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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 ‘handwritten communication’
Sunday, November 13th, 2016
We’re not just losing handwriting: written communication generally is going away.
 Detail from the journal of Mirabeau B. Lamar (1835).
I’ve mentioned here the little surge of emotion that comes when you recognize the writing of a loved one—or even, I suppose, the notes of a strict professor, or the scrawl of a stalker. In all cases, a lot more gets communicated by the slope of the letters, the look of the lines, than by the actual words and sentences themselves.
But imagine a world where those words and sentences themselves have gone missing. Imagine a virtual life in which everyone simply talks to each other, and any subtle hints to deeper meaning must come from the oldest nonverbal cues—tone of voice and facial expression. It’s where we seem to be headed in this digital age.
 Detail of 1407 Bible by Gerard Brils of Belgium.
Thanks to smart devices, now within arm’s reach of most First World residents, the ease of capturing audio and video has increased a hundredfold. Podcasts are how we document change or predict the future, replacing magazine articles and newspaper columns. We listen to storytelling and standup comedy instead of going to the library to check out books to read. We’ve been suddenly thrust into a golden era of TV.
Never mind the loss of longhand—typing on a traditional keyboard has given way to hammering out txts and mssgs with just two thumbs. With autocorrect, who needs to learn how to spell? Heck, witness the sudden proliferation of emoji. Is it inconceivable that written literacy will, over not a very long time, diminish and fade?
 Calligraphic font Zapfino (1998), by Hermann Zapf.
Maybe I’m being pessimistic—after all, my very livelihood depends on the written word—but consider the spread of this: “tl;dr.”
Short of an apocalyptic global catastrophe, I can think of no event that might reverse this slow extinction of reading and writing. Only if the grid goes down will we have to revert to lighting our own lamps, and making our own lampblack ink, sharpening our own quills, and pounding our own pulp into paper. I suppose that might be seen as a silver lining.
 Excerpt from the diary of my father, Leslie Willson.
I’m drawn again to a page of my father’s diary—this one from 07 August 1945, the day after the bombing of Hiroshima, when he was a 22-year-old serviceman—written in his familiar cursive hand:
“I cannot conceive of any harnessed force so powerful. Although no mention was made of the actual damage done by this one bomb, its potential effect is tremendous. It may well shorten the war to weeks or days—and it may well have been the death rattle of this round green earth.”
Well, here we are more than 70 years later, and no planetary cataclysm has occurred. So it might be up to our human eye for art and history to preserve our lovely alphabets—the beauty of calligraphy, the magic of an ancient inscribed scroll. Current type design trends, in fact, seem full of fanciful scripts.
Nope, I cannot abandon hope. I can’t conceive of life without the written word.
Miscellanea
» Does the loss of cursive mean social devolution?
» Or have computers effectively taken the place of the pen?
» Have you ever noticed how your handwriting has changed over time? (Mine has.)
» Another argument why teaching handwriting to kids is a good thing.
» What do François Mitterrand and Steve Jobs have in common?
» More moving evidence of the timeless power of handwriting.
Tags: apocalypse, calligraphy, communication, cursive, diary, future, graphology, handwritten communication, handwritten letters, Hiroshima, historical handwriting, journal, keyboards, Leslie willson, literacy, nonverbal communication, nonverbal cues, off the grid, penmanship, podcasts, predictions, reading and writing, smart phones, storytelling, text messages, written communication, written literacy, written word, WWII, Zapfino Posted in Calligraphy, Communication, Cursive, Graphology, History, Literacy, Longhand, Old Letters, Penmanship, Ruminations, Science, Specimens | 1 Comment »
Saturday, January 23rd, 2016
 John Hancock
Today, here in the U. S. of A., some celebrate National Handwriting Day.
The first National Handwriting Day happened in 1977, thanks to some folks with a stake in the practice—the Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association—who decided to celebrate penmanship on the 240th birthday of John Hancock, famed signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Not a bad idea.
In the four decades since, of course, a plethora of keyboards and smartphones and tablets has rendered penmanship more of a hobbyist’s pursuit. Not unlike taking pictures with now-old-fashioned film cameras. People don’t practice it, schools don’t teach it, and kids wouldn’t know how to decipher cursive script if their lives depended on it. Never mind that it’s actually good for you.
Even yours truly, who has black ballpoints scattered handily around the house on nearly every desk and table, rarely writes more than to-do lists these days. Some Antique Penman I am.
 John Hancock’s penmanship
And guess what? It turns out laments over the lost art of handwriting are nothing new. As a TIME article yesterday by Lily Rothman points out, teachers of penmanship deplored the death of fine pen strokes way back in 1935, more than forty years before the first National Handwriting Day. The trend toward bad handwriting also made the news in 1947, again in the early ’50s, and throughout the ’60s and ’70s. But most of that 20th century hue and cry came over the death of good handwriting—not the extinction of any kind of handwriting at all.
As I’ve opined here before, it’s not the beauty of the script that most counts—it’s its far less critical, less tangible qualities. Its heaviness or airiness, its intricacy or loopiness or slant. What it says about the writer. Its familiarity to someone.
Emanuella Grinberg, writing today for CNN, outlines studies that show how learning—and practicing—handwriting benefits the mind and body, not only for children but for grown-ups like you and me. It seems printing and longhand even exercise different areas of the brain. Grinberg also observes:
While we’re not aware of scientific evidence supporting the warm feeling of receiving a handwritten thank you card or love letter, anecdotal evidence suggests there’s something there.
 My dad writes home from basic training
Now, see, this is what I’m talking about.
Think of the subtle, complex, even visceral effect you get when first viewing a note card or sheet of stationery that someone far away has held, and has written on, has strung together words that communicate sentiments meant only and particularly for you. Think also of the secret knowledge on the part of the note- or letter-writer of how what they write will affect their distant pen pal. Think, too—maybe especially, in this word of instant communication—of the span of time between the writing and the reading.
In a piece today for International Business Times, William Watkinson lists a few examples of what handwriting says about a person: heavy vs. light pressure, the shapes and sizes of letters, their wide or narrow spacing. In the process of developing my historical pen fonts, I’ve read so many letters of well-known historical figures that I’ve seen a lot of these graphological clues—e.g., the large, airy penmanship of Sam Houston, the fancy script of Mirabeau B. Lamar, the scrawl of Emily Austin Perry. I’ve studied ink blots and cross-outs and what I’m convinced are the marks of tear drops.
 Sam Houston writes to Chief John Linney
But what I cannot do is divine how it felt for the recipients of these missives to read their authors’ handwritten words. Recipients like Shawnee Chief John Linney. Or the husband of Emily Perry.
There’s a distinct difference between reading a novel on a tablet screen and reading a perfect-bound book. I’d argue there’s even a greater difference between reading a handwritten note left hours or days before and an email message sent thirty seconds ago. A difference—a warm feeling—that’s akin to magic.
Miscellanea
» Um, contrariwise, here’s a robotic handwriting service—which is not exactly what I’m talking about.
[30 Oct 2019 update: The original link went dead, so I’ve inserted a link to another such service.]
» Ever hear of “penmanship porn”? (It’s actually kind of cool.)
» Australian parents emphasize handwriting.
» A century-old box in the cornerstone of a Kansas City school reveals penmanship of bygone days.
Tags: benefits of handwriting, cursive script, Emily Austin, Emily Austin Perry, handwriting analysis, handwritten communication, handwritten letters, historical letters, Houston Pen, Lamar Pen, Mirabeau B Lamar, National Handwriting Day, penmanship and the brain, Sam Houston Posted in Cursive, Education, Graphology, Historical Figures, History, News, Old Letters, Penmanship, Ruminations, Science, Uncategorized | No Comments »
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