How’s your hand writing?
I listened to Philip Hensher chatting about the dying art of handwriting on Start the Week last week and have now just stumbled across his blind analysis of certain famous people’s penmanship.
Guess whose handwriting (above) he describes as ‘a bit sad and babyish’? That’s one Barack Obama.
I’m definitely with the Hensher on the next one, those mid-word capital R’s are mental.
He concluded that the writer is not used to people saying ‘no’ to them. Beyonce, it turns out.
I know when I sit down to write it just feels a lot slower than rattling words off on a keyboard, editing quickly as you go. But I do still write the odd letter and thank you card and I love to receive them. Do you think hand writing is a dying art? Do you ever write postcards from holidays?
I’ll refer you to the fabulous Letters of Note while you consider this, and suggest you look up Spike Milligan’s letter to George Harrison. Not hand written sadly, but worth reading.
I find handwriting fascinating, and always have. My own is, unfortunately, untidy and therefore unattractive, a fact which I like to blame partly on the babyish writing we were taught at school (Marion Richardson I seem to recall) but also on years of using shorthand. I did buy a book on analysing handwriting and, like you, found the blind analysis really interesting. Poor Obama… he has enough troubles at the moment without this!
Oh, feel free to lend that book the next time I come up. x