handwriting... oh...

Everything should be cute. Lovely girls write letters, and love notes, and dreamy entries in secret diaries.

Well, that ideal image is ruined a bit if the lovely girl has ugly handwriting.

I always loved to draw, even before i learned to write. As a toddler i didn't know there was a right or wrong way to hold a pencil, and just did what seemed natural -- as long as i could waste reams of paper by covering each sheet with a large smiley face. I soon moved on to drawing Funny Bunny and Friends, the Happy Mobile gang (the Happy Mobile was our big green truck), and by first grade I'd finally stopped drawing Dad's mustache above his nose. And by then, i was also learning to write. But alas, it was too late to change my well-established grip on my pencil, even with the special three-sided pencil clutch my teacher made me use for practicing penmanship.

I can hold a pen the correct way and write fine, but i never do. It's uncomfortable and I certainly can't draw that way. I can't see any benefit in changing that habit now. I already have callouses in all the right places.

I don't know if the way i hold my pen has anything to do with the neatness of my writing, but it's always been difficult for people to read it. When i rush, even i usually can't read it. I've envied people with beautiful handwriting. On the computer i like to be vicariously cute and use fonts like "Catholic School Girls," neat and bubbly, each i dotted with a heart.

Still, when i take my time, my writing's not that bad. I sometimes even get compliments. Once a friend shocked me and confessed that she envied my handwriting; over the past few years, I've grown to like my (neater) writing too.

It still probably wouldn't hurt to tweak it a little. Last year i decided i was going to learn how to write with my left hand, and i was surprised how well it came along after a bit of practice. I'm slow and it looks like a very old person's writing, but it's legible. So i feel like if i want to adjust my handwriting a little, i can do it. Here's a webpage that seems helpful. I think i will go to the library and look at some handwriting books too, mostly because it sounds interesting.

Last night i made a very profound diary entry that reads "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" about half a dozen times. After examining my several different styles (i'm most inconsistent) and flipping through previous pages, i decided i'm happy with both my print and cursive. But i picked out a few things that mean the difference between cute and anti-cute:

• no slant - when i make my letters straight up and down, cuteness is increased.
• no hurry - i simply have to take my time, or it looks awful.
  

Some articles i've read about cuteness in Japan, including the one i linked to in the previous post, mention a style of cute handwriting that became popular among teenage girls in the 1970s. Apparently the handwriting predated, or almost caused the widespread interest in cuteness that took over the country for the next few decades. It's strange to think of handwriting as being so powerful!

By all accounts, the girls used mechanical pencils and wrote horizontally, using rounded characters mixed with little pictures and English words like "happy!" It was described as difficult to read, which made me feel a little better about my own writing at first. But after more reflection, i realize there is difference between "so cute it's no longer functional" and "just plain sloppy."

I looked briefly for some examples of this cute handwriting and couldn't find any; but i'm starting to suspect it may have become the norm, rather than the 70s fad i thought it was at first. In fact, except for the "difficult to read" part, it sounds very similar to the handwriting of some Japanese friends i've had. I'm going to have to dig for some letters from a girl named Tomoko, whose writing i remembered first when i thought about that description. But here are some excerpts of other friends writing, who may have been influenced in their grade school years by the very powerful "cute handwriting."