I recently stumbled across this brilliant poster by the husband wife duo, Old Tom Foolery (tell me you’ve seen their infamous mustache typeface poster?). It’s got me thinking about handwriting in a big way.

Do you remember practicing your cursive on pre-lined blue and and red newsprint? Oh, I loathed filling those notebooks–I could never master the z. Worst of all, my cursive would vary drastically from sentence to sentence making a mess of any note I penned. Despite Mrs. Young’s valiant teaching efforts, I ditched cursive the second I got to middle school and have never looked back.

With most of us doing our ‘writing’ with our fingertips these days (I seriously hope my thumbs aren’t arthritic from all the texting I do), I wonder what will come of hand writing. I love the sentiments expressed in this poster–especially the comparison of a neatly written letter to one’s personal appearance prior to being photographed (see #5). I think legibility is essential, and proper spelling and punctuation is pretty darn important too. As I like to say, it’s all in the details!

Do you print or scrawl in cursive? My Mom prints in all capital letters or she uses cursive–nothing in between. I love that handwriting is such a distinct and personal thing.