The Fall and Decline of Handwriting

[brimic]

This is a fun topic for me.
In my field, a lot of work is filled out in notebooks. Unfortunately most of the people I've worked with cannot read another person's handwriting, which means you sometimes need to track the author of an experiment down to have them translate for you if some important data is difficult to read.

[Hawkmoon]

i dont knw waht UR saying thr but txt U L8R anyway

TXT SPK is an entirely different peeve. I'm thinking (for example) more like what has apparently become the new rule of English grammar that ALL word's ending in an 'S' get an apostrophe -- whether the word is being used as a plural, a singular possessive, or a plural possessive. And then there are the Jeep forums. I have recently learned that the forward motion arresting devices on automobiles are "breaks," and that the act of rendering a device unworkable is to "brake" it.

And then there are those writers Who randomly capitalize words in the Middle of a sentence, for No apparent Reason.

I know that a couple or three hundred years ago some famous guy said, "A man who can spell a word only one way is lacking in imagination," but that was before Samuel Johnson and Daniel Webster. These days there's (or "theres" or "theirs") no excuse for not spelling correctly. There's an app for that.

[mtnbkr]

I don't mind txt speak in a phone or other small device.  You have a limited amount of space and the keyboards make typing everything out tedious.  I still tend to do so, but I don't judge those who use txt speak as long as it's not in regular email.

Chris

[Ben]

I don't mind txt speak in a phone or other small device.  You have a limited amount of space and the keyboards make typing everything out tedious.  I still tend to do so, but I don't judge those who use txt speak as long as it's not in regular email.

Chris

I don't mind text speak on a phone either, up to a point. When it gets too hard to decipher I start to get irritated, especially if the text turns into a conversation requiring more than one or two replies. At that point I just call the person up and tell them to spit it all out so we're done in 30 seconds versus ten minutes of texting. Admittedly a lot of that is me, my big clumsy fingers on a phone keyboard, and being of the "get off my lawn!" age.

To Hawkmoon's point: Unfortunately I find myself doing the "there" and "their" thing all too often, and that's what I blame on me getting lazy because of autocorrect and spellcheck. They make it too (or to) easy for me to just hit "send", "post" or whatever and send a grammatically incorrect missive away.

Though part of that is me not caring as much about my grammar if it's a forum post or quick email or something. When I have to send "official" emails at work, or when I write most anything in Word as a letter, a report, or something going to publication, I do take my time and reread everything more than once to look for errors. If it's a work report or something for publication, I actually print out hard copies and sit down with a red pen, sometimes through several iterations to make sure I catch any little mistake that software misses.*

*ETA - even though official fed.gov policy now is we're supposed to do everything "paperless" and avoid printing stuff except for a limited set of criteria. I generally ignore the policy, because (again, possibly because of my age and what I'm accustomed to) I do a much better job of editing and reviewing things if I can lean back in my chair with my feet up on my desk and read the hardcopy. If I had to review stuff on screen only, I'd let a lot more errors slip by.

[K Frame]

"And then there are those writers Who randomly capitalize words in the Middle of a sentence, for No apparent Reason."

Holy crap did I just have a knock down drag out over that issue this past week at work.

I won, but it was a nasty fight, and I've made an enemy, which I find rather amusing.

[Perd Hapley]

And then there are those writers Who randomly capitalize words in the Middle of a sentence, for No apparent Reason.

Don't like the Declaration of Independence, eh? I guess that explains why you don't know the difference between Noah and Daniel Webster, you unpatriotic so-and-so.

[roo_ster]

Don't like the Declaration of Independence, eh? I guess that explains why you don't know the difference between Noah and Daniel Webster, you unpatriotic so-and-so.

fistful, faust second with the Capital Noun criticism.

[Hawkmoon]

Bah -- Daniel, Noah ... one o' them Websters.

However, properly capitalizing the title of an official document, or proper names, is not "random." I'm talking about people Who write things like, " last Week my Son and i went to the baseball game and He had a couple two many beer's so We had to leave early or the police were going to Arrest us."

[Tallpine]

Noah webster was the one That built the Ark 

[Perd Hapley]

Bah -- Daniel, Noah ... one o' them Websters.

However, properly capitalizing the title of an official document, or proper names, is not "random." I'm talking about people Who write things like, " last Week my Son and i went to the baseball game and He had a couple two many beer's so We had to leave early or the police were going to Arrest us."

What I mean is that "our forefathers" considered it proper to capitalize various non-proper nouns within their sentences; usually more than one. I seem to remember seeing that in reproductions of the Declaration. We could probably hunt up a picture online.

I don't know exactly when that was in vogue, though I'm pretty sure I've seen it in 18th and 19th century writings. I also won't go so far as to say it was random, since I don't know what reasons they had.

[Nick1911]

This is a fun topic for me.
In my field, a lot of work is filled out in notebooks. Unfortunately most of the people I've worked with cannot read another person's handwriting, which means you sometimes need to track the author of an experiment down to have them translate for you if some important data is difficult to read.

Interesting.  I would have thought that lab notebooks would be kept on a computer in this day and age.

Personally, I've always typed where possible instead of writing by hand.  This has lead me to write far more then I probably would have otherwise done, but my handwriting is not fantastic.

[zahc]

It's still correct practice in German to capitalize all nouns. Somewhere or other English got lazy and started only capitalizing 'proper' nouns. I'm not sure where the shift happened.

[Perd Hapley]

It's amazing the Krauts can do so well in business, being so over-capitalized.

[MechAg94]

This is why, IMO, shorthand should still be offered at all schools, if not required as a first semester course.

I took shorthand for a semester in high school.  It really isn't all that great for taking notes unless you come back fairly soon an transcribe it back to normal words.  My lazy high school butt certainly wasn't going to do that.  Anyway, trying to study the shorthand notes a few weeks later for a test was difficult at best.  I stopped soon after.

[KD5NRH]

I took shorthand for a semester in high school.  It really isn't all that great for taking notes unless you come back fairly soon an transcribe it back to normal words.

Transcribing the notes onto a computer at the next opportunity is one of the best ways to get the material committed to memory anyway.

[LadySmith]

For us girls, neat and pretty cursive was a point of pride

This was true for me. I've gotten jobs based upon my penmanship. 
However, my spelling deteriorates when I'm on the computer, but not when I use paper.

And then there are those writers Who randomly capitalize words in the Middle of a sentence, for No apparent Reason.

How about the psycho writing when they do it within single words? Like, "toDaY i WenT tO tHe SToRe"

[Scout26]

My mother says I should have been a Doctor with my penmanship.

It was bad in school, got worse in the Army (Being an Officer means I had to sign a lot of stuff.  My signature, barely a scrawl to begin with, suffered most).

Now with the Multiple Myeloma and chemo, the Peripheral Neuropathy has gotten worse, and my handwriting with it.  My typing has suffered also, but edit is a wonderful feature.   

[Waitone]

Handwriting is important mainly in communicating with others.  Makes no difference what it looks like as long as you can read it IF YOUR OBJECTIVE IS PERSONAL NOTES. 

If however your objective is communication with others, handwriting becomes an issue.  I work in an environment where short notes have to be passed back and forth to ensure continuity of a business related effort.  A number of those I work with are college students on their first encounter with the big bad world of business.  Combine sucky handwriting skills (either block or cursive, makes no difference) with texting syntax and an obvious inability to think logically and you've got serial Charlie Foxtrots simply because basic communication skills don't exist.

One of our college students left a hand written message that combined texting syntax and pictograms.  I walked in and saw a cluster of 4 people standing in a group handing around a message, everyone trying to figure out what the message said.  Good thing I wasn't the owner because I'd have dealt with the matter in a forthright and unambiguous manner.  I guess I'm the unit's resident horse's ass because I will not ignore PP communication.  The issue is money and I owe it to my employer to do what is necessary to facilitate the collection of revenue.  It can not be done when there is no possibility of effective, timely communication.