“My forms for the upcoming camp came home today,” said my daughter recently. “Dad,” she continued, “I’m looking at Mom cause your handwriting is awful. No offense.”
No offense was taken because she’s right. My handwriting truly is awful. I certainly can’t blame genetics. My dad’s left-handled angled printing has always been neat and clean while my mother’s cursive has a formal, almost Victorian-like quality to it.
I place some of the blame on years of journalism and communications training, writing many stories after taking frantic notes during interviews.
The quality of my handwriting began its slow descent into illegibility during college. Handwriting stories evolved into writing stories directly onto a keyboard, so the need for neat handwriting lessened. Soon, I was the only one to comprehend my self-developed shorthand.
I was pleased to learn that our kids will take keyboarding classes in school, a class that I’d assumed had fallen off the curriculum. While voice to typing may indeed take over completely in their lifetimes, actual keyboarding is still an important skill to learn, lest they spend their lives hunting and pecking out term papers.
That takes me back to my typing class in the 80s, banging away during ninth grade on the IBM Selectrics -- a skill I probably didn’t appreciate learning until later on in life.
Yes, some have bemoaned the fact that schools often don’t teach cursive any more, and we may indeed see a time when keyboarding goes away as well. However, we’ve evolved over the years and, though we no longer hammer out characters on stone tablets, I’m sure we’ll all turn out just fine.
I’m Wester Wuori, and that’s my handwritten ... no, that’s my typed-directly-on-a-keyboard perspective.
