On Sunday, February 16, 2020 at 4:23:53 PM UTC, AMuzi wrote:
On 2/15/2020 7:10 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On Saturday, February 15, 2020 at 5:37:50 PM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 15 Feb 2020 14:01:55 -0500, Frank Krygowski wrote:

I have a friend who's a skilled and enthusiastic calligrapher. It's
amazing what some people can do.

When I was going to grade school "proper" "penmanship" was still not
unknown and I had one teacher what wrote the most beautiful
penmanship, "Spencerian" I think it was known as, that when she wrote
a note to your parents, "John must try harder", you wanted to frame it
to hang on the wall. :-)

A lost art.

Another cycling friend of mine is a retired teacher. Her penmanship is immaculate,
and precisely the same style they tried to teach me in 3rd grade.

OTOH, I was the student to whom they gave a special pencil, one that would guide
my fingers into the right configuration. They hoped it would help. It didn't.

- Frank Krygowski




Regular and repeated raps on the knuckles with an 18" wood
rule didn't work either.

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

My art teacher said, "You're no doubt a genius, Andre, but you'd better not choose the calligraphy section of the examination." Years later I was reminded of it when my mother returned a handwritten letter from me with a request to typewrite it -- and all future letters.

My over-esteem of the legibility of my handwriting -- if people would only close their eyes to s slit and view it from at least three feet away under a strong lamp -- was restored by Apple's Newton, a now forgotten early tablet with handwriting recognition built in, and a special script for those who wanted to learn it. I didn't. I would go to a concert and sit in he dark and in my normal handwriting would write my review on the Newton's screen one large word after another as the concert progressed. The Newton, a work of genius, never missed a word, not even the spelling of Slav names; immediately after the concert I'd modem it through to my paper without even reading it again and be the darling of the copy-editors for not causing extra work when the midnight deadline pressed. See, I used to say to people who complained about my handwriting, the Newton is smarter than you are. I used that Newton* for umpteen years after Apple stopped making it, until the iPad appeared. The iPad was larger and not as good (in the beginning anyway); Apple had given up on handwriting recognition in favour of dictation, which of course a reviewer cannot do while the concert is on.

Andre Jute
*Which was a gift from one of my son's friends after he "upgraded" to a Palm, so the Newton may even have been obsolete by the time I started using it.. Another Apple product I kept using long, long after it was obsolete -- in fact paying a premium for the last few NOS that a dealer had in stock as spares for my studio -- was the "multimedia" 840AV on which we made umpteen music videos.