Has Your Handwriting Changed For The Worse?

Discussion in 'Education & Learning' started by Joe Riley, Jun 4, 2016.

  1. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    I have noticed that my handwriting has slowly gotten worse, as I have aged. I use cursive most of the time, and I do not like to print everything. Maybe I am getting lazy, or my hand is just saying "Whatever"!:confused:
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  2. Patsy Faye

    Patsy Faye Supreme Member
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    People comment on my handwriting, they say its very good
    But some days, I find it difficult due to arthritis
     
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  3. Ike Willis

    Ike Willis Supreme Member
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    Mine certainly has. Arthritis plays a major role in my writing's legibility. On good days, my cursive writing is easily readable. On bad days, I have to print. On really bad days, I have to get someone else to write for me.
     
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  4. Holly Saunders

    Holly Saunders Supreme Member
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    Ditto to the above..I have arthritis in my fingers...so it has affected my writing...again on good days like you all it looks fine..but I keep a daily journal which I write in long hand , and I can look at yesterdays entry, and then todays' and it'll look like 2 different people's writing...:rolleyes: I'm also on steroids and it gives me the terrible shakes on some days...on those days it's impossible to write legibly in longhand ..
     
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  5. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    I failed to include this link in my post. The thought is that the keyboard helped speed up our poor writing. :rolleyes:

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  6. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Handwringing over demise of handwriting
    [​IMG]

    "Ms. Wright notes that learning itself may be impacted by a decline in handwriting. There has been research showing that the practice of writing activates portions of the brain that are only fired by the forming of letters.
    "The greatest activation happened when forming letters," Ms. Wright said. "You're visualizing it in the brain and capturing it with the motion of the hand."
    In other words, writing by hand allows the letters and words to sink into the brain, said Ms. Wright.
    "It's how you help yourself memorize" something, she said".

    "Doesn't texting have the same sinking-in effect?

    "No," she said. "What we have found is that there are different things going on (in the brain) when using your thumbs and texting. Information is coming at kids so quickly, too (in texting). I don't think that kids retain what they are seeing in a text," as compared to the visualization of handwriting".
     
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  7. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    My handwriting has changed some too. But I don't think it is just because I am older now. I also think it is because I don't write very much anymore. I type more than I write so while my typing skills are improving...the seldom use of my handwriting skills has caused a change in this skill. Practice makes perfect...and I just don't practice handwriting enough anymore.
     
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  8. Julie Stewart

    Julie Stewart Veteran Member
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    Yes mine has changed. at school I learned to write in a beautiful italic script. At university I dropped it for cursive writing which retained some of the regularity of italics and made my lecture notes popular among those students who had missed a lecture (not because my academic insights were brilliant - but because my handwriting was legible). Now, my handwriting isn't too bad - but nowhere near what it was. I don't have arthritis so I can only put it down to my having used a keyboard for the last 35-40 years or so.

    I only write shopping lists and greetings cards by hand now.
     
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  9. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    I used to have very good handwriting, both cursive and printed, but that's not the case anymore. Even when I try to be neat about it, it doesn't come out that way. Of course, most everything I have done since early elementary school has been by typewriter or computer, the exceptions being the occasional note to myself, and that's only because I haven't yet gotten used to asking Siri to do that for me.
     
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  10. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    Siri has spoiled a lot of people! :)
     
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  11. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Yes, Siri!;)
     
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  12. Corie Henson

    Corie Henson Veteran Member
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    My answer is yes and not only for me but for some other people I know. The changing of the handwriting is not a mystery though because my work involves a computer so I am more immersed in the keyboard unlike before that the pen and paper are my implements on the office table. That's the same case with other people I know, they also use the computer often. However, it seems that my signature is the same otherwise it will be a problem.

    My husband has a trick to get back that usual handwriting. He would be writing coils of about 1 centimeter in diameter. The pen makes a coil, about 10 coils in one circle. Make 10 circles like that - equivalent to writing 100 coils - and you will have a better handwriting. He said that he learned that in grade school where their teacher required them to write 100 such coils for their homework everyday. It is like a hand exercise to give your fingers the strength to make that smooth flow with the pen.
     
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  13. Joe Riley

    Joe Riley Supreme Member
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    Corie, your post reminded me of doodles! When I was young I had an Uncle, who sat at the kitchen table and drew doodles. They were mostly geometric shapes, made with a lead pencil. He had a radio for the news & ball games and a deck of cards for solitaire. But mostly, I remember his doodling.

    The closest I come to doing that, is when I am on the phone, writing info down on a pad. I mainly draw arrows and shapes, with an occasional word. After I hang up, I think "Who wrote that"? There are benefits to doodling!
    [​IMG]
     
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  14. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    My handwriting is not as good as it was before either. I pretty much think that it is for the same reasons that everyone else has mentioned. The main one is that I do not have many reasons to have to write out anything anymore, and am just way out of practice.
    I do have arthritis in my fingers and when they stiffen up, then it makes almost anything that i am doing with my hands harder, and does not turn out as well.
    When I do have occasion to write something, it is usually a quick note about something, and not anything where I am trying hard to make the writing look especially nice,

    My mother-in-law was English, and she also had that awesomely beautiful and intricate handwriting, that was almost like calligraphy, @Julie Stewart .
    It was more like a very stylish printing than actual longhand writing, with lots of flourishes and fancy loops.
     
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  15. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    While my handwriting used to be very good when I wanted it to be, that wasn't the case when I was taking notes for myself. While I was in high school and college, I would use a few shorthand notations that I had picked up in a shorthand course that I never completed (yeah, that's a habit with me), along with the chicken scratching that I would produce during rapid note-taking. The way that I would refer to it was that I would have to translate my notes into English within a couple of days or I couldn't read it myself. So I would take nearly illegible notes, which I would transfer to another notebook in legible hand, and then almost never refer to them again.

    You see, the act of writing them down carefully in legible handwriting was all the studying that I needed to do so, except for the few classes that required us to turn in our notes as classwork, my notes were not something that I would use to cram for exams.

    If I needed to cram for exams, it was only because I had missed sections of the work, so I'd catch up on that a couple of days before any major test, and do absolutely no studying for at least twenty-four hours before a test. It seemed that anything that I tried to cram in the night before a test would push a few other things out.

    But of course, some of that has little to do with handwriting, which is the subject of this thread.
     
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