Handwriting

[simont]

[Poll #1324167]

eta: I forgot to say so specifically, but I hope the people who have ticked "something else interesting" will say what it was :-)

Comments

[huggyrei.livejournal.com]

Just in case you're interested:

I tend to write joined-up, however I always disliked the fact that several letters no longer looked the same when joined up, so I tend to take the pen off and do half-joined half-printed for these letters (most of the options in your second lot, hence why I exhibit none of those features). I use crossbars for z's, a habbit acquired from doing a lot of maths, where the lecturers tend to do that so as to avoid getting Z confused with 2 when writing equations.

If I want to write in a way that is legible to anyone else, I usually print since my joined-up is pretty scrawly to anyone who isn't me (I tend to write too fast, and printing forces me to slow down).

[megamole.livejournal.com]

My written lower-case "g" can often be very similar to a figure 8 and my lower-case "o" is often a straight across, down and back up loop (as many left-handers write) for speed.

I'm right-handed but can write perfectly legibly, and strangely similarly, with my left.

[megamole.livejournal.com]

For lower-case G overload or WTF, go here (http://typographica.org/001108.php).

[simont]

Mmm. Yes, the concept of letters with a distinctively different cursive form from their printed form is part of what was interesting me about the whole idea. It's even more pronounced in Cyrillic (if I remember correctly from a few half-hearted Russian lessons I had in the 6th form): a few letters look so different that a non-native reader wouldn't even recognise them as the same letter without being told. Though, I suppose, a non-native reader of the Roman alphabet might justifiably think the same about our single- and double-storey 'a'.

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

I was tought typical French copperplate at school which would have demonstrated all of your cursive features. However I rebelled against this fairly rapidly, though some features persist. A rapidly scribbled round of quick brown foxes reveals the following -
I do my 'g' essentially in figure of 8 format such that the downstroke originates from the left rather than the right of the top loop.
I tend to top-link to letters with rising strokes, eg 'the' will have a connection between the bar of the 't' and the top of the 'h'.
My numeric '1' has the serif-like top tick, but generally not the bottom horizontal unless I'm trying to disambiguate for people who don't put crossbars through their 7s!

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I would describe my system as: Partially joined-up, the result of trying to teach proper joined-up writing to someone who didn't have good hand-to-eye coordination and who didn't understand why he was being made to do this difficult and pointless thing when his previous writing style was legible enough, and then letting the writing slowly deteriorate and lose cursive features over the years (but keeping some of the ones that allow for fast writing). I suspect this is quite common.

[scribb1e.livejournal.com]

I (when I feel like it) do the old-fashioned sort of r - as in this alphabet (http://www.howtotutor.com/pics/cursive.jpg).

[mooism.livejournal.com]

My handwriting is joined-up, but I can't remember how (or whether) I was taught joined-up at school.

I have redesigned my lower case Ts over the years. In the beginning they suffered from me not lifting the pen at all --- they looked something like a cursive lower case B, but with the loop being more than closed.

When I was about 13 or 14, I thought this was atrociously untidy, so I started writing it as a simple cross --- it looked like a dagger or a crucifix.

That was a great improvement, but when I started my A levels I started confusing it with my plus signs. So I added a curvy tail. Small letters (eg lower E, lower O) following a lower case T sometimes find themselves sitting over the bowl of the tail; usually they balance on the pointy end.

[lnr]

I write in a combination of printed and cursive letters: basically using the print versions where I think the joined up version as taught looks rubbish - I'm sure to look at it's very similar to your printed-but-not-lifting-pen option. I'll tend to use all printing when wanting to be especially clear (email addresses, cards to young relatives).

As for specific features: it can vary. E is sometimes straight, sometimes curved (like a reverse 3) and sometimes a weird version which has a loop through the top curve, as if it were joined to a previous letter. I tend to use a crossbar on z when deliberately printing but not when joined up, similarly a printed k is straight but joined up often looped. I do almost always cross my 7s though. Oh and I draw my xs with a curve in mathematical contexts, but not in normal handwriting. And my z very occasionally has a descender, but that was a bit of a phase :-)

Edit: Actually, looking a sample of handwriting from when I was scribbling Christmas card lists (on the same piece of paper I just wrote the alphabet to test my writing - you'd think I'd have *noticed* I had a sample there already and just looked at that), it seems my os sometimes meet and sometimes have a gap, my vs are curvier than I thought, but the rest seems much as described. There's also sometimes a bit of a gap in the top curve of my d, which you don't mention.

[lnr]

In all those respects you are almost entirely like me!

[antinomy.livejournal.com]

I should add I suppose that despite a decade and a half (at least!) of neglect, the muscle memory for perfect copperplate is still in my hand!

[simont]

Yes, that was the sort of r I was thinking of when I talked about the concave curve at the top. I couldn't quite think of a way to describe it fully in words, and neither could I think of a good Google term to find an example image...

[simont]

Oh and I draw my xs with a curve in mathematical contexts, but not in normal handwriting

Yes, me too. Nearly mentioned that in the poll, except that I decided mathematical context was too specialist to be of general interest. I also write 'l' with a loop in mathematical context (on the grounds that in that particular situation there tends to be too little context around to permit reliably distinguishing it from a 1).

a bit of a gap in the top curve of my d

I didn't mention that because I don't recall ever having been taught to do it or seen anyone else do it as if deliberately. I'm less interested in gaps that arise accidentally from high speed than I am in ones that are an intentional part of the writing style as designed.

[pne.livejournal.com]

My handwriting is a fairly haphazard mix of printed, school cursive, and idiosyncratic joined-up forms; which form of a letter I pick depends partly on context (the letter before and/or after) but also exhibits seemingly-random variation; I might write the same word in several ways in the same text.

In particular, the "ti" sequence has the two common forms: (1) vertical stroke; horizonal stroke forming the crossbar of the "t" and then going downwards to form the stem of the "i"; dot; and (2) vertical stroke curving to the right and back up again to x-height, then changing direction down again (like a "u" with a long left-hand side) -- this is the stem of the "t" and of the "i"; horizontal (but sloping slightly upwards) stroke followed by a short downtack (this is the cross-bar of the "t" and the dot of the "i" in one).

Typical features of my handwriting include a "d" which looks like a ð without the crossbar (i.e. with the final stroke curving to the left rather than going straight up and then down again); a connected "ng" where the "g" starts at the bottom, turns 270° counter-clockwise and descends vertically before curving to the left again (rather than the stroke completing the 360° circle, then changing direction to proceed downwards and then curve to the left); and a "g" which has only a hint of a curve (definitely not a complete loop) at the top, looking more like an elongated "s".

[marnanel.livejournal.com]

My capital H is sort of like two figure 8s.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Oh and I draw my xs with a curve in mathematical contexts, but not in normal handwriting.

I do this, too; and the form I use is one I only learned in a mathematical context -- neither the D'Nealian handwriting we were taught early on, nor common German handwriting, has the )( form I learned in maths.

[xraycb.livejournal.com]

I remember doing tedious joined up handwriting lessons at school, but I don't think they had any more than subconscious impact on my style of writing outside those lessons

My writing has the pen leaving the paper only at the end of each word, with "t"s crossed and "i"s dotted then, so the descenders of {j,y,g} loop round into the next letter.

Most of my letters with a vertical line (l, b, d, t, but not h) have the vertical line formed by a narrow loop, but only if they occur in the middle of a word.

[aldabra]

Mine's about half joined-up and half cursive. I think several of the letters, such as d, are influenced by my having done Greek and being lazy enough that I wanted the same squiggle to pass in both alphabets. (Actually, [fx: writes out Greek alphabet] I think it's just d.) I don't think I've seen anyone else write r the way I do, and it's conspicuously absent from graphology books, which is odd because it looks just like an r but is more convenient to write in cursive (it grows out of the bottom left, has an angle at the top left and a horizontal flourish).

[pm215]

Speaking of the Roman alphabet, have you seen Roman Cursive (as used in things like the Vindolanda tablets)?

[naath.livejournal.com]

My joined up has features as indicated; I often use print though in which case I mostly close loops of things and sometimes use the double-story a. I only use long 's' if I'm deliberately being 'old fashioned'.

I can hand-write in a variety of styles but that's the "default" that I use if I'm not thinking hard :-).

[naath.livejournal.com]

oh yes, I do that sometimes too.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I think most people start their cursive 'r's at the top left rather than bottom.

[pseudomonas.livejournal.com]

My handwriting is either a scrawl (when I'm optimizing for speed), or a rather scruffy copperplate, which I adopted a few years back as I felt I needed something that wasn't a scrawl, now and again. The long-'s'es are inconsistently applied (though usually not at the end of a word or the second 's' in a pair), and probably a bit silly, but I've kind of got into the habit now. My T, I, and J are pretty similar - *I* can tell the difference, though. My 'r' has a nasty habit of disappearing into the nextdoor letters.

[k425.livejournal.com]

I have two types of cursive. One is the slanted style I learnt at school, with the figure-of-eight 'f', the concave 'r' etc; the other is an upright style more like joined-up roundhand. I can swap between the two while writing a document (but try not to), and I don't think they look like the writing of the same person (but who am I to say?).

[aldabra]

Yes. But it seems odd that they *all* do.

[uitlander]

My handwriting can be very variable, and leans whichever way it feels like at the time. I write ones as the print '1', and use the European '7' (with crossbar) having spent *mumble* years working in Europe where this was the only way of avoiding confusion. I use both epsilon style upper case 'E' and the one that looks like a C with a cross bar, depending on how lazy I am feeling at the time (I prefer the Epsilon 'E').

I can write as fast in block capitals as handwriting, mainly due to too much time spent writing museum labels and site notebooks that others had to be able to read. Anything written as notes tends to become incomprehensible within about 12 hours unless I write it up neatly.

[pizza.maircrosoft.com (from livejournal.com)]

I think of it as a french r: http://images.google.com/images?q=french+handwriting+r&btnG=Search+Images&hl=en&sa=2

[gerald_duck]

My "w" is curved at the bottom in the same way as my "v" is. I don't know whether or not this is an obvious consequence of my tickying the " 'v' has a curved rather than pointed bottom" tickybox.

[teleute.livejournal.com]

I picked up a number of strange habits with my writing quite deliberately, since my Godmother also has a very distinctive (and much more classy) hand-writing style that was clearly created, rather than occuring organically. I write 'd' as an eth without the crossbar, and 'b' like a flat symbol in music. 'E' is a backwards 3 (but so is my mothers, and since my name begins with E, I could easily have picked that up from her). 'y' has a straight descender, but 'g' a curved one.

Not deliberate, but something I can't change no matter how hard I try: 'h' has a straight descender when written first, or following any letter other than 't'. When following 't' it has a very prominent loop at the top, and often becomes almost flat at the bottom ('L' shaped). I also have a tendency to join capitals to the following lower case letter, and to join numbers written in sequence (phone numbers for instance).

Interestingly, the Tablet TIP seems to have no problems at all with the slightly strange way I write.

[firefliesinjune.livejournal.com]

I had to write out all my letters just to look at them for this. My handwriting is a very squiggly version of what we learned in school. I am primarily left handed, but for some oddball reason I write with my right. I think this is because the school wanted us all to be right handed for ease of teaching.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I cross my zeroes in the manner of a computer printout.

[kyte.livejournal.com]

My writing tends towards the haphazard - I had remedial handwriting lessons and everything! I'm not quite sure which categories I fit into, but I do capital Es a la Grecque. (It's a very tasty sauce.)

[sphyg.livejournal.com]

My J's are sometimes like 9's or big g's, which caught from my mum. Likewise, I caught crossed 7's from my brother. I write far less these days, so tend to make it less joined-up to be legible.

[geekette8.livejournal.com]

My lower case g is a sort of loose figure 8, too. I consciously copied that when I was a teenager from someone I admired.

[sonicdrift.livejournal.com]

My 2's, L's and alpha's all look the same. This was not useful when reading my university notes.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

Or a copperplate one!

[meirion.livejournal.com]

For some reason the poll won't let me submit! However, I write in a modified copperplate when I write by hand — taught myself at 11 or so because I was so disgusted with my handwriting at the time and was really into calligraphy.

The main extra unusual thing is my lower case ds curve leftwards at the top. I should perhaps write a paragraph or two and scan them in. Actually that might be quite an interesting meme ...