In Mrs. Whaley’s third-grade classroom, the children are practicing their cursive capitals:
Beverly Cleary, Ramona Quimby, Age 8 (New York: William Morrow, 1981).
Ramona must be in the clutches of the Palmer Method, whose capital Q is a piece of work. In The Palmer Method for Business Writing (1915), A. N. Palmer admits that “capital Q is simply a large figure two” — a big floppy numeral passing for a letter. Some Method!
I can’t recall a cursive Q of any sort from childhood. I do remember G and Z , which came to me in their Palmer forms, and which I could never get quite right. Especially Z .
[Capitals Q and Z from The Palmer Method for Business Writing (1915).]
Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts (Pinboard)
Dowdy-world miracle (From Fifteen )
Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary
Quimby economics
Ramona Quimby, stationery fan
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April 2018: In the memoir A Girl from Yamhill (1988), Beverly Cleary writes about her first exposure to cursive, in the form of the the Wesco system of handwriting, which, like the Palmer Method, has a 2-shaped Q. It’s now obvious to me that Cleary is drawing on her Wesco childhood in her depiction of Ramona’s dissatisfaction with cursive writing.
Monday, May 9, 2016
Cursive Quimby
By Michael Leddy at 9:50 AM
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Play fair. Keep it clean. No potshots and no derailing. Thanks.
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