Many years ago, when I was at school, our collective handwriting ranged from the reasonably neat to the absolutely unreadable and appalling scrawl! Mine was a cross between Jennings and Molesworth after several tinctures...
Our Headmaster tried to encourage us to learn the Italic method, and we all bought those square nib dip pens, and the inkwell monitor worked overtime before prep, but it was never to be, and I reverted to my spidery, wiggly writing! One day, a few years later, I had some sort of St Paul moment, and grabbing a green biro, immediately and totally changed my writing style to the one which I still use, sloping forward, and slightly above the line! It was during a history lesson, and to this day, I don't understand why it happened, but it did!
But there was one chap at school, who changed all this! Tim Satchell was slightly older than me, and he was a lovely guy back then, being artistic and sporting as well as friendly to everyone. He decided to reinvent his handwriting, by taking samples of everyone he could ask, and choosing the best bits of each style! He was meticulous in his method of choosing each letter, and adapting it to his own requirements.
And he actually succeeded, handsomely, and his handwriting became something of a wonder, because it was neat, even, and of course, easily read! I hope he kept it up, as he became a journalist, and did columns occasionally for the London press, and a few years ago did an article about getting MS, so I hope he has the slow one, not the quick and nasty one...
I found his signature in my old autograph book (remember them), the other day! He said he'd be famous one day!
Well he is in my book!
5 comments:
My handwriting is dire even though I once had a go at calligraphy and wasn't too bad at it. Unfortunately I'd have taken about a week to write anything worthwhile.
Tim's result was pretty damn good, Mr H!
I've always wanted to draw a proper 1/2500 map of our area, label it, colour it and frame it!
I need a little more time and space...
hallo again!
In my youth I was what subsequently became known as a "teenage scribbler". I lost count of the number of times my teachers asked (told!) me to re-write an essay because of my horrible scrawl.... but to this day all that extra practice made not the slightest difference.
Maybe I should have been a doctor - then nobody would have noticed!
It depends on whether you're someone like Richard Branson, who is apparently dyslexic, but consider how he has a few dollars more than we do, Reevers!
I once had a boss who couldn't read or write, and he ran the business (50 plus guys and gals), with a rod of iron!
Good builder though, and I learned a lot from him!
My handwriting is terrible.
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