> When I moved to England and started school in the British system, my record for penmanship, previously among the best in the class, suddenly because among the worst. I had to relearn how to write in cursive. In England, 'l's, 'h's, and 'f's are rendered without any loops at all -- you go up a letter 'l', you trace it exactly back down. No loop in 'k's either.'r's and 's's look just like the print versions. 'r's are connected to the preceding letter but not the following, and 's's aren't connected to either. 'p's and 'b's don't connect to the following letter, either, and there are other disconnections, too.


Well, I have to say this, I find American handwriting unbelievably difficult to decipher. The way an "r" looks like an "n" that's been whacked with a stick especially gets to me. Maybe I've been seeing unusually poor examples, though.

From what you describe, the way I was taught in school follows the English style. In primary school (I guess I was about six) we learned to print first, then were taught to join up the letters, but yeah, they basically stay the same. I could read and write long before I started school, so I had to sit painfully through all those INSANELY BORING and USELESS let's-learn-the-alphabet sessions. I'm not sure if they had much effect on my writing, which I suppose was a mixture of my parents' styles.

When I was about nine I discovered the glory of archaic penmanship on the frontispiece of an old book, and something about all those curly bits and swooshy baroque squiggliegies really appealed to me. I spent an awful lot of time copying and practising until I could write naturally in a very elaborate 18th century hand. For some reason this was very important to me at the time. *shrug* I was probably one of the weirder kids in school, I guess, but my essays certainly *looked* good. :-)

So, anyway, I had spectacularly artistic handwriting until I got to university, where notetaking demanded more speed. Between that and working on computers instead of on paper, my handwriting has now degenerated into a random scrawl of untidy printing. You can't write attractively with a standard ballpoint pen, anyway, but mostly it's lack of practice.

Interesting to think that I can now go for maybe a week without handwriting more than maybe a few words.

Brunnen-"life in general needs more elaborate artistic curly bits"G