Handwriting becoming a dying art

It’s encouraging when in the middle of a heartfelt journey a person meets another traveler going the same way. It’s nice to think “great minds” think along similar routes. Earlier this fall both The Fargo Forum and CBS’s Sunday Morning carried stories on penmanship — cursive writing. And the week before I had completed a class in cursive writing for the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s School Days program at Fort Totten. It was reassuring to learn I was not alone in recognizing the need for children to learn it.

As the internet became our medium of choice, the need for handwriting skills diminished. With the computer keyboard replacing handwritten letters we are seeing high school, and even college students, with undecipherable handwriting, and often worse, an inability to read/write script.

Teachers in lower grades have to make certain their students can and do use keyboards. With time being so limited and supply funds cut to the bone, it’s easy to understand why script or cursive has taken a back seat to keyboard. Many educators question whether that’s a good tradeoff.

It was so important that during the early years of the U.S. movement westward, a man’s penmanship could qualify him for a career with the government writing documents and letters. Every document of importance, such as the Constitution, great speeches or commands from the White House was in long hand, or script.

Spencerian script (originated in 1840 by Roger Spencer and used in the Coca-Cola and Ford logos) was, until the 1920s, the primary hand for formal documents. As modernity hit the 20th century, A.N. Palmer designed a more streamlined and modern script that could be written more quickly, while simultaneously appearing to be an “educated” script. It’s what our grandparents learned in lower grades. Even that script is hard to read by those entering high school.

For any modern justification to use cursive penmanship, I am grateful. It’s the reason I’ve been teaching it at the SHSND’s school days events at various fort/historic sites the past years.

Perhaps it is incumbent on grandparents to take their offspring and their children’s children aside, and encourage or even teach them longhand writing. I think of the poems and letters written by my own mother, and how different the feeling would be were those treasures written on the computer and simply saved on a flash drive. The art of a beautiful letter is felt almost as much in how it is written, or scrawled across the paper, as in the words themselves. It is an art form of the heart that anyone can master.

If anyone has an item for this column, please send to Sharon Cox, PO Box 1559, Jamestown, ND 58402-1559.

Tags: sharon cox, diversions