Penmanship

So as part of my new gig as a lecturer in the journalism department at the local U, I volunteered to part of the greeters program that helps welcome freshman j-school majors to campus.

Last month I e-mailed them all (about 50). This month, it's a hand-written note and next month it's a phone call. In working on the notes, I've noticed that my handwriting is really bad...just barely legible. And I have to print. I tried to write in cursive and couldn't do it for the life of me. I can't remember the last time I wrote in cursive.

I know my handwriting is bad when taking notes for a story, but I'm hurrying to keep up with someone talking. Now, I have all the time I want to write these notes, and it doesn't seem to help much.

Anyone else notice this about their own handwriting?

 

My handwriting has gone completely to freaking hell the last several years, partly due to a TIA I had a couple of years ago, but mainly due to the fact that I literally never ever hand-write anymore. Anything.

I used to have a really nice signature, a cool-John Hancock-style thingie I used on contracts, credit cards, etc, and now it's just chicken scratch.

 

I write like a doctor.

I blame college for this.

 

It's soccer's fault.

 

Years of note-taking has ruined my penmanship. I've tried to get better by slowing down, but I get impatient when it takes 15 minutes to write a note in a greeting card.

 

Only "C"'s I got in elementary school were for penmanship, and I got them every damn marking pweriod.
Things have not improved in the ensuing 45 years.

 

When I'm covering a baseball game, sometimes other reporters ask to copy the lineups out of my book and they have trouble reading my writing.
I guess the moral of the story is you never know when other people will have to read something you've handwritten, so learn to write neatly.

 

I used to have such nice penmanship in high school and college. Now, the nuns would slap my hands with a ruler. I blame it all on sportswriting - taking fast notes, on the runs, on those reporter's notebooks. Now, I write too fast, I'm too impatient and I just string it all together without taking the time to make it nice and neat.

 

I used to have great handwriting--not 'pretty' or girly, but very cool. Now I find it impossible and even painful to handwrite for a long time. I am positive this is from years of typing or scrawling little notes...lost the flexibility in those little teeny muscles.

 

Blame mouses and keyboards. My carpal tunnel/overuse injuries make writing anything more than a quick note uncomfortable, if not flat-out painful. Not that I had decent handwriting to begin with, anyway.