How come some people have very neat handwriting while others have chicken scratch handwriting? Admittedly I write very sloppy but my sister, who went through the same elementary school system as me, writes very neatly and articulately. Also my dad had bad handwriting but my mom had great handwriting. Is it a gender thing? A genetic thing? As hard as I try as an adult I can't write neatly.
OT- Handwriting neatness
- Thread starter Extra Point_rivals157299
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Oh Jeeze, Extra - painful memories !
I was the only kid in 4th grade not to make the Palmer Penmanship Club (strokes and ovals, strokes and ovals), long time ago.
One of my kids shares the affliction other two - beautiful handwriting.
I suspect, fine motor skills are genetic.
Oh, Well, we all have our shortcomings, and gifts...
I was the only kid in 4th grade not to make the Palmer Penmanship Club (strokes and ovals, strokes and ovals), long time ago.
One of my kids shares the affliction other two - beautiful handwriting.
I suspect, fine motor skills are genetic.
Oh, Well, we all have our shortcomings, and gifts...
left handed people should get a pass when it comes to this.....partly because teachers could not figure out how to show them how to hold and position a pencil/pen properly....
I worked in a store where adult customers had to sign for stuff, and 90% of the time I would notice a lefty because they held the pen with the back of the pen pointing away, towards me.... their arm curled and the paper at an angle....never seemed to happen with righties....some of lefties did have decent handwriting, but most would not.....a handicap from an early age, I suppose.
and, of course, we all know superior people have bad handwriting, so most lefties are brilliant
I worked in a store where adult customers had to sign for stuff, and 90% of the time I would notice a lefty because they held the pen with the back of the pen pointing away, towards me.... their arm curled and the paper at an angle....never seemed to happen with righties....some of lefties did have decent handwriting, but most would not.....a handicap from an early age, I suppose.
and, of course, we all know superior people have bad handwriting, so most lefties are brilliant
the nuns beat good penmanship into kids in Catholic grammar school.
I think handwriting is becoming more and sloppy given that we use actual pen and paper so infrequently now. I could swear I have read articles that say some school systems are not even teaching cursive writing anymore...
I think handwriting is becoming more and sloppy given that we use actual pen and paper so infrequently now. I could swear I have read articles that say some school systems are not even teaching cursive writing anymore...
In my case my handwriting is almost illegible...though I got an "A" from my 5th grade teacher (she liked me).
At times I resent expressing ideas in writing.....slows me down (I'm very verbal). So I'm ANGRY when I write...and it shows.
I don't care.
One graduate professor told me " I know you're writing something....but truthfully I can't make out all of it. But since you over participate in class / I know you know the subject matter:"
I joined the honor society for both under-grad at Rutgers ....and then grad school...using the same approach. Test starts: fill up that blue book with as much BS as possible...and then walk out.
MO
At times I resent expressing ideas in writing.....slows me down (I'm very verbal). So I'm ANGRY when I write...and it shows.
I don't care.
One graduate professor told me " I know you're writing something....but truthfully I can't make out all of it. But since you over participate in class / I know you know the subject matter:"
I joined the honor society for both under-grad at Rutgers ....and then grad school...using the same approach. Test starts: fill up that blue book with as much BS as possible...and then walk out.
MO
Educational thing. I noticed it with my niece and nephews, along with their mother. They all write exactly the same way after all attending the same grade school. I mentioned it to my brother after noticing, and he said the kids he has seen from the school all write very similarly.
Penmanship went the way of vocabulary, Blockbuster, Gatorgum, Pony, Atari, Commodore 64, Saturn, Crazy Eddie's, Arthur Anderson
They are not even teaching cursive writing in our schools in NYC anymore. Think about all the forms that you fill out that ask for your signature and also your name printed. Is 'signature' going the way of the typewriter? A thing of history?
Good luck to these kids when they have to sign 20 pages of mortgage paperwork. Or for that matter if they are lucky enough, sign their autograph for hundreds of fans at RU fan fest .
Many lefties are taught to write with that awful arm curl to keep from smudging the words they just wrote. Just one of the joys of being a left handed person, right up there with scissors and buttons/crowns on watches.
I can vividly remember learning how to write and starting on the right side of page and writing right to left across my body because that is how the teacher was doing it on the blackboard. Teacher looked at my page and couldn't figure out what I was doing....
I have nightmares about the Palmer Method. Could not get that right to save my life. Whenever anybody didn't get the strokes and ovals right, the nuns used to wack us on the back of the hand with a ruler. I made the mistake once of asking how breaking my hand was supposed to make me write better. I got wacked in the back of the head. I thlnk the nun called me a "bold, brazen article," but I was a little fuzzy for a while so my memory might have been affected.
As long as you can duplicate it, it can be a straight line. It is better to have a scribble sig when signing things like mortgage docs. To sign your name legibly that many times in similar fashion is tough.
I HAD good handwriting. Then I started working. Now I barely write at all -- 99% is typed. So when I actually do have to write something, holding a pen feels strange and my penmanship suffers. It's almost like I'm writing something with my weak hand.
There won't be mortgage paperwork in the very near future. Everything is going to be through apps.
I had good neat cursive writing taught to me in my grammar school days. However once speed became important when writing tests and essays etc in higher grade levels, I had to develop a bastardized cursive/print hybrid to not run out of time. Now my handwriting looks terrible.
Ha ! jmg75 - "bold, brazen article," , I remember that phase and the whacks !
Must have been in the manual...
Still, I look back with a sense of fondness.
Must have been in the manual...
Still, I look back with a sense of fondness.
Not that, I would ever allow my kids to go through that...
Lawyers and Swat teams, would have been summoned !
Lawyers and Swat teams, would have been summoned !
Crappy penmanship here - think it was because I just hated it, so I didn't try very hard, plus for my notes as long as I could read it is all that matters. I was able to write neatly when I had to, though, i.e., for any assignments that had to be handed in.
My signature is an impossible-to-forge scrawl, but it's very repeatable by me - the election folks always chuckle when I walk up to sign in, since they remember my crazy signature.
My signature is an impossible-to-forge scrawl, but it's very repeatable by me - the election folks always chuckle when I walk up to sign in, since they remember my crazy signature.
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The question is, why would lefties have to curl their arms when righties do not?......obviously they are not doing something right and the curl is an attempt to correct it.... I think it all starts with lefties not holding the pen correctly
Can't tell if serious - if serious, it's because we somewhat arbitrarily write from left to right, such that righties hands are to the right of the freshest ink, so smudging is much less likely, whereas lefties are always moving right into the freshest ink on the page. Must really suck for lefties. In addition a lefty's hand must end up blocking much of what was just written, making it harder to stay aligned and harder to simply put thoughts together.
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I am a lefty and as I recall the teachers had a hard time teaching me to hold a pencil or pen.
And, as my wife teacher tells me, and as I recall, you write with a number two pencil when learning how to write..
That would shoot down your theory, I would think...not much smudging with a pencil
My wife also believes that teachers would not slant the paper correctly for lefties
For the record, I now hold a pen correctly and my fingers remain below the writing..... I basically did that retraining myself f as an adult....a lefty can do it
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Lefty and I smudge. Pencil, pen, crayon...doesn't matter. I also do not curl or hold my paper at an odd angle. I write like a righty would in the mirror. I just write like I had a stroke then had my hand stepped on by an elephant.
Nor should they. I haven't written anything in cursive, outside of my signature, since I learned it back in the 3rd grade. What a complete and total waste of time. About the only possible purpose that it could serve is if you're going to be a historian and need to read through old Thomas Jefferson letters or something. It's a completely obsolete "skill" in modern society, like knowing how to change the ribbon on a typewriter.
I am SO sorry for all the cursive illiterates on this thread. How can you possibly become successful .
Completely disagree. It helps refine fine motor skills developed when you learn printing. Almost nothing else can replicate it. Definitely not keyboarding.
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Maybe we should eliminate teaching math because our smart phones can do the work for us if needed.
I posted this on the current events board about a week ago, I think it works on this thread.
I went to the movies with my wife and my tickets cost $20.50....I gave the college age girl a $20 and a $5 bill......she gave me 50 cents change, obviously mistakenly thinking I had given her a $1 bill.....
I pointed out that I had given her a $5 and she owed me 4 dollars more....she knew she had made the mistake because the two bills were
on the counter, not in the till yet.
the thing is, she had to use her smart phone to figure out how much more to give me, not trusting I was telling her the correct amount.....
she could not figure the difference between $21 and $25 dollars in change....
hopefully she could have done the math if she really had to, but she did not even try, why bother when the smart phone can do it .....
we all know stories about when you go into a store and give a bill and also some loose change in order to get a bigger bill as change, and they cannot figure it out.....I think my example takes it to a new level
Completely AGREE!
We wonder why the generations continue to develop less and less sense. We've gotten away from teaching core topics.
Vocabulary continues to devolve because we aren't taught root languages. We learn quick math (that evidently doesn't allow you to make change mentally). Same with,and most importantly civics. How many young adults know anything about our system of government?
I just sold a piece of land out of state and the entire process was done through the internet by the title company. Our "signatures" on the contracts were digital. I even had the choice of what my signature should look like as did my wife. Both were beautiful to look at [banana]. Think about how you sign for your credit card purchases at stores. I love those blunt sticks that make your signature look like you suffered a stroke recently.
Truth is that writing as we all knew it is dead.
Truth is that writing as we all knew it is dead.
Back in the old days we used to do all rate schedules by hand in my department at PRU. I was usually picked to do it because my handwriting was so precise.
Fast forward 40+ years and the most I write these days is when I fill out a paper check. My handwriting has become so bad that I can hardly tell what I've written.
Fast forward 40+ years and the most I write these days is when I fill out a paper check. My handwriting has become so bad that I can hardly tell what I've written.
Apples to oranges. Not teaching math because smart phones can do math for you is completely different from not teaching cursive writing because keyboards/keypads are an alternate way to write. There's no deeper, more fundamental understanding of inputting letters with regard to doing it by hand or by keyboard, so the only value I see in cursive writing is teaching fine motor control, which I imagine could be done in many other ways, whereas the smart phone or any calculator is performing important-to-understand work behind the scenes that is essential for people to learn on their own.
Your cashier example, while annoying, doesn't necessarily mean people are generally worse at math than they used to be. I grew up with some dumb people and I'd be surprised if the % of dumb people has really changed all that much in 30-40 years. I could be wrong, but I think you just got an especially dumb one.
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