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"Handwriting" redirects here. For scripts for writing down notes by hand, see "Cursive".

Example of classic American business handwriting known as Spencerian script from 1884.

Penmanship or handwriting is the art of writing with the hand and a writing instrument. Styles of handwriting are also called hands or scripts.

[edit] History

Ancient Roman handwriting styles included Roman cursive, and the more calligraphic rustic capitals and square capitals, the latter of which forms the basis for modern capital letters and was used in stone inscriptions.

Carolingian minuscule under the influence of Alcuin of York became the dominant hand during the Carolingian Renaissance (750AD–1000AD). Gothic script gained ascendency during the eleventh century, and retained its dominance until the Italian Renaissance (1400AD–1600AD). During this time frame (750–1500) regional variants of the dominant scripts were created, and spread in popularity. By the sixteenth century, these regional copybooks showed little influence of their origins. As countries unified, these regional variations became national notebooks.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw another revival of clean formalized handwriting in England and the United States of America.

In the United States, starting in the late 19th century, there were cries that handwriting was being neglected due to the typewriter. By the 21st century, blame was being attached to the use of computers. Linked to this decline in penmanship has been a decrease from two hours per day in penmanship instruction during the 19th century to less than an hour per semester in 2007.

Letter written in England in 1894, showing a handwriting style of the period.

[edit] Books used in North America

Platt Rogers Spencer is known as the "Father of American Penmanship". His writing system was first published in 1848, in his book Spencer and Rice's System of Business and Ladies' Penmanship. The most popular Spencerian manual was The Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship, published by his sons in 1866. This "Spencerian Method" was taught in American schools until the mid 1920s, and has seen a resurgence in recent years through charter schools and home schooling using revised Spencerian books and methods produced by former IAMPETH president Michael Sull (* 1946).

George A. Gaskell (1845–1886), a student of Spencer, authored two popular books on penmanship, Gaskell's Complete Compendium of Elegant Writing and The Penman's Hand-Book (1883).

Starting at the beginning of the 20th century, Zaner-Bloser Script and the Palmer Method, introduced by Charles Paxton Zaner (15 February 1864 – 1 December 1918) and Elmer Ward Bloser (6 November 1865 – 1929) of the Zanerian Business College and A. N. Palmer in his Palmer's Guide to Business Writing, published in 1894, became the dominant copybooks in North America.^{[citation needed]} The A. N. Palmer Company finally folded in the early 1980s — Zaner-Bloser continues, and accounts for roughly 40% of handwriting textbook sales in the USA.

New scripts include D'Nealian Script and Getty-Dubay — both published in 1976. D'Nealian (named after its inventor, Donald Neal Thurber) uses a slanted, serifed manuscript form followed by an entirely joined and looped cursive of the typical American variety. Getty-Dubay (named after its inventors, Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay) uses a slightly slanted, optionally serifed Italic manuscript followed by a partially joined, unlooped Italic cursive with letter-forms similar to those of Italic manuscript. D'Nealian accounts for 40% of American handwriting textbook sales; Getty-Dubay, which accounted for less than 1% of American handwriting textbook sales in 1995, by 2003 had come to account for 7% of American handwriting textbook sales, and has reportedly continued this growth.

The remainder of the American handwriting textbook scene comprises more than 200 published textbook curricula, all differing from these and from each other in often confusing ways: particularly as regards cursive. (E.g., the cursive capital "T" of the Harcourt-Brace handwriting program closely resembles the cursive capital "F" of most other American handwriting programs and in fact looks much more like their "F" than it looks like the "T" of those other cursive programs.)

Two styles of hand printing.

[edit] Forgery

Forgery of a person's handwriting is a frequent occurrence and commonly appears in the legal court system. Signatures etc. are analyzed by a questioned document examiner.

[edit] Motor control

Handwriting requires the motor coordination of multiple joints in the hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder to form letters and to arrange them on the page. Holding the pen and guiding it across paper depends mostly upon sensory information from skin, joints and muscles of the hand and this adjusts movement to changes in the friction between pen and paper.^[1] With practice and familiarity, handwriting becomes highly automated using motor programs stored in motor memory.^[2] Compared to other complex motor skills handwriting is far less dependent on a moment-to-moment visual guidance.^[3][4]

Research in individuals with complete peripheral deafferentation with and without vision of their writing hand finds increase of number of pen touches, increase in number of inversions in velocity, decrease of mean stroke frequency and longer writing movement duration. The changes show that cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback play a critical role in updating the motor memories and internal models that underlie handwriting. In contrast, sight provides only a secondary role in adjusting motor commands.^[4]

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Typography — the appearance, arrangement, and style of printed script.

Types of writing

• Block letters — also called printing is the use of the simple letters children are taught to write when first learning
• Calligraphy — the art of writing itself, generally more concerned with aesthetics for decorative effect than normal handwriting.
• Cursive — any style of handwriting in which all the letters in a word are connected.

Studies of writing and penmanship

• Diplomatics — forensic palaeography (seeks the provenance of written documents).
• Graphology — the study and analysis of handwriting especially in relation to human psychology.
• Graphonomics — is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the handwriting process and the handwritten product
• Palaeography — the study of script.

Penmanship-related professions

• Letterer — comic book lettering profession.
• Technical lettering — the process of forming letters, numerals, and other characters in technical drawing.
• Questioned document examiner — forensic science discipline which includes handwriting examination

Other penmanship-related topics

• Handwriting in left-handed people
• Handwriting recognition — is the ability of a computer to receive and interpret intelligible handwritten input
• Regional handwriting variation
• Signature

[edit] External links

• Lessons in Calligraphy and Penmanship
• An Elegant Hand: The Golden Age of American Penmanship and Calligraphy by William E. Henning, ed. by Paul Melzer
• The Golden Age of American penmanship, including scans of the January 1932 issue of Austin Norman Palmer's American Penman
• Improving handwriting
• Several scripts
• [1]
• Exercises and examples of French cursive penmanship
• The Handwriting Is on the Wall; Researchers See a Downside as Keyboards Replace Pens in Schools Article in Washington Post.