Saturday, January 23, 2016

National Handwriting Day

It’s National Handwriting Day (John Hancock’s birthday), which comes six days after the more awkwardly named National Send a Handwritten Letter Day. Two handwritten holidays in one week!

I have three letters to write and will write one of them today. So I will declare Local Handwriting Days in the near near future.

Time has an article whose title seems designed to command the attention of younger passersby: “People Have Been Freaking Out About the Death of Cursive Way Longer Than You Think.” The article includes links to Time reports from 1935, 1947, 1953, and 1980. “‘Penmanship is sort of dying out,’” said a pencil salesman, “softly,” in 1935.

The growth of interest in small notebooks (Field Notes Brand, Moleskine, and so on) suggests to me that writing by hand (though perhaps not in cursive) is powerfully appealing to those who already spend too much time at a keyboard. Writing by hand: not dead yet.

Related reading
All OCA handwriting and letter posts (Pinboard)

comments: 1

Daughter Number Three said...

Each time I see the title of this story, at first I think it's "National Handwringing Day." Which, I suppose, is just about everyday on the interweb.