Our handwriting changes throughout our life, but how much change is consciously possible?
Starting with my ordinary writing, I pretended I was back in grade school learning "Macleans Method" of joined-up writing.
It was invented (if that's the right word) in Victoria, BC, in 1921 and used right across Canada till at least the sixties.
(What a blast from the past that illustration is! Just look at the spring on the first stroke!) Peggy in my third grade class had beautiful writing with strong down-strokes, but I found that channelling Peggy made my arm ache and was damaging the pen nib, so I tried relaxing into the True Spirit of Macleans - fluidity and boringness - which helped make the line spacing more spacious. But it is simply toooo joined-up for comfort - going back to the beginning of a long word to dot the I is tedious! So much faster to write when judicious breaks are used... and thus our individual handwriting evolves.
Do tall ascenders signify spirituality and lofty ideals in the personality of the writer? Do long descenders signify action and physicality? What about the O with the extra loop - sign of flightyness - or has that been taken over by the [horror of horrors] smiley-face dotting the I?
I learned a different method of writing when I worked in the primary schools here. I had to help the students, so I had to do it the way they were taught. Alot of it ended up changing my handwriting.
ReplyDeleteI can't remember what it was called, but it was sort of a combination of joined-up and printing.
Sandy
For some reason the secret word thing for posting is now 2 words made up of 2 different and unusual fonts. is this a coincidence or what? :0)