What ever happened to the Palmer Method of writing? It has gone the way of other cursive writing styles like Spencerian Script, Zanor Bloser, and D’nealian. What would our Founding Fathers think who signed the Declaration of Independence in Script. I’ll never forget the nuns hovering over me with their giant rulers prepared to whack me if I wasn’t doing it right. Doing it right didn’t mean squeezing your fingers as you write. It meant one motion of your entire hand and arm. Those who perfected it grew up to have beautiful handwriting, like my wife, not me. Those who didn’t perfect it grew up to be doctors and presidents. My doctor signs my prescriptions with a straight line. Curiously, I once covered the entire prescription with my hand, except the signature, and asked the pharmacist to identify the doctor, and he did so immediately. Penmanship was always a staple of learning like Math and English but long gone from the curriculum. You rarely see any evidence of it today except for a few, like John Hancock’s signature and CocaCola ads. Who writes anymore, who needs to, with email, texting, twitter, etc? When was the last time you WROTE a letter? Sometimes kids are forced to, like thanking Grandma for a gift, but have you see some of the writing in those thank you notes?
originally published September 4, 2015