griffonage

[underused]

From the French griffoner, 'to scribble or scrawl,' griffonage is a pretty word for terrible handwriting.

How much writing do you still do "by hand"? Print or cursive?

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handwriting sample: Edna St Vincent Millay

Comments

[misbegotten]

I do cards and postcards in prinsive. Cursint? (Oh, that sounds naughty.) Mostly the wotd is very applicable to me.

[underused]

First, "prinsive." Perfect!

The second link is an opinion piece discussing the issue of whether children should still learn cursive writing in school. I think it was in one of the comments someone noted that most of our adult writing is exactly what you describe--a personalised mix of print and cursive that gives us optimum efficiency while (hopefully) remaining legible. But if we never learned cursive, we'd never really learn to use handwriting effectively. I thought it was an interesting idea.

[darkmagess]

that is an excellent word!

[underused]

I couldn't agree more.

[merikuru]

My writing is sort of a mixture of both. Very print-y, but with a lot of cursive-ish loops and connections and often rather unreadable (in my opinion.)

I don't think I'd go so far as to call it griffonage though.

[amidthestars]

There were about 3 years where I didn't have a computer or a phone or any other type-y machine, and so I wrote everything by hand. I found it hard, mostly because my brain always worked too fast for my hands to keep up. It often felt viscerally overwhelming, and I always felt really limited in what I was actually capable of expressing. (Does that make sense?)

I've read a lot of writers (Mary Oliver is the only one I can think of right now, but I know I've read others, too) who insist that writing by hand is the only way to properly write anything, and that typing is, I guess, unnatural and not as good for your thinking or creating, and I always think, "Really?" I don't want that to be true. Writing by hand is painful for my wild little brain.

My handwriting is more cursive than print. Printing has always felt too slow for me. I wouldn't say it's terrible (in the griffonage sense), but (as you know!) it is often criticized for being too small - which it definitely is. But it's always just been mine, you know? There was a time where I actually started to study calligraphy books to see if there was a way I could make my writing bigger but still feel like it belonged to me. I'm not sure if I was successful, but it was fun to play with (and I learned a weird amount about calligraphy in the process). I try to write larger now, but it still doesn't feel natural.