Illegible Letters

Prompted by Khoi Vinh's look at his own declining penmanship. I've never had exceptional handwriting. I dropped cursive and lowercase letters entirely years ago (I had to make room for all those HTML tags, CSS hacks, and JavaScript functions).

I guess I am always shouting on paper.

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Comments

Garrett Dimon says:

I too dropped lowercase and cursive in favor of all caps, all the time. Interestingly, most building architects, from my limited experience, use this same style hand-writing. If you ever look at blueprints, it's fairly obvious.

I wonder if there's any general right-brain/left-brain reason for gravitating towards writing that way, or if it's just 100% coincidence.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Shaun Inman says:

I think there's enough variety between handwritten letterforms of the same type (just look at my A's). Mix in upper and lowercase and the reader performs twice as much processing for each character.

Of course, aren't words recognized more by the combination of letterforms, the gestalt of their ascenders, descenders and counters, than the invidiual, isolated forms themselves? I think uppercase text has to be read, it can't be easily scanned. So my handwriting is no more usable than Khoi's.

I think I daydreamed about becoming an architect once.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

wilsonminer says:

I tried all caps for a while before I realized that was actually less legible than my already terrible lowercase printing. Thank goodness for computers.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

simplebitsdan says:

+1 all caps here as well. Have been all-capping since high school. But it's far less legible than yours :)
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Sushi & Robots says:

i write block style as well. I think almost all the designers I know do this.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

solarfrog says:

I write all caps when it needs to be readable. For speed, I go with a mixed bag, but lose legibility. That's usually for my own notes, journal, etc.

As for alphabets in general - on the topic of processing letters - I'm a huge fan of Alphabet 26
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Corey Csuhta says:

I've all-capped since I wasn't required to use cursive in school. My lowercase print is legible, but my all caps looks far neater when there are multiple lines of it.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Rob Goodlatte says:

When I write a note that someone else has to read, I all-cap it, but when I'm writing something for myself, I write in my normal chicken scratch.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Craig C. says:

I learned to write in clean all-caps when I was deep in my comics training, and so today hand printing in all-caps is slower for me than printing in mixed-case because I tend to do the former more carefully. I eschew cursive entirely - even in my signature - and have since the 5th grade. A few years ago, I needed to write something in cursive for some reason and couldn't at all remember how that goofy-looking capital "G" went; I had to look it up.

It's a bit tragic that the craft of penmanship has declined so rapidly with the advent and ubiquity of mechanical writing devices. A letter handwritten a century ago by a barely-educated yokel still puts our modern-day designer scrawlings to shame. Do they even still teach cursive handwriting in elementary school?
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

nateklaiber says:

I am with Rob G. on this one. If I have to write legible I write all uppercase. If I need to jot down thoughts and ideas it is pure chicken scratch. I find it rare that people can read what I write...but I think I have my own short hand so I can jot things down quickly.

Maybe I always feel rushed when I am writing. Who knows.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Jesse Gardner says:

If only my cursive teacher believed that all-caps was the wave of the future...

*sigh*
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

alan fangor says:

Actually i like your letters. I write in all caps too. It isn't a style choice so much as it is something i do without thinking. It just comes out. I never thought there was anything wrong with writing all in caps and it never occurred to me that someone would perceive that as shouting.

Embrace it. Caps are wayyy cooler than normal handwriting.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

pocketwookie says:

hmmm...interesting topic. I guess I never really paid much attention to it before, but I've been doing this since highschool. Too many essays kicked back to me for rewrites or clarification. I had horrible cursive writing. Probably still do, I just haven't tried it in so long.
Posted 24 months ago. ( permalink )

Tom Coates says:

Ooh, quoting 'Elements of Typographic Style'.
Posted 23 months ago. ( permalink )

badgersuomi says:

Hey, I found this exercise intriguing.

I'm an allcapper, too.

I scratched out an example of my script.
www.flickr.com/photos/badgersuomi/1458515467/

It's kind of fun to take a step back and analyze how you form your own letters.
Posted 22 months ago. ( permalink )

Miss Nikki says:

No, don't dream about being an architect. What you do is so much more fun.
Posted 3 weeks ago. ( permalink )

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