What Handwriting Did You Learn In School?

[Nimmireth]

I'd love to see some samples of what style of handwriting people were taught in grade school.

 

I was taught Zaner-Bloser Simplified in the late 60s. It looks like this:

 

 

What did you learn? Non-Roman based writing systems welcome.

[JefferyS]

Ours (1950's, southern California) was very similar to that. Essentially the Civil Service Penmanship style promoted earlier in the 20th century.

[RLTodd]

ditto.

 

I think the Z-B was the State standard.

Edited August 18, 2011 by RLTodd

[Chthulhu]

Zaner-Bloser for me, in the same time period. Mine never looked as neat as the examples, though.

Edited August 18, 2011 by Chthulhu

[Mauricio]

The Palmer Method.

[Nimmireth]

Anyone from some European countries - France, Italy? From another thread I have a sample of what was taught in Germany in the 80s, but I can't seem to attach it to a post of my own.

[kitsunec4]

Learned Palmer in school, discovered that I like writing in cursive, and wound up being the person to never ask for notes in classes despite my comprehensiveness. A lot of people in my age bracket seem to be put off by an entire page of cursive.

 

Only ever learned how to print in Chinese, discovered recently that I have forgotten the vast majority of the discipline for calligraphy. My mother would cry if she saw my recent writing samples.

[AlexLeGrande]

I learned the Palmer Method in Newark New Jersey in the early 1950's.

[effika]

D'nealian for me, when I started kindergarten in 1988. Before that it was Zaner-Bloser simplified, as my mother had learned.

 

I would say that it was lucky the two scripts are fairly similar, but my handwriting back then was never good enough to show the difference between the two!

[dizzypen]

Zaner-Bloser here as well. That was in the 80s.

[caliken]

Anyone from some European countries?.

 

This is Vere Foster Civil Service Script, taught in UK schools in the 1940's. It's a simplified form of "Copperplate" but written more upright. Our first writing experience was with dip pens fitted with flexible nibs!

 

caliken

 

http://www.fulltable.com/VTS/a/artman/wr/03.jpg

Edited August 18, 2011 by caliken

[New_Falcon]

Marion Richardson was taught in my school in the UK during the 80's.

[WestLothian]

Simple Modern Hand

Introduced in Scotland about 1960 by Tom Gourdie,

Simple Modern Hand used simple letter shapes formed

with the traditional handwriting technique in both script

and cursive forms.

Edited August 19, 2011 by WestLothian

[Purrr]

I was taught this horrible thing in the early 1990s

http://miatankar.webblogg.se/images/2009/s-stil_34883544.jpg

Hope the image works as I stole borrowed that picture from a blog without reuploading it to some other host.

 

Even thought this style was long since abolished when I was taught handwriting - it was still the style my school thought was appropriate I guess. It can be written joined (cursive) or unjoined. Most kids were taught unjoined but those that wanted or had a bit harder time learning the art of reading and writing were taught the joined version. I was in the latter category of both being slow to the whole idea of weird signs meaning anything, pictographs made more sense for me, and that I actually wanted to learn joined writing. As for why I wanted to learn joined writing, one can only guess but I blame my family.

What I really dislike about it, besides the appearances, is that it's not a flowing cursive handwriting. There are so many sharp angles that you never get that nice rolling wave motion you get when writing Business Script (I've only studied the Mills variant but Palmer's seems to have the same ideal) that you Americans are blessed with

Also observe the lack of nice loopy joins from the letters with long ascenders, for example g. This was one of the things most teachers back in the days criticized it for.

 

So a bit of history if you are so inclined (I for one love reading about the history behind everything)

This style was called the SÖ-style, short for the Skolöverstyrelse style, SÖ was the old Swedish state department of education. SÖ in the early 1970's, set to motion scheme to unify the handwriting of the whole of Sweden.

It made quite some stir when it got launched. Some other countries were apparently so amazed by this idea that they decided to make similar plans for a unified national handwriting.

But back to tiny Sweden. Some teachers thought it was just plain horrible and some even now claim it made people write a word unjoined when it should really be joined. For you English speakers with few unjoined words, think train ticket - we swedes would write it as trainticket but obviously in Swedish. In short, the style is blamed for almost everything. Which can be quite practical when one does not want anyone to notice the actual problems at hand.

There are still some outcries that this style demolished the handwriting for an entire generation! But if one checks the little details of the story one will notice that with the launch of this new handwriting, teachers actually stopped teaching handwriting as much as one did before. Once, kids were drilled in handwriting in special 'neat handwriting' classes but now, there's none of that.

If you in the 1990's asked the calligraphers who designed this new style, why is there is much hate for the SÖ-style? You would be answered that they would not understand any of the criticism. As they would claim it's a simple and has a very high legibility.

As of this post, there's still no magnificent Swedish standard of handwriting but one can only guess when the politicians get another silly idea stuck on their minds.

 

This post ended up a heck lot longer that I first imagined but I hope a few of you managed to read all of it, and for you who did, I salute you!

Edited August 19, 2011 by Purrr

[Chevalier]

I learned this one first, it's the German "vereinfachte Ausgangsschrift":

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Vereinfachte_Ausgangsschrift.png

 

 

... the German "lateinische Ausgangsschrift"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/a/a5/La-ges.jpg

 

 

... and the Swiss "Schnürlischrift"

http://www.lothosoft.ch/schulschriften/ch1.gif

[altair]

I learned Peterson Method in Pittsburgh, PA in the mid 60's (not very well I might add).

 

http://www.peterson-handwriting.com/images/tagline.jpg

[Nimmireth]

Thank you to everyone who posted samples! Purrr, your sample is very similar to that taught by Getty/Dubay in Write Now. I went through that book, but found the cursive ugly. I like the older German styles of cursive. Much prettier.

[HeartMan]

Another item learned from FPN. I didn't know of different styles. I guess the style I learned in the mid '60s was D'nealian on account of the capital Q looking more like a 2.

[Joe in Seattle]

Palmer Method, early 50's in Washington state.

[Shangas]

I learned Modern Victorian Cursive. Australia in the early 1990s.