Plainfield Today (Old): Cn u rd ths?

(Photo, IAMPETH)

Cn u rd ths?

Anyone who has received an email from PT knows that he is guilty of the quick abbreviation for email msgs.

But two recent stories on written communication (Ledger and Washington Post) set PT off on an Internet tangent that is part reminiscence, part instruction.

PT learned to write the old-fashioned way -- meaning the Palmer method. Once we got to 3rd grade (the 'middle' room in my 3-room country schoolhouse), we were led to put aside the childish printed letters we had learned in the earlier grades and start the path to 'grown-up' writing.

How exciting it was! How laborious! How life-changing!

And, potentially, how messy, since we used steel penpoints in wooden holders dipped into glass inkwells recessed into our desktops and filled with REAL ink. Learning to manage the pen and the ink was as much part of entering this new world as was mastering the shapes on the page.

Patiently, Miss Cumro would march up and down the aisles, checking our work and occasionally stopping to help a little hand learn how better to grasp the pen, how more smoothly to move the hand across the paper.

It was assumed EVERYONE would write clearly and acceptably -- and it seems everyone did!

PENMANSHIP was even a category to be graded on the dreaded Report Card.

Repetition wasn't meant for its own sake, it was intended to make the writing second nature, like riding a bike, driving a car or playing a musical instrument. Psychologists refer to it as kinesthesia or proprioception. It is so effective that people can even write a legible note IN THE DARK as a result.

We would take our handwriting worksheets, with the teacher's comments, home as proudly as any kid today -- though, of course, there were no fridge magnets and hence fridge art had not yet been invented. Some parents would keep these (and other items) in scrapbooks to record a child's growing years. Imagine!

Though we copied the loops and swirls and practiced the shapes and frills of the various letters, we were allowed -- even expected -- to personalize our handwriting within the parameters. This always led to a kind of cat-and-mouse with the teacher as kids would explore the boundaries of what was acceptable.

Who knew such large lessons would lie in wait in such repetitive scribblings?

But Mr. Palmer actually had SEVERAL things in mind in developing his famous method. He was concerned that writers develop not only LEGIBILITY, but EASE, RAPIDITY and ENDURANCE.

Remember, his style was developed before typewriters or computers. It was an important part of business education, since the keeping of records and handling of correspondence (including copying) could occupy some people's entire work days.

So why, if we learned to write so clearly, smoothly and effortlessly, is our handwriting so wretched and crabbed today?

Part of it surely has to be the accelerated pace of everything. We are in a constant rush. There is so much to do, so much to pay atttention to, so little time.

Part of it has to be the change in technology. When we dipped our pens into actual ink and wrote a few lines until we had to dip again, there was an organic connection to what was going on. How many miles, how many months would you have to write before your ballpoint started to skip today?

In fact, ink and pens to hold them are now an exotic -- and pricey -- niche market.

Something for aging and nostalgic Boomers to indulge in, now that they presumably have reached that stage in life where they have disposable income to do same.

But the democracy of it all is lost.

Which is where the kids and their racy new email and IM language comes in -- they are devising a way of keeping Mr. Palmer's hallmarks -- legibility, ease, rapidity and endurance -- as current as the latest gamebox.

Well, maybe excepting endurance.

Have we gained, or lost, or simply changed?

-- Dan Damon