History of Penmanship

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

So how’s your penmanship? Are you proud when other people see it?

If you’re like me, the answer is, eh, not so much.

And I was thinking about this recently because there’s a new book out called Script and Scribble by Kitty Burns Flory.

And it’s about the history of handwriting.

And one of the surprising things I read in there was that in 2006, Grant, there were only 15% of students taking the SAT who actually wrote out the essay portion in cursive handwriting.

15%, Grant.

How did the rest of it write?

With block letters.

Block letters.

Printing, yeah.

Yeah, I was surprised at that, but then I guess it makes sense because fewer and fewer people are bothering to have beautiful penmanship or penmanship that actually is fluent.

I’m interested in the fact that my mother’s generation, she’s in her 50s, she shares a handwriting in common with my mother-in-law.

They’re roughly the same age.

And when I look at their handwriting, they both have the Palmer Method down cold.

You can just see it.

They must have both had endless drills year after year to get their handwriting down well, right?

Yeah, my mother’s was the same way.

But it’s so interesting, isn’t it, to think about things that are handwritten.

I mean, you and I corresponded for about three years by email.

And just a few months ago, I got something in postal mail from you that you sent to me.

And it was kind of this, you know, I kind of caught my breath because handwriting is as personal as a voice.

And I realized I had never seen that sight of you.

Were you terrified?

I was, no.

I just thought I’d seen you, you know, with just your undershirt on or something.

I don’t know.

Well, I have to tell you, I have terrible handwriting.

I have great cards from the third grade.

So a long time ago, they give me very poor marks for my penmanship.

You know who has really nice handwriting, actually, is Barack Obama.

Oh, does he now?

Yeah.

You remember the story about when he wrote out a prayer and stuck it in the wailing wall?

And somebody pulled it out of there?

They printed that in one of the papers in Israel, and he has pretty darn nice handwriting, I have to say.

So maybe he’ll be ushering in a new era of penmanship.

Okay, I doubt it, but…

Yeah, I doubt it, too. The keyboard has taken over.

Well, how’s your handwriting? Do you think penmanship’s important these days?

If you want to talk about that or any other aspect of language, word origins, grammar, slang, or good writing,

Call us. The number’s 1-877-929-9673.

That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or you can send an email in whatever font you like, we don’t care, to words@waywordradio.org.

Bring on the Comic Sans.