A few thoughts on handwriting:

I was jotting down a few words on paper today when a thought occcurred to me: is there really any need for anybody to learn to write any more?

Does anybody write any more?

I’m not speaking about putting words into sentences with commas and full stops, they’ll always be a need for that I think (think, not know), I’m talking about handwriting. You know that stuff that we all struggled with at school where we picked up a pencil and learnt to draw the alphabet, getting ‘b’ and ‘d’ around the wrong way and getting confused between kicking and curly.

My gran used to write in the most beautiful copperplate writing, I think everybody of her generation did. Even I was taught to take pride in my handwriting, repeatedly drawing curve patterns before we were even allowed to start trying to write joined-up. Same pattern over and over again, like a wave, like a wave breaking. I could almost hear the whoosh of the sea after a couple of hours or so of wave after wave.

For a while at junior school our hew headmaster insisted that we all write with italic nibs and learn to write in an italic style. I can’t remember how long it lasted but I do remember that it was hard and that I never fully mastered it, although something must have caught because my good handwriting is full of flourish and slant.

I’m one of those people who can write very nicely when I want to, although my ‘best’ handwriting is really me drawing letters – well it goes with the territory. At my worst my handwriting is a lazy, messy, indecipherable scrawl which even I can’t read back at times. If I write a shopping list you can guarantee that when I get to the shops not only have I forgotten what I wanted but I can’t read my list either – for some reason the letters have turned into just a series of squiggly, runic, jottings.

I have lots of thoughts on handwriting. Handwriting is such a personal thing. It can say so much about you as a person. There are whole police departments who do nothing else but analyse it. Does our personality influence our handwriting or does our handwriting influence our personality? Is handwriting art?

So what about the future? There’s almost no need to pick up a pen these days; the keyboard is the new pen and paper, e-mail the new letter (and no wonder with the price of a stamp), lists are captured on your phone, notes are no longer left for you; you simply receive a text instead, even love letters are 'hearted' on Facebook. Kids do still learn to write with pens on paper at school but I really do wonder for how much longer.