handwriting that diary is even better.
» Finally, from North Country Public Radio, this story on a seminar titled “Technologies of Writing in the Age of Print.”
Tags: cursive instruction, cursive script, diary, handwriting, handwriting lessons, handwriting recognition, journal, journaling, longhand, pen and ink, penmanship, writing by hand Posted in Communication, Cursive, Education, Handwriting, Longhand, Old Letters | No Comments »
Monday, March 6th, 2017
Are cries of “long live longhand!” being heard? Although I don’t dare declare it so—it’s starting to seem that reports of cursive’s demise are premature.
I am remiss, meanwhile, for not having at least dashed off a little update here on The Penman over the past few months. Instead, I had my head down, working to finish our latest font, Geographica Script, a replication of 18th century roundhand. The task of type design is, for me, a matter of sustained fixation—so many tiny tasks to complete over the course of hours, days, weeks, and (in this case) months. When it comes to font work, I just dive in and go.
Perhaps it’s because elsewhere in my life I tend to procrastinate.
But the font is done, and delivered to distributors, and now’s a good time to sit back and ruminate over my odd mission to preserve and make accessible old penmanship styles. It’s a mission I question often. (Is my work in fact having the opposite effect?) But when an early licensee of Geographica Script mentioned his reason for ordering—he’s up in his 70s, has missed the days of longhand, and wants to ensure that his grandchildren can read and appreciate a cursive hand—I remembered one reason I’ve been keeping the discussion alive.
That’s when I ventured a quick scan of recent online mentions of penmanship and handwriting. Lo, there’s been a shift—and the news is encouraging.
For one thing, schools in a few U.S. states have begun requiring handwriting instruction again, instruction not required by the Common Core Standards adopted in 2010. A state rep in Ohio has recently introduced a bill to require students to be proficient in cursive by fifth grade. Arizona has similar legislation on the books already. Louisiana has also begun learn cursive from third through twelfth grade. Education officials in New York City, meantime, are distributing handbooks on handwriting instruction to schools—which have the final say on whether to teach it.
Google image search for “old letters.”
And support for a revival isn’t just coming from older folks lamenting how things used to be. A younger, online crowd is showing an interest in the “ancient” art of hand-lettering. Just google “old letters,” and you’ll get more than 300 million results, and scores of lovely images of vintage script. Ironically, it seems, easy new imaging technology is managing to preserve—perhaps even popularize—that old outdated longhand.
Current typographic trends also show a fascination with loopy cursives. Just check a graphic design site or two, and you’ll see what I mean. Never mind the science that describes cognitive benefits from manipulating pens and pencils—and their tendency to slow you down.
Of course, it’s never wise to underestimate the lament of a grandparent. Nor is it a bad idea to make sure new generations can still read their ancestors’ letters—or even becoming adept at writing that way.
Examples of Library Hand.
Cataloguers’ Hand
One interesting historical handwriting relic I stumbled over the other day is Library Hand, a style of lettering developed in the late 19th century expressly for card catalogs. At a four-day gathering in 1887, librarians and “cataloguers” sought to standardize what at the time were wildly varying writing styles—not all of them legible.
(“The handwriting of the old-fashioned writing master is quite as illegible as that of the most illiterate boor,” this article in Atlas Obscura quotes from a New York Library School handbook.)
Both near-typewritten and “joined-hand” styles emerged from the 1887 meeting, each painstakingly, nitpickingly standardized. Eventually, of course, typewritten cards took hold—and more recently card catalogs have more or less completely vanished. Lucky for us, reproductions of Library Hand were saved.
Miscellanea
» Praise of the good ol’ handwritten letter (a powerful gesture).
» Another feature of handwriting (as I’ve mentioned here): it can help diagnose illness.
» Of course it can also shed light on the personality of, let’s say, the POTUS.
» Robots are even trying their mechanical hand at, well, handwriting (good luck with that).
» With longhand making something of a comeback, how will you do in this cursive quiz?
Tags: Arizona, cursive, cursive in schools, cursive instruction, cursive script, cursive writing, Geographica Script, handwriting, handwriting instruction, handwritten letters, historical, library hand, longhand, longhand resurgence, Louisiana, New York schools, Ohio, old handwriting, old letters, pen, pencil, penmanship, Professor font, teaching cursive Posted in 1700s, 19th Century, 20th Century, Communication, Cursive, Education, History, Literacy, Longhand, News, Old Letters, Penmanship, Round Hand, Ruminations, Science | No Comments »
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