The Ancient Art of Writing

Mark Cuban wrote a humorous post yesterday about forgetting how to write. He talks about being in a meeting and suddenly needing to take notes, and having to go “1900′s” and use a pen and paper.

I can totally sympathize with this! I’ve been using a computer most of my life (since I was 8 ) to type reports and for pretty much everything. Because of this, penmanship was never a very important or even practiced skill for me. My handwriting has always been if not completely, at least borderline illegible.

Then there’s that whole cursive thing – I never learned to write in cursive, it always seemed stupid to me. I mean, I can sort of do it if forced, but there’s no way I can sit down and write in cursive without thinking very carefully how to create each letter. When I do write, it is always in print, and I have no concept of upper/lower case letters in print. My brain seems to choose the blockiest, simplest form of the letter and use that. thE woRDs I wRITE by hAnD look LIKE thIs. Combine that with my poor penmanship and doing it very quickly, and it is nearly impossible for most people to figure out what I’ve written – even me!

There is one exception to the cursive rule – my signature. When I was in 8th grade I remember wanting to have a unique signature. I spent hours and hours figuring out my signature and then even more hours practicing it. When people see me sign my signature they find it interesting because they think it could easily be copied, the thing is – I do it EXACTLY the same each time and duplicating it properly is actually nearly impossible. In fact if I think about it, I mess it up!

I find writing by pen to be a tedious pointless excercise because it is slow, illegible and clumsy. The real problem is all those people who think you’re rudely browsing the web when you’re taking notes during a meeting!