I sometimes wish knuckle rapping was still in use when I went to school…
- Thread starter Frito Ray
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I started practicing mine a year or so ago, with a fountain pen. I write out as much as I can in terms of grocery lists, to-do lists, meal planning, etc. It's gotten better.
Letter after letter. Number and number. Word after word.
There are books you can buy as an adult too. This is the one I have contemplating purchasing.
The Art of Cursive Penmanship: A Personal Handwriting Program for Adults https://a.co/d/iIxlEyb
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- #3
Thanks, you are right, I have to do something. It is getting worse and getting embarrassing. Just hope the neurons are still fresh enough to accomplish something.
I am the exact opposite of this guy:
Knuckle rapping for everything was used by nuns in my catholic grade school in the 1950s. The best was my 7th grade nun who would give you her thick 18" wood ruler and make you rap your own. If she didn't think it hard enough, she would take over. It didn't help my hand writing, which got much worse with computers and age. I'll write items on our grocery list and sometimes even I can't figure out what I wrote when we're at the store.
It's a good idea to have something to aspire to (teaching book samples or even some writing better than yours) otherwise practice won't show much improvement.
My writing's better-looking when I take a little time with it. Same blather as always, otherwise. 
When I was in school they'd graduated from knuckle-rapping to a rock-maple paddle. One teacher would get that thing out and bring it over to one's seat and instruct one to sit on the paddle. This was usually sufficient to induce reflection and correction. However, for some of us and I'm a poster child, we'd forget and then it was a slow march down to the principal's office where the prinicpal would leave their office so the strongest male teacher in the school could take a miscreant in for a tune-up.
Funny thing; you could hear that Pow! all over the building, but whenever it was me on the receiving end I never heard it. Sure put a youthful spring in the step, I'll say that.
O.H.
When I was in school they'd graduated from knuckle-rapping to a rock-maple paddle. One teacher would get that thing out and bring it over to one's seat and instruct one to sit on the paddle. This was usually sufficient to induce reflection and correction. However, for some of us and I'm a poster child, we'd forget and then it was a slow march down to the principal's office where the prinicpal would leave their office so the strongest male teacher in the school could take a miscreant in for a tune-up.
Funny thing; you could hear that Pow! all over the building, but whenever it was me on the receiving end I never heard it. Sure put a youthful spring in the step, I'll say that.
O.H.
My handwriting was so terrible at school that I was the only kid at high school (14yrs) not allowed to use a fountain pen, had to use a pencil. But boy did my handwriting look impressive when I finally got a fountain pen. Can't use them at work but i do sneak in a liquid ink rollerball ink pen. Use fountain pens when at home or out and about. Get some funny looks when I sign something and pull out a Kaweco sport with a 1.1 stub nib.
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- #8
That’s an idea, it would force me to slow down and be more deliberate with strokes.
I did see an inexpensive calligraphy set for sale at Christmas. It had an exercise book and two or three pens of different widths.
I was in a store called 5 Below, I think. Mostly junk, but I saw a calligraphy set there for, I guess, $5 or below.
I've all but forgotten cursive, even my printing is barely decipherable now. Actually putting pen to paper is very rare for me now.
I find that if I print and I'm too lazy to completely lift the pen off the paper,
in between the letters,
it bears a remarkable similarity to cursive.
Ditto! The Major clearly remembers being in 1st + 2nd grade, with schoolwork being to fill out rows with a single letter- for instance, fill a this page w/rows of Rs. He + his friend Darren would do the exact same thing: write each row as a really long letter R. They followed the exact letter of the law (pun intended), while completely ignoring its spirit.
The Major bets that Darren's handwriting is as indecipherable as his.
The Major's father, on the other hand, had extremely precise, neat print handwriting, no doubt related to his training as a draftsman (before transferring from a vo-tech high school to a comprehensive one and perusing a cereer in engineering). When he + the Major's mother were in a long relationship, his father being literally in the US Army, all his letters to her were printed out. One time, his mother asked his father why he didn't write out his letters in cursive. So, the Major's father did.
In her response, the Major's mother asked his father to kindly return to print handwriting.
-MO
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My handwriting has always been a mish-mash of cursive (caps and small) and printing. My last name starts with a G, but I never liked the cursive cap, so I use a large, small case g, which my wife also prefers using.
When I started school in Germany, we did not only learn modern cursive, which is nice flowing and rounded, but also the old German script, which is nothing of this at all. My writing was totally screwed up by this. The school system later reviewed this and dropped the old German writing. Years later, before computers, we wrote our lab reports by hand and a secretary typed it. One day one of them called me up to her office and started complaining about my hand writing, but as soon as I explained, she totally understood, as she went through the same.
Example how this old German looked, and to be honest, I couldn't read most of it no longer, some words, yes:
Example how this old German looked, and to be honest, I couldn't read most of it no longer, some words, yes:
My sister wrote information and some trivia questions on a dry erase board where she works as a physical therapist. She was born in 1976.
They asked her to stop using cursive, as younger employees couldn't read it.
They asked her to stop using cursive, as younger employees couldn't read it.
You can bet the catholic school nuns would give you a knuckle rapping if you tried cursive at school.
I had fallen out of use of cursive too, but mainly due to years in the field artillery. You just print stuff in that line of work. Then I got into ink fountain pens, and had to re-aquaint myself with cursive altogether.
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