When’s the last time you received a handwritten letter?
Photo from FontFont’s flickr
Note Writing is imperative during my grade school years. I remember starting with a date on the uppermost right side of the page; 07-16-96, short for July 16 of 1996. I copy exactly what my teacher writes on the board. I will underline a word and encircle it three times like how she wanted to exaggerate on it.
I have a good penmanship. My teachers would love me to copy a passage from the book to the board when they’re feeling slack. My seatmates adore my notes. In high school, my friends begged to photocopy my notebook. I really like writing with my hands. I’m proud of it and I enjoy the attention, especially the ladies in college since it’s peculiar for a guy to have a beautiful penmanship.
But in my second year in college, I don’t write as much on paper anymore. I used my phone to take photos of my professor’s scribbles. There was this particular professor who said that his only request from us is to give him heads up if we’re going to take a picture; and he will smile or act like a passionate lecturer.
People now use their smartphones to list grocery items or laptop to write a mail. It’s easier that way. We just need this small box in our pocket to note anything. It’s perfectly legible too.
It’s convenient to write this post using my laptop than in paper. I will have to type it anyway if I handwritten this, to reach you. But I miss the praise I get from my penmanship. It’s my style; parts of my individuality are imprinted on every curve of letter a and the dot on letter j.
“Schools don’t care how a child holds her pencil as long as she can read” (Suddath, 2009). Education would only care if you fared pass on a test. It won’t grade your penmanship. And in standardized tests, we don’t need to write. We just choose the letter or shade the circle corresponding to the right answer. There’s also spur of tablet and computer use in schools.
It’s true that performance won’t be affected whether you have a legible handwriting or not. It’s just that, it’s us. Using our hands to write is human. When we receive a typewritten letter, it can be from anybody because the font is computerized. But if you open a letter and you see the first handwritten word, you know who wrote it. It’s each person’s distinct feature.
Would you mourn the death of handwriting?
Source:Mourning the Death of Handwriting; TIME
Moment Matters 
You have lovely writing. I miss handwritten notes, I mean sure it’s quicker to type, but it’s just not the same. Typed letters have no character. Love your post!
Odd, i was talking about that today . . .Cool thinking.
I was wondering this when my sister said to me…I didn’t know you could write!
My wife will write me letters now and then and I do the same for her. I will say I still hand write my grocery lists too but as for writing and receiving letter to and from anyone else the closest I get to that is a birthday or christmas card. Unfortunately, with the advancement of technology some things stop becoming common place even in our own lives. It’s inevitable.
You may not have thought it, but for Rex and I, despite living on two different continents and having skype and email to talk to each other – we have always written love letter and sent cards just on whims, especially when he was in Iraq! I would come home from a long day and find a wonderful surprise of a letter from him, pages long, talking about anything and everything. I also still send handwritten thank you notes for any gifts – there is just something so much more personal and loving about a letter than an email, even if it’s just as short. 🙂
I love this post. The handwritten letter, I’m afraid, is probably a thing of the past. But I have a secret hope that people still write handwritten letters and notes to each other. Like you said, there is nothing better thann opening up an envelope and seeing a handwritten note or letter from a loved one.
Cool post. I remember it well.
Yes, gains come with losses, and losses with gains….
It’s one of those things I believe the upcoming generation will look at us and say “You did what?” When I was in school penmanship was important and graded. I can’t say I was thrilled with it, and I went to a Catholic school where I forgot I wasn’t allowed to write left handed so the teacher (nun) smacked my hand so hard she broke a bone in it. There needs to be a middle of the road somewhere.
I run a small business and some people still write checks. It may not seem like much but you can still see a lot in them. One of my clients has the most amazingly beautiful handwriting. She was an elementary school teacher.
You have great handwriting! I love writing letters the old-fashioned way, and I still do send them. My writing suffered from a number of years as a small-town reporter, though, where the goal was to write as fast as my subject talked. Sometimes I even find myself apologizing for my writing. Still… I hope the fact that I send handwritten thank yous and just-because notes counts for something.
Pretty cool handwriting 🙂
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I really like this post. Awhile back (years ago really) I wrote a girl a handwritten letter. I wanted what I had to say to be more than letters on the screen with no feeling. For some reason, I felt by writing it by hand what I said and had to say would mean more, matter more to her. That by doing it by hand I would seem more sincere. I suppose I wanted to make it more personal, isn’t a love letter supposed to be personal if nothing else? No one ever talks about the “amazing love email” they got…..
This is interesting – I just read a news article about this happening here in the UK too.
Maybe because my penmanship is awful, but I don’t mourn the loss of handwriting. I remember back in third grade learning cursive, and my teacher kept reiterating how important learning this was. I guess she hadn’t anticipated the computer becoming so popular. Nowadays I think kids really only learn cursive to sign their name.
You are right once again as I find your writings usually are, I was raised old school and at that time hand writing had to be just so. I type like a demon these days as this is my profession so the thought of having to hand write is unthinkable but I do miss seeing hand written form. As always thank you for your thoughts. Theo
We can mourn the passing of penmanship but very few of us would sacrifice the speed of the keyboard for a beautiful hand.
The lack of letter writing is also killing the postal service. I have often wondered if we should have a, “Mail a Letter to a Loved One” day, which I think would excite many people and help the Post Office.
I miss the days when I eagerly waited for a letter from someone. I would check the mail box everyday.
It’s amazing how much times have changed in just a few short years…I too remember the insisting teachers in grade school to how important handwriting was going to be. Now, it seems, handwriting is going the same route as 8-track tapes and CD players.
And even though my handwriting is terrible, I still try to keep it alive. I write a journal, strickly hand-written…although I’m still trying to get my penmenship to where I can read what i wrote months later…hmm, work in progress.
Great Post
Your handwriting is very sweet – think you can tell alot about someone from their handwriting. I love to handwrite stuff – it is the main reason I write lists – not for the list itself, but for the joy of writing
I couldn’t agree more. I worked hard on my penmanship all through high school. And now we’re talking about the death of handwriting. It’s a unique look at personality and has more heart than something printed.
It is amazing how mankind has come full circle in regards to handwriting. In centuries past, a person who could actually write well was considered to have a severe advantage over his fellow man. Today, it seems that our choice to utilize technology the way we do is bringing this ideal back. People will be more impressed by those with accurate spelling and grammar as well as legible penmanship. Fascinating.
Nice handwriting. 😉
I am a thank you note writer…by hand. The last time I got a handwritten letter was last month – a response to my thank you note from a friend. It’s a cherished artifact that brought back memories from swapping notes in grade school.
Such a lovely topic. I still keep a paper journal. I still write nifty little poems or notes in birthday or holiday cards. I love to write with pen and paper. I have to say though, your penmanship is remarkable. I thought that was regular computer inputted font. I would want to show that off too.
PS thank you for the like on my blog!
I also have very good handwriting as a result of years of training when we were in our elementary school days. Except for professional papers, correspondence through e-mails, and blog posts, I still write everything in paper. I still have a paper organizer/calendar and still jot down notes using paper and notebooks. I also still write letters by hand. I don’t want for handwriting to die. But I am also concerned for our trees, so I try to recycle paper as much as I can.
Great post. I was just having this conversation with my mom recently how no one writes letters anymore.
I always hand write when I am preparing anything, especially my poetry. It’s all part of the process for me. It helps me to think. I go over what I have written, I cross out this and rearrange that, I tear out pages as I go until by the end of the process I have, maybe 10 spoiled sheets which represent the work that has gone into what I have produced. You don’t get that with a computer, once it’s gone it’s gone and there’s no record of the blood, sweat and tears that preceded the finished article.
When I have finished the poem I then write it out beautifully in my latest notebook and I draw a heart over it. That shows me that I have finished it and I like what I have written. I don’t think I could produce what I do if I went straight to the computer. I love my notebooks and I love my pens.
Thanks for this. Glad to know that others feel the same.
Corinne at soulsnet
Beautiful! My husband has amazing handwriting! It was his handwritten postcards that captured me 14 years ago and still going strong!
And don’t we all open that handwritten envelope first?
Yes, very good!!! I have hideous handwriting…however…I definitely prefer hand-written things to typed…within reason, of course! (My manuscript would be illegible if hand-written!) It makes me sad that people are losing the “touch”…I love recognizing hand writing! Rarely happens any more…
Not only do I not hand write notes in class I don’t even type them anymore. I just go to my professor’s website (like Webcourses) and print out the lecture slides to follow along in class.
This is a topic I’ve been following recently. i read an article in a magazine which opined to decline in penship skill in school age children. i went to catholic schools as a child, so we had penmanship classes. it was regular homework i toted from school on a daily basis. i’ve always been a letter writer. even now i sit once a quarter and write about half a dozen people with whom i hope to retain contact. it was once a mark of excellence to have good penmanship, now it’s an oddity. how sad to see it’s importance minimalized in the schools as it is.
My mother and I live states away from grandparents who for some reason would only write letters to me. I wrote back. I even got old school about it and started sealing my envelopes with melted wax. I felt like I had more time to express my thoughts and like I was writing secret messages in a bottle. When I left from college I received special ordered stationaries and actually wrote letters to my boyfriend who stayed in our home town. At first he thought it was stupid and “gay” (direct quote) but he soon enjoyed the experience of checking the mail box expectant of something written personally for him to hold, to read directly from my thoughts. Overall, the experience of writing a letter is extremely different than an email, no matter how long or revealing the email.
Additionally, I too have noticed that teachers are apparently no longer teaching students how to hold a writing utensil as I watched my 10 year old cousin pick up a pen, writing with his hand in the shape of a fist, which then did clarify why his handwriting was so poor (I’d seen his writing earlier, reasoning his poor handwriting to the cause that he is a boy or young). My cousin also doesn’t know how to read cursive- so he says. In the end, when thinking about the origin of “the school” and schooling, it was a secondary place of education, not primary nor sole place of education. Students or children should be reinforced and sometimes re-educated at home. Many parents don’t do that. Parents should notice, hey my kid is not holding a pencil correctly, and teach them to do so, rather than ranting and raving at the next PTSA meeting. Sure, maybe there’s a little slack in the classroom, I ask parents, would it be so hard to pick up a little bit of it? However, if you are a parent that pays some sort of astronomically priced private school tuition for your student, and they can’t hold a writing utensil, yeah, you need to go talk to someone cause that’s intolerable.
My son is not learning cursive, they don’t teach it anymore, I have tried to teach him, he can write his name, I think it’s sad, his teachers don’t even have that perfect teacher handwriting either.
Personally, I believe in handwritten notes… and I write them every chance I can. Unfortunately, they are becoming a lost art. I have too many friends whose lives are comprised only of email, social media, text messaging and the like — traits of a world that’s too busy. A handwritten note takes more time, more thought…more effort. I suppose it is the writer in me, but I have long saved notes that were special for one reason or another. I keep them in a box – rereading them now and then. I suppose one day these handwritten notes will be like rare treasures.
Say it so, yet, we still do it ;0
Wow… I hadn’t actually thought of this. Handwriting obsolete? Poppycock! We still have to sign our checks right? Oh… wait… I pay my bills online. Well then, there’s my grocery list! Oh… nevermind, I use an app for that. What about that lovenote in my partner’s lunch? Huh? Oh wait… we text each other. Damn. I miss handwriting.
Great perspective!
I still write Christmas cards by hand. When possible I use a fountain pen. As much as I use a keyboard I am convinced that the hand-written word exercises a part of my mind that a keyboard will not. A friend of mine who is a teacher said she was teaching penmanship this year. She was having a difficult time reading the work her pupils turned into her. Oh, and yes, you do print very nicely. 🙂
““Schools don’t care how a child holds her pencil as long as she can read” (Suddath, 2009; Mourning the Death of Handwriting). Education would only care if you fared pass on a test. It won’t grade your penmanship. And in standardized tests, we don’t need to write. We just choose the letter or shade the circle corresponding to the right answer. There’s also spur of tablet and computer use in schools.”
I’m assuming this is in the US? It is not that many years since I quit teaching. I had to teach kids how to hold a pencil and how to write regardless of year group. There are marks awarded for good handwriting on SATs in the UK, but then they did not use “circle” or “shade in” tests for literacy.
Kids, and often their parents, grumbled about the point of doing handwriting. Trust me, if I couldn’t read what they wrote daily at school, I cared. I was the one having to try to decipher it.