My handwriting is atrocious due to a combination of left-handedness and fine motor issues. I type much faster than I could ever write, and painlessly as well – consequently, I write as rarely as possible.

Which still means I write quite a bit. I don’t type and print my shopping lists, I don’t type out short notes to my niece’s teachers, I don’t type out reminders on post-its, I don’t type out notes in the margins of cookbooks….

And I consciously make an effort to type more than write (or even speak, some days)!

I happen to be an American of Asian decent. I was born in 1981. My parents were immigrants, but I was born and raised here.

I grew up in the Nevada, which is next to California for anyone reading this who isn’t familiar with Nevada.

I remember having to practice writing in print and then later in cursive in elementary school, although I can’t remember which grades. Although I wouldn’t say that my handwriting is really horrible, alas, I was never really good at handwriting. I found your blog post by accident because I was searching for some book reviews on books for adults like me who want to improve their handwriting. I also wanted to see if any of the books might be good for my little brother, currently 16 years old and in high school. I thought my handwriting could use some improvement, but at least I never have trouble reading it. My little brother, on the other hand, can’t even read his own handwriting sometimes.

Upon realizing that my little brother’s handwriting is so bad, I wondered if changes in the way handwriting is taught might have played a role. After all, we both live in and grew up in the same city and went to schools in the same school district. When I was in high school I remember volunteering a little bit of my time each week at a local elementary school. I recall the 3rd Grade teacher I was assigned to help, Ms. Penrose, lamenting that they (the school district) had changed the style/font of the print letters on the worksheets and examples they give students to practice writing their ABCs. Apparently, the previous style was D’Nealian, whose print style was just a little curvy and slanty. I think that was the style of print I was taught. The style the school district had switched to was Zaner Bloser, whose print style has no slant and was described to me as ball and stick. Think of the letter be as being composed of one long stick and one ball in the lower half of the stick, and think of the letter a as being composed of one ball and a short stick on the right of the ball. I remember Ms Penrose lamenting this because she believed that D’Nelian style print better prepare students for cursive. Perhaps she was right; I can’t be sure.

But I do know this. My little brother, now 16, doesn’t remember how to write cursive and his print is barely legible.

Although I think handwriting is still an important skill, I’ve read that some people believe it is fast becoming irrelevant. Who knows? Perhaps they’re not far off. We almost always have the option to type want we want to communicate in writing nowadays.

Still, I wish to improve my handwriting, if it is still possible at my age. I’m considering buying a book called “Fix it Write” by Nan Jay Barchowsky. I don’t know if it is any good. I came across by chance. Has anyone heard of it? I think it teaches some style called italic writing.

I do have to agree that the pencil grip is most importan. However, having taught extensively in both Kindergarten and Grade 3, this skill has to be properly taught in Kindergarten, it it does not appear that many teachers these days are paying attention to that particular skill. By the time kids get to Grade 3 (or even Grade Two or Grade One) it’s often extremely difficult to change the ingrained pencil-grip style. I finally gave up on it, after a decade of working with kids on it in Grade 3. I instead showed them and made suggestions, but if they were resistant to changing it at that point, I just tried finally to work with them from there instead of concentrating on that problem. Unfortunately, a lot of Kindergarten teachers are just passing out pencils and paying no attention at ALL to teaching correct pencil grip in the first place. I taught it well at that age, as well as the turned paper, and my five-year-old students mastered it well. Then I moved to Grade 3, where the same students I’d taught came through again. By that time, their Britishand Australian teachers in-between had put their papers straight on the desk, taught them a different style of printing, and I basically had to fix everything all over again. But we did manage it!

As a twenty-something, I will freely admit that the quality of American cursive writing has generally declined in younger generations. I came across this post in looking up sights for improving my almost legendarily bad handwriting. However, I think that the rise of computers and word processors would only receive part of the blame. When the idea of teaching manuscript (un-joined/print) writing early to children before cursive came to prominence in the 60’s, there came a dearth of attention to proper hand writing technique. As someone who had remedial education in hand writing in the mid to late 80’s I would say that they focused most upon my pencil/pen grip with a much lesser extent paid to my arm and paper positioning. The importance of writing with the whole arm rather than finger scribbling was totally ignored. I have since learned that these priorities may have been reversed (My improper pen grip seems to have been due, mostly, to the discomfort from scribbling letters with my fingers rather than using my whole arm to write). To be fair, my teachers were also trying to correct my tendency to reverse letters like b and d and p and q (which they succeeded at) as well as my general inability to spell (which is still poor). I have learned that modern theories of handwriting education in America often focuses upon correcting these issues before addressing bad writing in general.

I don’t remember much time being spent on cursive when I was at school in the UK. I do, however, remember being required to use a fountain pen rather than a ballpoint pen in 6th grade and being told it was because a fountain pen would require us to be more precise in our handwriting – that writing with a ballpoint pen would lead to us being much sloppier writers. I do also remember learning the shapes of the letters in cursive, so I could at least read them, although I was not required to write that way.

From 6th grade on we were expected to use pen rather than pencil for any work we were handing in to a teacher. I remember being surprised when I arrived in the US to find that college students often used pencil – from my cultural point of view that seemed childish.

When I was teaching middle school technology classes (up until a couple of years ago) I did require my students to work on their touch typing. Our goal was 50 wpm – which is my own typing speed as a completely self-taught typist. My husband had a required typing class in high school and his typing speed is significantly faster – more like 80 wpm.

One last thought on handwriting – I remember being home sick from school for a week when I was in eighth grade and deciding to change my handwriting. I wanted to make it much tidier and easier to read. In that one week I changed my style significantly. When my mother saw what I was doing she commented that she had always been taught that so long as your handwriting style was still changing then your personality was not yet set.

Thank you for adding your observations.

Eileen

I teach 15 to 18 year olds. They are nothing like Thai kids, the handwriting varies massively.

I have started a new school year and the students are so much better at writing this year. My role has changed too; my lessons are like oral communication, so I focus on listening and speaking skills with only a little writing.

I would like to teach them writing, but it is not my duty and they are probably set in any way they have by now. I am content just trying to get them to enjoy English. I would teach them fancy capitals and curls, but these kids seem to respond little to the prospect of a game, so there is not that much that can excite them.

Thank you for an interesting discussion.

Kind Regards,
Nick