For many pro-keyboarding anti-handwriters, the real bugaboo is cursive writing--the Palmer Method and its offspring. When the computer crashes or the electricity fails, when repetitive stress syndrome threatens or they’re on a mountaintop in Colorado with the urge to write a poem and only a notebook at hand--what, they ask, is wrong with printing?
The only sensible answer is: nothing. An even more sensible answer is that it’s possible to learn a writing system that combines the clarity and simplicity of printing with the speed of cursive. Many of us have, informally, devised such a script for ourselves out of desperation.
Although I haven't written in cursive since junior high, I LOVE to print. Colleagues often compliment the marks I make, and there isn't a one that goes by that I don't chuckle and remember my institutional training in what Dr. Wallschlaeger called "Lettering." As a sophomore design student, each night we were charged with the task of completing the alphabet and numbers, for a height of 3/16" to 1 1/2". All the letter forms were to be of the same "personality," as Doc called it -- all letters made with the same stroke weight, design, and style. I loved it. I felt as though I were a scribe during the renaissance, cloistered away to practice my craft. After ten weeks of this, or when The Doctor deemed you worthy, it was thought that your technique was ingrained.
I have been told numerous times that I should make my lettering a font. Never. It just doesn't seem like the thing a scribe would allow.
Read the rest here.
Explore Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting here.
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