H. W. T. - Handwriting Without Tears

[JonA]

Greetings All!

 

In (teaching) Italic May Soon Be Illegal In The USA, I suggested we start a new topic devoted specifically to a discussion of the form of the HWT cursive. My suggestion was seconded, and so here I am. As can be read in that thread, HWT (Handwriting Without Tears) is a handwriting program targeted at schools as a favorable alternative to other handwriting techniques. You can find their website here: Handwriting Without Tears, with a link to their letterforms (the topic of this thread) here: Cursive.

 

Many may notice similarities between the HWT forms and non-HWT cursive forms taught in schools today and in the past, but there are some crucial differences. The purpose of this thread is for laying out some of those differences, though it is not to be a pure compare/contrast effort, to be sure. What we will want to discuss are the pros and cons of the letterform standards themselves as used for aids to improving penmanship and general academic success (both things the folk at HWT claim as advantages to their model). Through this all it may become necessary to mention other models, but I would hope we can keep the discussion as focused on HWT as possible.

 

Any comments on the HWT letterforms made in the previous thread are gladly welcomed here; conversely, any comments relating to the public policy of the matter should be posted in the other thread.

 

And so let's get started. Here's a toast to fruitful discussion!

 

JonA

Edited August 1, 2010 by JonA

[JonA]

To start, I will copy-paste relevant portions from my post in the previous thread here:

 

I must say, from my initial perspective, that aside from the form being just down-right ugly (why is the top hump on the B bigger than the lower?), it is also illogical. I agree with the Handwriting Standards site that there are considerable parallels between handwriting (along with composition style in general) and thinking ability; unfortunately, the inconsistencies I see in the HWT model make me suspect that it will do more harm than good, and may encourage the poor thinking already rampant in the U.S. public (resulting from a lack of proper education in the first place) with its illogical, inconsistent connections, and other problems too numerous to list now.

 

JonA

[KateGladstone]

To start, I will copy-paste relevant portions from my post in the previous thread here:

 

I must say, from my initial perspective, that aside from the form being just down-right ugly (why is the top hump on the B bigger than the lower?), it is also illogical. I agree with the Handwriting Standards site that there are considerable parallels between handwriting (along with composition style in general) and thinking ability; unfortunately, the inconsistencies I see in the HWT model make me suspect that it will do more harm than good, and may encourage the poor thinking already rampant in the U.S. public (resulting from a lack of proper education in the first place) with its illogical, inconsistent connections, and other problems too numerous to list now.

 

JonA

I would very much like to see JonA itemize a few (at least) of the multifarious scribal impediments built into HWTears -- this would allow me to comment without fear of duplicating his efforts.

 

Just a few of the difficulties I see:

 

Vertical, rounded shapes (even in their cursive!) are unnatural for most writers and countermand the development of speed (in fact, the HWTears training for teachers tells them that speed is entirely unimportant and needs no attention)

 

Inefficient use of horizontals to join ALL cursive letters (this is done because /1/ horizontals necessarily exit some letters, such as o, and the designer wanted to minimize the number of different joins, and /2/ the designer believes that schoolchildren are biologically incapable of perceiving or producing diagonal movements: no joke -- I've talked with her at some length, and have seen her training-program.)

 

Beginning every cursive letter at a different position from the same letter's beginning in the previous (unjoined) style (in HWTears printing, all letters begin above the base-line, but in HWTears cursive, all letters begin at the base-line: every motor habit must be re-learned, simultaneously with learning to add loops and make the other shape-changes)

 

Gross inaccuracies (in the students' books, the teachers' book, and the teacher-training workshops) regarding the history of our handwriting (e.g., students learning HWTears cursive -- and teachers/occupational therapists (OTs) learning to teach HWTears cursive -- are taught as a matter of gospel that no handwriting ever slanted until the 18th century when pointed-pen users found it impossible to produce vertical lines. Yet slanted writings abound before that period, and vertical writing systems were and are known among pointed-pen users. Several mid-19th-century English and American school-styles were not only vertical, but were in fact called "Vertical Writing" -- Google this term in books.google.com to see some of the textbooks which taught them -- and they were all written with the pointed pen ... in fact, they are strikingly similar to HWTears cursive. There was, in the middle third of the 19th century, a tremendous vogue for such methods (and their founders used exactly the arguments that HWTears today presents as "the latest research") but that vogue collapsed after 20 - 30 years when the generation which had grown up on those styles reached adulthood and realized that its handwriting was generally poor: they went to the other extreme and tended to adopt (and to teach their own children/pupils) extremely slanted scripts such as Spencerian (which of course can create somewhat different problems and difficulties ... )

 

Several people who had to (or wanted to) attend HWTears courses (either as part of a requirement for becoming an OT specializing in handwriting, or because their school/district had bought the program in a finally-discovered desire to teach some handwriting, or for any other reason such as seeing one of the firm's many press-releases whenever they come to some town or city and give a training-course for parents/teachers/others) of course knew the actual history of slant vs. vertical in handwriting (as opposed to the HWTears version) and have told me that they found themselves asked to leave the course when they dared to ask about the discrepancy between what HWTears says happened & what documentably happened.

 

When I asked the HWTears founder, Dr. Jan Olsen (her doctorate is in Education), where she had gotten the info that "slant did not exist until the 18th century / pointed pens make verticals impossible," she said that she had not actually seen or learned this anywhere, but had sat down and figured out for herself that "it must have happened this way. Since there is no evidence or any sources on the matter of slant or anything else in handwriting history [she said], I figured it was safe to assume this as fact and provide this as an explanation so that people will know the history." I asked her then if, when she wrote her books a couple of decades ago, she would have welcomed any contact with sources/researchers on the history of handwriting slant and/or other aspects of handwriting history -- and if she would welcome any such contacts now. She replied "Yes" to both questions, asked me for names of books/people that can provide expertise in the subject (I named a few of the best -- one of them, as it happens, lives in her own state of Maryland) ... and, I found out over the next five years, she never checked with a single one of them (and she certainly did not revise her workshops or her textbooks). When I asked her why, she said: "After I asked for those names and book-titles and you gave them, I realized that this would not be good for me to check into -- because, if I really did turn out to be wrong, it would be a bother because I would have to change my books and my workshops and I don't want to mess with anything that has been so successful. If I change what I am teaching, people will be confused and they will lose their trust in me. I would feel that I lost my integrity if I let that happen." I post this here -- in an education thread instead of in a public-policy thread -- because educational concerns include a concern with the integrity of the educator (as well as the obvious concern with the factual accuracy of the teaching).

[JonA]

I would very much like to see JonA itemize a few (at least) of the multifarious scribal impediments built into HWTears -- this would allow me to comment without fear of duplicating his efforts.

 

Well, as I've said, my exposure to HWT is little, and certainly far less than yours. Likewise are my efforts, and you can rest assured that you are unlikely to duplicate any of them. My sentiments toward the method I've already posted:

 

1) It is just generally ugly and looks like a sloppy, poorly-learned version of what I was taught in school. Specifically, I am speaking about the following matters:

 

a) It is VERTICAL!! (and that creates/exasperates problems b-d)

Majuscule B with its equal sized humps (in the school script I was taught, though more hideous in vertical)

c) Minuscule R looks like the Greek Pi

d) Majuscule W with its equal height verticals (also in the school script I was taught)

 

2) The connecting strokes seem inconsistent. Some letters (Aa, Cc, Oo, for example) lack initial strokes. Though the system seeks to keep its connections at the base line, several letters (o, v, w, for example) have exit stokes on the midline (also in the script I was taught).

 

Ultimately I see this script as similar to many other cursives, with similar downfalls plus a few extras. On purely penmanship grounds, it is not the worst thing to happen to schools (especially since most folk don't continue writing with their school-taught hand). But, Kate, as you began this campaign targeting specifically HWT, I'll leave the specific problems to you, especially since you've spoken with the program's designer.

 

Jon

[KateGladstone]

Believe it or not, the HWTears designer believes that every one of those glaring flaws makes her program simpler and more consistent than anything else that ever was, is, or ever will be on the market!

She also enjoys making statements (publicly and in training-workshops) that "only HWTears has ______________ [fill in the blank with various obvious techniques for teaching handwriting, such as tracing the letter-models]" and she gets positively nasty when this is challenged (especially if the challenger documents that the statement is false). How she gets schools to believe this and her other statements: when deciding which schools/districts to sell to, she usually prioritizes those that haven't had any handwriting program in a long time (and there are enough such places to keep her in business for a looooong time!) so that she and her staff can make such claims without too much fear that anyone in her audience will know better. (One of her -- and her staff's -- favorite claims, when working such audiences or speaking to the public or generating press-releases, is that "no one else but HWTears provides any training at all, to anyone, in how to teach handwriting." ... and, yes, she is far from tolerant of those who know otherwise: e.g., of people who say that they have been to some other form of training in that subject.)

A very notable thing about her classes to make teachers and other people into "certified handwriting specialists" (the certification is given, of course, by the HWTears firm) is that there is no attention given to improving the participants' own handwriting, and participants' handwriting is never evaluated before they receive their certificates at the end -- in other words, you can walk into the course writing illegibly, and walk out of the course still writing illegibly, and (if it is one of the courses that give the certification) you are now a certified handwriting trainer who writes illegibly.

(This is actually consistent with the way in which students' performance is evaluated in a HWTears lesson for children. A HWTears lesson includes so many activities other than actually writing -- such as learning to perform songs about letters, a puppet-show about letters, and even doing dances about letters -- that it is entirely possible for a child who cannot write worth a bean to get high grades in HWTears handwriting nonetheless. Such grade-inflation is, in turn, quietly encouraged by the HWTears policy that the cost of materials is immediately raised astronomically -- by removing the 80% discount -- if any school concludes that some of its children are doing poorly with HWTears and should be taken off the program: if a school lowers the quantity of its HWTears order for that reason, or for any other reason, the 80% discount is immediately removed and the program changes from cheap to unaffordable: this gives administrators and teachers an incentive to do everything necessary to judge all students as "successful" within this program, so that the prices -- on an unbreakable contract -- will not be raised. I have actually known of teachers whose administrators [supervisors or school principals] told them that they would be "hurting the school" if they reported that HWTears was failing with any of their students "because, if one student is allowed to be taken off the program, and something else has to be done with that child, the program becomes unaffordable for everyone else, so everyone else's interests are sacrificed to just one child." !!!???@$#!!!#$@???!!! )

[JonA]

But in terms of letterform (or letter-forming methodology) from what other problems does HWT suffer? You've outlined many policy-related problems, but I am still eagerly waiting to see how they connect to the general inadequacies of the forms themselves.

 

I made mention of the fact that connection strategies utilized in writing are indications of mental strategies (connected writing corresponds to connected thoughts), and that the generally poor connecting system used by HWT is not able to take advantage of this fact and may, indeed, hinder the development of useful mental strategies. What other instances can we find in which the letterforms (or letter-forming methodologies) appear counter productive to the scholastic goals of academic success and intellectual development?

 

The public and pedagogical policy of HWT is, if you are correct in your assessments, clearly ridiculous; but after the useless singing and dancing is over and everyone sits down at a desk to start writing, what methodologies are employed, how are the letterforms taught, and what does all that mean to the subject of this forum?

 

Jon

[desertsquid]

Here's a link to some HWT cursive examples. I agree that they look odd. At the very least, the upper-case 'F', 'G' and 'Q' look strange. I would not recognize them out of context so they would slow down my reading of someone's handwriting if they were used.

[JonA]

Here's a link to some HWT cursive examples. I agree that they look odd. At the very least, the upper-case 'F', 'G' and 'Q' look strange. I would not recognize them out of context so they would slow down my reading of someone's handwriting if they were used.

 

Interesting! I like the F; it looks much like my own.

 

 

JonA

[KateGladstone]

Re:

... t connection strategies utilized in writing are indications of mental strategies (connected writing corresponds to connected thoughts), ...

 

Evidence, please?

Despite not providing evidence for that assertion, Jon A. has pretty ably set out several reasons that HWTears is deleterious as a style (and would be deleterious even if its promoters did not try resorting to criminalization of every other style).

Its connection strategies, in particular, are bad for reasons other than what Jon A. has asserted. (The most glaring badness: connecting horizontally from baseline-exit letters -- take the word "and" for an example -- means that the join becomes an unwieldy obtuse angle like two adjacent sides of a trapezoid: a long horizontal movement followed by a steep upward diagonal as one joins into the next letter. This is not a strategy for connection, but a miscarriage of connection.)

Jon A. plainly feels strongly about his "connections = thoughts" premise, as he has stated it twice. I myself, though, cannot offer his assertion as an argument until I see trustworthy evidence for his assertion. (Do people who write Italic -- which is semi-connected -- think less than people who write 100% connected styles? I have heard this asserted -- so far, only by graphologists and their adherents -- but I have never seen it demonstrated.)

 

 

Edited August 2, 2010 by KateGladstone

[Pentech42]

I took a look at the site and besides some letterform differently madrd for the most part its cursive similar to what I learned years ago. If it helps children learn writing besides the market share grab is it such a bad thing. I wonder how the other schools of writing were talked about back oh the day?

[caliken]

It's almost as if the creators of H.W.T. handwriting have gone out of their way to produce particularly ugly lettering.

However, I'm aware that this is entirely subjective and others may like its appearance.

 

What really matters is its practicality and it is here that it falls down badly. Handwriting is first and foremost a form of communication and to be of any use it has to be easily read and reasonably quickly written. To fulfil these criteria, handwriting must flow easily across the page. This is impossible with horizontal ligatures which turn uphill between letters producing a stop-go effect and slowing everything right down (e.g. 'e' to 'n'). Also, these weird ligatures create very uneven inter-letter spacing.

 

The letters themselves are inconsistent in construction. Minuscule 'o' is circular whilst 'p' and 'd' are more elliptical. On the other hand, 'l' and 'e' are very narrow. These letters don't go together and the result is a jumbled mess.

It's easy to see how this handwriting style would quickly disintigrate in everyday use.

 

All handwriting styles must be symmetrical if they are to be easily written amd read and this is sadly lacking here. It's like trying to go down steps of different heights. At best it's uncomfortable and at worse - disastrous!

 

Seriously, I fimd it hard to believe that the country which produced the beautiful, and practical, Spencerian script and its off-shoots, is seriously considering this alternative.

 

As someone once said "Letters should be designed by an artist and not an engineer"

 

caliken

[KateGladstone]

Caliken has summed up the design issues of HWTears better and far more succinctly than I could have --

though, instead of "All handwriting styles must be symmetrical"

I'd have said "All handwriting styles must be rhythmic."

(Think of how the a and the n -- for instance -- are written in Italic or Spencerian or whatever you favor as a well-designed style: they are rhythmic, because they are formed with rhythmic and somewhat repeated motions -- but they are not symmetrical. Likewise, symmetrical shapes may make very bad handwriting indeed: the HWTears o -- and the o of almost any badly made print-writing style -- is as symmetrical as any geometry-text example of a circle or ellipse.)

Still, Caliken, I hope I may quote you when parents, teachers, or others ask me about HWTears: as the sheer arrhythmia of the style is a practical obstacle and not merely an artistic one.

The glaring ugliness of HWTears, by the way -- not just the writing, but the textbook series and other materials (designed and published by the founder) which teach that writing -- will get you seriously sneered at if you dare to hint at them to the founder or to any members of her corporation. She, and they, will haughtily inform you that she had seven solid years in art school (somehow vaguely connected with her doctorate in education) and that therefore the books and the letters are beautiful.

Re: "Letters should be designed by an artist and not by an engineer" --

I wish those letters had been designed by an engineer.

Things designed by engineers tend to work.

 

It's almost as if the creators of H.W.T. handwriting have gone out of their way to produce particularly ugly lettering.

However, I'm aware that this is entirely subjective and others may like its appearance.

 

What really matters is its practicality and it is here that it falls down badly. Handwriting is first and foremost a form of communication and to be of any use it has to be easily read and reasonably quickly written. To fulfil these criteria, handwriting must flow easily across the page. This is impossible with horizontal ligatures which turn uphill between letters producing a stop-go effect and slowing everything right down (e.g. 'e' to 'n'). Also, these weird ligatures create very uneven inter-letter spacing.

 

The letters themselves are inconsistent in construction. Minuscule 'o' is circular whilst 'p' and 'd' are more elliptical. On the other hand, 'l' and 'e' are very narrow. These letters don't go together and the result is a jumbled mess.

It's easy to see how this handwriting style would quickly disintigrate in everyday use.

 

All handwriting styles must be symmetrical if they are to be easily written amd read and this is sadly lacking here. It's like trying to go down steps of different heights. At best it's uncomfortable and at worse - disastrous!

 

Seriously, I fimd it hard to believe that the country which produced the beautiful, and practical, Spencerian script and its off-shoots, is seriously considering this alternative.

 

As someone once said "Letters should be designed by an artist and not an engineer"

 

caliken

[KateGladstone]

HWTears has, in any case, become the official handwriting program of the Sylvan Learning Centers tutoring-school chain ...

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&q=sylvan+handwriting+tears

 

This will doubtless eventually worsen their already mixed reputation.

(Oh, don't stop them -- they have every right to use whatever ineffective programs they want.)

[sumgaikid]

"As someone once said "Letters should be designed by an artist and not an engineer".

 

+1 and beyond.....................it couldn't be said any better! :clap1:

 

 

John

[The Royal Pen]

Was the person who desgned HWT a 3 year old herself? NO! Her letters looks as though they were made by one.

They are as ugly as (I would use HWT as a comparisen "Sure, that couch is as ugly as Handwriting Without Tears!")

[RLTodd]

It's almost as if the creators of H.W.T. handwriting have gone out of their way to produce particularly ugly lettering......

 

I agree with that.

 

It looks like a step worse than D'Nealian, which I thought was a coruption of Zaner Blosser for no purpose other than to generate some sales commissions.

 

By the way, speaking of educational improvements from above, how is that New Math thing going? U.S. students now scoring at the top of the world, after all its been what, forty, fifty years?

[caliken]

 

though, instead of "All handwriting styles must be symmetrical"

I'd have said "All handwriting styles must be rhythmic."

(Think of how the a and the n -- for instance -- are written in Italic or Spencerian or whatever you favor as a well-designed style: they are rhythmic, because they are formed with rhythmic and somewhat repeated motions -- but they are not symmetrical. Likewise, symmetrical shapes may make very bad handwriting indeed: the HWTears o -- and the o of almost any badly made print-writing style -- is as symmetrical as any geometry-text example of a circle or ellipse.)

 

Sorry, I wasn't referring to individual letters, but to the overall appearance of lettering as a whole.

I agree that 'symmetrical' was the wrong word, but I couldn't think of an alternative, other than just 'balanced' which seemed inadequate, somehow!

 

Letters, when used together in words, if disproportionate in construction become much more difficult to read - and if it can't be read easily, there's little point in having written it in the first place. Add to this, inconsistent spacing due to over-elaborate ligatures, and the result is unfortunate, to say the least.

 

caliken

Edited August 3, 2010 by caliken

[Moppeh]

Wow, after reading these comments and studying the script again, I have to say I am most horrified by the lack of diagonal connecting...how does that even work?

 

About a decade ago I was in an elementary school that still taught handwriting, and thought the script we learned was ugly and impractical (it was d'nealian, I believe)--though that may also have been because I was 9. But this is much worse.

 

And the claims of the program are equally ridiculous. The site claims it has "clean, vertical style without extravagant loops or tails" but the loops and tails are just as present as the cursive I was taught, except vertical. And "simple and effective techniques for connecting letters"--really? I'm pretty sure that forcing half your connectors to run along the baseline isn't effective, at all.

 

Here's a link to a copy of (what I think is) the d'nealian script: here, grabbed from some school's website.

[KateGladstone]

HWTears indeed publicly misrepresents its own program,

/a/ by saying that it doesn't have aspects which it does indeed have (such as lots of loops -- they also say that their letter-shapes don't change from printing to cursive, and they sneer at you when you count the loops and other changes & ask about these),

and

/b/ by saying that they're the only program which doesn't have these aspects (that they indeed have, but that their fastest-growing rivals -- Italic programs -- don't have)

If you ask them about the discrepancies (maybe pointing to the loops/letter-changes in their samples), they sneer at you -- as I've said: specifically, they either change the subject or tell you (often quite loudly) that there is something wrong with your education or wrong with your brain or wrong with your vision if you can look at HWTears samples and see their loops and letter-changes and all the rest of the stuff that (according to their advertising and PR) they do not have and are the only ones who do not have.

Re other matters:

D'Nealian, when it was invented in the late 1960s (I know the D'Signer of the program -- one Donald Neal Thurber, who named it after himself) was very like Italic (although he did not know about Italic at the time he began designing his program) -- very Italic-like letter-forms, joining optional and not 100% if used, and so on (The original model even used an edged pen!) However, he later (in 1976, as I recall) sold the rights for a large sum (five-figure annual royalties) to a company called Scott-Foresman, which was later bought by the company that currently owns D'N (Pearson USA). Don Thurber's deal with Scott-Foresman (continued by Pearson) was that they could make any changes they want, as long as they paid him that large annual sum and kept the D'Nealian name on the product. Scott-Foresman's changes, which were extensive (e.g., adding a cursive stage with loops and letter-changes and ceaseless connection of letters) were made because Scott-Foresman didn't think that anyone in the USA would evre buy a program that (at the time) didn't have loops or letter-changes or ceaseless connections. Don says he regrets having sold the program under those terms, because he says he disapproves what they've done to it: he also states that he cannot break their contract with them (and therefore remains under that agreement and accepts the pay from it). He actually did finally try, a few years ago under my repeated urging, to break the contract and force them to allow him to re-design D'N back to at least something like its original form: but they wouldn't budge, so he has apparently resigned himself to continuing to endorse their checks. By the way, for many years after the company changed D'N, the company continued to advertise it with ads that would have been correct if they hadn't changed it: specifically, their publicity for many years stated -- and, as I recall, some of their current publicity still states -- that D'Nealian does not change the letter-shapes in going from print-writing to cursive.

Tonight, when I have a bit more time, I will post some comparative graphics of different handwriting styles (D'N vs. Italic vs. others) to help in identifying/comparing/contrasting the various systems. For now, though, I must run -- as my husband and I have appointments to help someone with a serious refill/leakage problem (namely, we're giving blood at the Red Cross. I may suggest to them that they should set up collection vans at Pen Shows, because we are at least sympathetic to problems of refilling and fluid flow ... )

Seriously, though, I think it's time that someone starts a consumer-protection organization to deal with handwriting programs -- specifically, to deal with unethical behavior (such as false advertising and other deceptions) committed by handwriting programs. (There is a lot more than you would think -- some handwriting publishers' representatives bribe school boards/school principals/district superintendents to get their program adopted: ask for details, and I will tell you how it's done.)

I am starting this consumer-protection group for "consumers of handwriting" -- who are most literate adults/schoolkids -- and calling it CATCH: Create And Teach Competent Handwriting. Who wants to join, or who would like more details?

[Hetty]

I had never heard of this method before Kate introduced the topic yesterday, but after viewing the samples it looks a very ugly handwriting style. It looks incoherent and without any integrity of design. Some of the letters have loops and tails, some have none. Some letters are upright, some seem to slant slightly backwards. Some of the letters look virtually illegible, e.g. majuscule 'G', lowercase 'r'. These are just a few examples. I haven't yet seen any handwritten text of this style, but i would imagine that it could quickly disintegrate into confusion and illegibility. It also seems to me that it would be difficult to learn because it is incoherent and that the learner may well feel a lack of structure and 'safety' in its principles. I cannot imagine six and seven yesr-olds finding this easy. I should be interested to see some samples of text.

 

Hetty