Re: [NTLK] Newton's HWR [WAS: "Re: Newton reclassification"]

On Apr 27, 2007, at 5:09 PM, Lord Groundhog wrote:

> Sorry in advance for the length of this.

Thank you for going into such depth!

> 1. I suspect my generation is nearly the last to have been drilled
> rigorously in "penmanship"

I think you're right. I'm 37 and was theoretically taught penmanship,
but I don't recall any real attention to it after about third grade.
I also remember my grandmother (herself a schoolteacher) being
somewhat shocked that I was taught to write letters the wrong way,
for example starting with an upstroke (not an issue growing up with
pencils and ballpoints, but that would have been a no-no in the days
when boys would dip girls' pigtails in the inkpots. I'm old enough to
remember school desks with places for inkpots, but no inkpots (until
I got older, of course.)

> 2. I also suspect my generation is nearly the last to have been
> required not
> only to learn said alphabet and practise it in twice weekly
> "penmanship
> lessons" from 2nd grade onwards, but to use it in all our other
> lessons.
> For example, I recall that teachers used to take marks off for poor
> penmanship in all my other lessons.

I don't recall ever losing points for poor penmanship and I had
plenty of poor penmanship. My handwriting was so bad that I gave up
lowercase letters in exchange for small caps. My school papers looked
like the Sunday comics.

Sometime after I turned thirty I made it a point to start relearning
lowercase letters. I have a ways to go:

http://splicer.com/?attachment_id=1011
http://splicer.com/?attachment_id=989

I'm progressing toward an almost cursive style, but most of my
ligatures come from an imitation of typography.

Of course, that's not how I write on the Newton. It's all discrete
letters.

So you've at least renewed my hope. I'll try resetting whatever it's
already learned about my handwriting and sitting through the training
a few times, see where that leads me.

Thank you ever so much!

Steve

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