Bad Handwriting
Created | Updated Dec 19, 2003
I have bad handwriting. It's probably best just to come out and say it at the start.
For those of you with beautiful handwriting, you don't know the full horror of having bad handwriting. But since we all love a good horror story, I know you'll read on, no matter how nice and elegant your personal script is.
I developed my bad handwriting at primary school. I never was much good. My main problem is that my brain goes far too fast for my hands (or mouth) to keep up. It's like a secretary taking dictation from a motor mouth. This leads to my hands rushing to get finished. As a result my writing is dreadful, as is my typing.
People, particularly my mother, were always commenting on it. 'What dreadful writing you've got!' she'd say. Of course having always had this problem, I didn't see it, so I couldn't see what her problem was. I could read the page perfectly, I could make out each and every letter. In fact, I was so good that when cards and letters arrived from certain uncles and aunts, who shall remain nameless, I was the only person who could read them.
My second problem is that even if I try to write legibly, I always end up rushing at the end and making a mess, and because I'm used to my own writing, this is not always easy for me to notice.
I got to thinking. In a world where we use computers and personal data assistants to record documents, notes and memos, and where computers are getting good enough to understand spoken words and even take dictation; is hand writing really all that important?
I know that when I want to write a letter to someone, my first instinct is to power up my computer. 'Low toner alert' has become like a personal visit from Death - everything stops. I don't have a letter note-pad and don't know where I could get one from if I needed to. Email ranks at the top of my most useful inventions of the 20th century.
With all this technology, are we forgetting how to write legibly? When was the last time you wrote out something by hand? Most of the forms I fill in are over the Internet and even my computer helps out with its autocomplete feature that fills in all my essential details. I dread the day it goes wonky and decides that I'm a female called Ethel.
But there's an upside to my terrible hand writing. I can read anything that dreamt of by the most insane lunatic (as long as it's in English). I've even helped my parents to learn to read bad writing.
So in the end I feel my bad writing had helped my parents. In a world of bad writers, they are now armed with the skills to decipher any written text and discover it's meaning. My mother is now very proud that she can read her doctor's prescriptions.
As she puts it; with writing this bad, it's only a shame I'm not a doctor.
