Earlier tonight Liz asked me to help her with some preparations for a photo shoot she’s doing tomorrow (shooting some horribly expensive bling bling watches) and she needed me to write product facts in little notebooks and agendas to serve as props. In itself its not that weird, usually when someone I know needs ‘fancy’ (or legible) handwriting they’ll ask me to do it. However Liz asked me to write some notes in cursive (hand)writing… and I struggled like a 7 year old in grade school. I really had to pace myself and consider the movement of my hand and carefully draw the letter shapes. All because I’ve been writing in block capitals for the last 20 odd years or so, just like my dad.
See, my dad (an interior designer) wrote exclusively in capitals. And when I learned how to write, he’d take me to his side and explained that type and letterforms, like everything else, are constructed out of the 3 basic shapes (circle, square, pyramid for those just joining us) and therefore he’d show me how to ‘draw’ letters, instead of simply banging out cursive text so I’d learn to pay attention to the specific shape of each letter. And so I slowly started to mimic his writing and draw little pyramids instead of A’s and after a few years of practice I managed to bastardize his writing into my own. I still take great pleasure in handwriting, even though I don’t write long letters by hand, I will often doodle and practice writing the alphabet, numbers and random words to see if I can further optimize the letterforms.
September 10th, 2009
nice, now let’s see an ampersand! ^^
September 10th, 2009
Nice indeed. You should make a captcha of your handwriting instead of the recaptcha thing ;)
October 18th, 2009
I’m the same way – the only cursive I know is my name. I can’t even begin to remember how to write cursive letters that aren’t in my own name. I took a drafting class in highschool and it’s been all block capitals since. I’ll take more pride in my writing style thinking that it’s more of an art form now – thanks!
August 2nd, 2010
Lovely blog post! I started switching to all caps about two years ago and I don’t think I’ll ever go back.