FAQs: Frequently
Asked Questions
Q:
Does handwriting matter in the Computer Age?
A:
For quick notes (phone
numbers/names/messages), on-the-spot jottings/memos, short faxes
pen/pencil and paper remain the medium of choice. (Just check your
fridge door!)
And ... a lot of the info stored in computers
or sent over phone lines exists, at some point, only as someone's
handwriting (data entry, receptionists' forms, etc).
Even today's computers depend more and more on
non-keyboard input such as pen-based input ("electronic ink") and
handwriting recognition. (Does your handwriting "compute"? )
Q:
I like my personal and unique
handwriting. If I "repair" it, won't this mean substituting someone
else's "blah", conformist, textbook idea of prissy-perfect "proper
penmanship"?
A:
You could never end up writing like any
other person (or anyone's "perfect" textbook examples) even if
you wanted to!
In writing, as in any other physical skill, we
all learn the basics, but - the more we make those basics a part of us
- the more our unique selves blaze through.
A child learns to walk (or an injury survivor re-learns)
- he or she doesn't worry, "Do I walk individually enough? Or does my
walk look the same as anybody else's?"
Yet each of us steps through life with a
distinctive, personal walk ... although we each learned to walk "the
same as anyone else."
Q:
Go back to handwriting lessons? I hated handwriting practice at school
I never could see any point in the ways I was told I "should" make the
letters.
A:
Questioning your schooldays'
handwriting lessons can mean you have great potential to improve your
handwriting ... because some of the most annoying things about typical
school-handwriting lessons really do not have much of a point.
(And the people who notice that often do the best
with Handwriting Repair .)
Unlike time-wasting conventional approaches, Handwriting Repair eliminates the extra
frills and distractions that our handwriting has added over the last
500 years.
For instance: as a child, you probably started
out with "print-writing" - then, just when you'd finally gotten the
"hang" of all those perfect circles and verticals, your teachers or
parents may have forced to change everything and start over, with
something very different that they called "cursive writing":
But Handwriting Repair
, unlike the conventional methods, won't "jerk you around."
"Hand-friendly" beginnings:
build with almost zero change into a simple
mature hand:
At each stage, you learn speed/legibility
techniques to keep handwriting functional in any situation. And you
learn better, more frequent use of speed/legibility "shortcuts" that
you may have heard were "wrong" - shortcuts you may already have
applied without even noticing.
Want something fancier? You can (optionally)
let your new skill plus a calligraphy marker or pen create individual
variations of calligraphic writing:
"Q:
Interesting... but do I want anything "new-&-improved"? ...
... I'd like to stick with
"the real thing": traditional cursive writing: the time-honored
original. ...
...Where did this come from,
anyway? Ergonomics labs? ...
...It looks ... well, ...
artistic . Did this get dreamed up in an art studio somewhere?...
...Look: I believe in
getting back to basics! ...
A:
Tradition does hold important
keys ... and not everything new works well.
Though HandwritingRepair
fits the recommendations of recent research involving the ergonomics of
our letters, Handwriting Repair also
stands solidly on the original traditions of handwriting instruction in
our alphabet as this developed through history.
To see
how our handwriting developed, click here for a handwriting-history
site! (Rome through the Renaissance)
u/projects/paleogra/human12.gif">... to go
to that site's scanned sample of Renaissance cursive, click here ...
So ...
... What about those loop-and-frill renditions
of cursive writing that we like to regard as "the real thing"?
They came later: much, much
later than the basics I went back to in creating Handwriting Repair .
(In fact, our "time-honored" models of cursive
came along later than most major countries.)
And where did loop-and-frill cursives come
from, anyway?
From the classroom? From real-world experience?
Well, actually ... they came from ... art
studios.
(Want the full, fascinating story?
To learn more, take Handwriting Repair !)
Q.
But ... but ... but I thought signatures always had to be in cursive.
Doesn't the law require cursive handwriting for legal signatures?
A.
No legal sources researched by me
or by my legal counsel justify the common assumption that signatures
require cursive. The following material legally defining signatures and
writing comes from definitions in BLACK'S
LAW DICTIONARY (eighth edition) and from definitions in the revised
Uniform
Commercial Code (law in all fifty USA states).
From the BLACK'S
LAW DICTIONARY [ ] entry for "Signature" -
"A signature may be written by hand, printed, stamped,
typewritten, engraved, photographed, or cut from one instrument
and attached to another, and a signature lithographed on an
instrument by a party is sufficient for the purpose of signing
it, it being immaterial with what kind of instrument a signature
is made. ... whatever mark, symbol, or device one may choose to
employ as a representative of himself is sufficient ... The name
or mark of a person, written by that person at his or her
direction. In commercial law, any name, word, or mark used with
the intention to authenticate a writing constitutes a signature.
UCC 1-201(39), 3-401(2). A signature is made by use of any
name, including any trade or assumed name, upon an instrument, or
by any word or mark used in lieu of a written signature."
From the BLACK'S
LAW DICTIONARY definition for "Writing" -
"The expression of ideas by letters visible to the eye."
Articles 1-201 (39) and 1-201 (46) of the revised Uniform
Commercial Code :
(39) "Signed" includes any symbol executed or adopted by a party
with present intention to authenticate a writing.
(46) "Written" or "Writing" includes printing, typewriting, or
any other intentional reduction to tangible form.
Neither source mentions cursive as a
requirement for signatures or for handwriting.
Q:
You call this handwriting
an "Italic" model. I thought "Italic" meant a font style...?
A:
Yes, the word "Italic" refers to a
type-face style ... and it also refers to a handwriting style:
the style which inspired many Italic type-fonts of today.
The name "Italic" refers to things from Italy -
the style of handwriting called Italic developed in Renaissance Italy
in the 15th century, at the same time as the development of
book-printing with movable type.
Since paper cost a lot in those early times,
printers in Venice, Italy decided to print as legibly as possible on as
small an amount of paper as possible - whch meant that they had to use
a highly legible, but compact, style of letter.
So, when space and paper-saving were crucial,
they copied the most legible and compact handwriting style of the time:
Italic handwriting.
Since Italic writing has a very slight slant
(in constrast to other traditional handwriting styles that gave us
other type-fonts and type-styles), the word "Italic" - in reference to
a type-font - came to mean "slanted".
Q:
So you've got "the
original" ... so what? Does anyone use it TODAY? It somehow doesn't
seem ... well, ... American, I guess.
A:
You want "American"? You want
"up-to-date"? So do I:
You can't get much more "American" than
Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock. Pilgrim fathers William Bradford and Elder
William Brewster learned relatively frill-free Italic handwritings in
their youth, and brought these handwritings to the New World on the
MAYFLOWER. Even today - even though spelling and much else has changed
since Pilgrim times, we still find these Pilgrim Fathers' handwritings
much simpler and more legible than most American handwritings of later
centuries.
To see and read manuscripts in William
Bradford's original handwriting, visit the
"living history" museum of the Plymouth Colony: "Plimoth Plantation" in
Plymouth, Massachusetts or click the
following links to see ...
Click here
to see William Bradford's handwriting on the MAYFLOWER passenger list.
Click here to
see the Mayflower Compact in William Bradford's handwriting.
(I would like to link to scans of Elder William
Brewster's handwriting, but I haven't yet found any scans of his
writing on-line. If you know of a site with samples of Elder Brewster's
handwriting, please inform me!)
Even in Pilgrim times, though, most schools
imposed more fanciful styles - as they have continued to do in the
centuries since. However, no matter what ornamentation a given teacher
or textbook prescribed, many Americans (famous and otherwise) have
always simplified their writing, improving on the school methods of
their day.
For instance, the loop-de-loop gorgeousness of
the Declaration of Independence
(click
here to visit it on a historical-documents site)
does not show Jefferson's actual
writing: eighteenth-century professional penman Timothy Matlack, not
Jefferson, created that famous finished copy.
Jefferson's own writing uses a slight, almost
vertical slant, with simple capitals and few loops:
much like Handwriting
Repair writing.
Click here to
see page 1 of Jefferson's handwritten draft of the Declaration of
Independence.
Click here to see
page 2 of Jefferson's handwritten draft of the Declaration of
Independence.
Click here to see
page 3 of Jefferson's handwritten draft of the Declaration of
Independence.
Click here to see
page 4 of Jefferson's handwritten draft of the Declaration of
Independence.
top
Q:
What about TODAY ?
A:
You probably know at least a few people
who handwrite with unusual clarity even at the highest speeds.
Take a good, careful look at how they
write!
(When you do, you probably won't find anything even close to typical
classroom/workbook models of "how to make the letters.")
Those "natural" handwriters have (more often
than not) unconsciously happened on many Handwriting
Repair forms and techniques.
On their own - perhaps without even knowing it
- they have discovered something that makes sense. They write well, in
spite of everything, pretty much "by accident."
With Handwriting
Repair,
competence does not require an
accident.
With Handwriting Repair,
all of us can share
success.
