Handwriting?

Lately I've been hearing and reading a lot about the death of handwriting--which, believe me, I've noticed on the writing placement exams of incoming freshmen! But I had it really brought home when one of the faculty told me they had a student confess that they hadn't read the instructor's comments on their paper because they couldn't read cursive. !!!

I remember how terribly excited I was to learn cursive--that was like a major highlight of my education. I remember how important my mother thought penmanship was and how she used to lament her small, pointed writing. I remember experimenting with my handwriting as a teenager (no, I did not dot my i's with hearts!).

But then I've always loved paper and pens. I'm always buying notebooks, weighing the advantages of narrow, college, and wide-ruled, drooling over heavy, expensive, textured paper, wishing I could write in a straight line so I didn't have to have ruled paper--I even thought about learning to make paper at one point. And I've spent half my life in pursuit of the perfect pen, and have always wanted to have a beautiful old fountain pen. I used to always write a story by hand first, pen on paper, then type up a draft from the manuscript (a word in which you will find the Latin for "hand," manu, and "write," script). Did you know that Virginia Woolf used a dip-pen for her writing--a nib stuck in a pen-holder and dipped into a bottle of ink--for many years?

My handwriting now isn't good--it's big and scrawly, and I use it mostly to write checks and phone notes. I suppose one doesn't need to know cursive to get through the world these days. But it's kind of sad, isn't it? Think of what a mark of accomplishment and pride being able to sign one's own name used to be, instead of drawing a wobbly X "Jane Doe her mark."