penmanship

There are 12 posts tagged penmanship (this is page 1 of 2).

Do You Still Write With a Pen?

There is, still, something I like about writing by hand that I miss when I’m typing on a keyboard. There is a smoothness to the pen and paper and I like having good penmanship. There is no penmanship at all with a keyboard.

Today I found a note from Perfect Pen, a site selling pens and etc. They say 95% of people write their name first, when they get a new pen. I don’t know if its true. How would you find out about that. Chances are someone selling pens and seeing people test them before buying, would know. So it could be true. What did you last write, by hand? I wrote a grocery list. But I also sent out handwritten Christmas cards this year.

I write down ideas for stories or non-fiction ideas for posts to my sites. Sometimes they never become posts. Lots of ideas are written and just don’t develop further, or get mislaid somewhere, one way or another. But, I still like writing ideas more than typing them. My brain works differently while writing.  A bit slower and not as directly focused on the idea while I have the distraction of the pen, paper and penmanship. More than likely that changes how the ideas develop. Typing is so instant.

National Ballpoint Pen Day is June 10th. It’s the day the patent for the ballpoint pen was filed.

Have you ever gotten into calligraphy, with fountain pens? I did a little of that. In high school I had a fountain pen. It was fun to write with but not as clean as a ballpoint pen. Of course, there have been pencils since the age of the dinosaurs (not literally). Pencils are just not the same, though artists still draw with an assortment of them.

Today, even though it isn’t Ballpoint Pen Day, take a look at all the pens you have collected, scattered, around your home. Get some scrap paper out of the recycling and test all your pens. Not many have the option to be refillable and reused now. Or, people almost never seem to do that. Too many freebie pens given away to take the time to recycle them. Unless you have a favourite pen. I did have a favourite ballpoint pen but it was kind of exotic and I couldn’t find ink to refill it. If you can find a use for the pens that no longer work, got dried out, or broken, that’s great. Most likely the best you can do is get rid of them and have that much less clutter around.

Happy pen testing. Will you scribble something or ring true to the theory that the first thing you write with a new (sort of new) pen is your name?

 

Does Penmanship Still Count?

We type on the keyboard and now and then pick up a pen for a quick note. Not so long ago we were more likely to hand write than pull out a typewriter to bang out a note on that keyboard. Older typewriters require some force behind fingers.

I miss hand writing. I keep noticing how much less controlled and sloppy looking my handwriting is becoming. Does handwriting still matter to anyone? Did you know schools are not teaching cursive writing any longer? My niece told me about this and asked me to teach her how to write. How strange will the world be when the generation of young people comes who are no longer taught how to write, or print, at all?

You may laugh and think this is silly… but in my generation I won penmanship awards for my cursive script writing. That wasn’t so long ago, considering I’m still far from being a century old.

Letter Writers Alliance: Penmanship Pointers

Paperpenalia: Tips to Improve your Handwriting

How to Keep from Getting Bored with Your Diary

If you’ve been keeping a journal. or diary, for awhile it can become a little stale just talking to yourself, the same monologue. Here are some ways to perk your journal writing back up and make it something you can look forward to again.

Start with a diary you like. Shop for a pretty or interesting blank book or make a cover (and even pages) of your own. Or, you might use an online diary and begin on a site like Open Diary, LiveJournal or Blogger.

If you really want to write every day, do it. Keeping a writing schedule is a great way to boost your creativity and discipline yourself to write.

If you don’t want to be a disciplined writer versus a creative writer then don’t push yourself to write ever day.

Whether you write daily or not, don’t always write a long post. Give yourself quick days so you don’t feel chained to your diary. Then, when you have something to say and really do want to write about your feelings, thoughts, ideas and happenings in your life, do so. Give yourself all the space you want to explore your own self.

Have fun with your journal. Draw in it, sketch, stick souvenirs or stickers inside the pages, Turn each fresh page into something uniquely you and don’t be too timid about trying something new. This is your diary, your journal, all the rules are your own to set, or even ignore when you choose to.

Be emotional. In life we are told to be nice, not to be too sensitive and not to get so angry. However, in your diary you can vent, you can pour out sadness, grief, envy, anger, bitterness, jealousy, loneliness, hopeless feelings – any and all feelings can leak out from your fingers, into your pen or your keyboard and onto the fresh white page. This is your place to be emotional and not be judged or told what you should feel.

Always remember this is your adventure on paper. Write it your way.

Don’t always write in the same place or at the same time. Take your diary on the road. Go out to the coffee shop, the mall food court, anywhere you can find a decent place to write. Don’t always look for quiet and solitude. There’s something kind of special, romantic and even mysterious about being a writer right out there where everyone can see you.

You don’t have to use your best penmanship. As long as you can understand our own grammar, spelling and punctuation, that’s all that really matters. (Maybe some day your diary will become a big, best seller) but right now it’s all just your own message in a bottle to yourself. Make mistakes, get messy and don’t go back and fix everything.

If you write with paper and pen take some time to try a few different kinds of pens. Experiment with ink colours, thick or thin nibs and different kind of grips on the pen itself. It’s really nice to have a pen that completely suits your writing style.

Write with pencil if you find yourself wanting to sketch or go back and fix your spelling.

Not everything in your diary has to come from your own brain. If you come across a quote by someone else stick it in the pages too. Write about why you like it, what was special about it for you.

Inspiration, Prompts and Articles for Diary Writers

Diary Groups and Projects

 

Letter Writing Fading to Black

When did you last write someone a real letter?

This is what my nephew, Zack, asked me last week. One of his friends said she would really love to get a letter in the mail. So Zack wrote her a letter and sent it to her through the mail. It will be a very nice surprise for her one day this week.

I used to write letters to my older relatives, the Grandmothers and their sisters (my Great-Aunts). The last of them have been gone for years and it’s been about that long ago that I wrote a letter. Unless letters sent with Christmas cards count, I haven’t written a letter just for the sake of writing a letter in seven years I’m guessing. Kind of sad.

I know my nephew and nieces would love to have a letter arrive in the mail, kids always do. But I probably won’t write one. Email is so much easier, takes less time and doesn’t require postage or stationery.

The loss of letter writing is something we shouldn’t take too lightly. If you think about it, when was the last time you wrote anything by hand? A list doesn’t count. I wonder if someday penmanship, cursive writing and just plain handwriting will become something no longer taught in schools, no longer thought of as mainstream or of much importance at all. We type things far more than we write them out in long hand. This is good for some things, it is more accurate, less likely to be misread. It’s faster too.

People talk about print becoming something in the past. But, I take it a step in another direction and I can see handwriting becoming a lost art, a forgotten skill.

By the way… do you know which is which between stationary and stationery? Stationery, with an E, is the one for letters and envelopes which tend to come in pretty patterns in a pretty pattern box. Just think of the E which is also in letters and envelopes. Stationary with an A is about staying still.

I like this quote from The Art of Manliness, about letter writing:

The writing and reception of letters will always offer an experience that modern technology cannot touch. Twitter is effective for broadcasting what you’re eating for lunch, and email is fantastic for quick exchanges on the most pertinent pieces of information. But when it comes to sharing one’s true thoughts, sincere sympathies, ardent love, and deepest gratitude, words traveling along an invisible superhighway will never suffice. Why? Because sending a letter is the next best thing to showing up personally at someone’s door.

Extra Resources:

365 Letters – A blog about letter writing, mail art and postcards. Carla says: I’m a writer who has taken on the ambitious project of writing a letter every day in 2009 as a way to keep in touch with all of my friends and family.

Letter Writers Alliance – An organization dedicated to keeping the art of letter writing alive. World wide membership.

The Modern Letter Project – “It is our hope that, at end of the year each participant in the project will have a network of new pen pals, friends, and a collection of letters to treasure, and as a group, the art of letter-writing will explore new intersections between letter-writing with art and technology.”

Flickr: The Art of Letter Writing

Flickr: Letter Lovers

Just a Bit of Pen Envy

I miss writing with a pen. I miss penmanship too. My penmanship has suffered from lack of use. However, my keyboarding skills are pretty fast and accurate – as long as I am typing my own words right out of my head.

I still like to look at pens. I seldom fail to go down the office supplies aisle in stores. There are so many nice pens, some with thick nibs, some thin. Some with the perfect black ink. Now there are gel pens with multi colour inks, unlimited ranges of colours. Then there are the old style fountain pens, like a calligraphy pen used to write invitations in a fancy script.

I still remember my favourite pen from school days. I still have an assortment of pens on my desk, close at hand. I seldom use them and that is kind of sad. Yes, I’m a bit of a history geek. Sort of a traditionalist in the leave no man behind way. But, that doesn’t mean I am going to go back to writing long hand. It just means I feel the loss of the pen in my hand, the writing flowing from my pen in cursive style.

One thing I do not miss is the old typewriter. Word processing on the computer is far too good for me to want to return to the old manual typewriter.

Do you ever miss writing with pen and ink? Do you also have a growing collection of pens, seldom used?

Write a Letter about Yourself

Look back on your year, from the end of last October to the nearing of the end of this October. In some spiritual beliefs this time of the year is about looking back, reflecting on the past and finding fresh inspiration for the future.

Write yourself a short letter. You could even try writing it in long hand if your penmanship hasn’t become too rusty from using the computer keyboard. Write about the past year and what you can look forward to. Put your letter somewhere you will find it next year, for October 2009. Tell yourself about yourself.

Best wishes for the year ahead. 🙂