Don Hill
By Don Hill
Are we losing the ability to write in longhand?
Does anyone write a letter anymore? Do girls write secret diaries? Is the pen no longer mightier than the sword? Is script now considered a coded message? Is penmanship no longer taught?
I guess the last time I wrote a letter in longhand — that is using my hand and a pen —would have been when I was courting Mary. At that time, I still used the fountain pen and bottled ink. In case you don’t know what I am talking about, the fountain pen was an invention that changed writing from the dipped pen that had to be dipped every three or four words to one that held ink.
Like the one I have in the Conner Museum of Antique Printing, it has a rubber tube inside the handle and a lever on the side, which when you pumped it up and down would pull ink into the tube. You still had to insert the pen nib into the ink bottle to fill the pen, but once filled, you could write several pages. Of course, this all developed through the ages from the bamboo stick to the quill (feather) to the lead pencil and the metal dipped pen.
Writing became a work of art back in our earlier days when our ancestors used a quill and later the metal pen, both of which had a split nib. This made it possible to change the thickness of the stroke by applying pressure to separate the nib. Penmanship was taught in school. Forming the letters by hand movements not only created beautiful letters and words, it also improved memory. “The sequential finger movements activate multiple regions of the brain associated with processing and remembering information.” (I got that from the Internet.)
Even more important, it made the message more personal. You could often associate the style of writing with the person. Was it a bold masculine stroke or was it a delicate feminine handwritten letter? Better yet if she added her perfume. Oh my! Somehow, you don’t get that with email. They had to come up with emojis for a substitute. It just isn’t the same.
Longhand continued to decline when Gutenberg developed the printing press, Henry Mills invented the typewriter and now the computer word processing and voice dictation. Even when longhand is used, the invention of the ballpoint pen eliminated the thick and thin elements, which destroyed the art of beautiful penmanship.
So now, the only thing I write in longhand is a grocery list, which I can’t understand when I get to the store. I do well to sign my name anymore.
Don Hill is a resident of Seymour and a longtime volunteer for Southern Indiana Center for the Arts. Send comments to [email protected].