Opinion

Anita Robinson: The art of penmanship is sadly fading away

The rapid rise of technology has transformed how we communicate
The rapid rise of technology has transformed how we communicate The rapid rise of technology has transformed how we communicate

I had a letter recently from a cousin on my mother’s side whom I last saw several years ago.

Apart from the welcome news of relations I didn’t know I had, what delighted me most was the fact it was handwritten over three pages in an impeccably flowing copperplate script that was so reminiscent of my parents’ hand.

‘Penmanship’ was a skill to be proud of in those days – and likely to die out in our own. Readers may be old enough to recall the blue-backed Vere Foster exercise books ruled with two narrowly-spaced blue lines and a wider red line above and below and the laborious daily task of copying some improving epithet from the blackboard.

Thirty heads bent, thirty tongues protruding, thirty youngsters painstakingly labouring, with a grip on the pen so tight you’d a dinge in your index finger and thumb for ages afterwards. The silence was broken only by the scritch-scratch of nibs and the frequent chink of dip-pens against little enamel inkwells. We were, literally, minding our p’s and q’s. Too much pressure and you gouged the paper or deposited a disastrous blot – just as you reached the last word. ‘Blotting your copybook’ in every sense. Cursive writing was a curse indeed.

The invention of the biro pen was the salvation of my generation – clean, efficient and speedy, but only for shopping-lists, casual communication and student notes. Etiquette decreed important missives be written with the fountain pen you got for your sixteenth birthday as a sign you were sensible enough to take care of it. Sixteen of course, is the year you get notions about yourself. I recall with some embarrassment devising elaborate variations of my own signature – in turquoise Quink.

With friends scattered to various higher education establishments, we continued to communicate by mail. Their letters were thrilling. They were discovering smoking and jazz, posing and politics. I, meanwhile, with others training as Early Years teachers, found myself practising ‘blackboard technique’ in exactly the same way we’d been taught at primary school – only this time with chalk and italic script (four degrees from the vertical) with a critical audience. I was only allowed to take a student summer job in London if, (a) I went with a sensible friend and (b) wrote home twice weekly. These sanctions I was happy to abide by, since our eight-hour working days and travelling to and from our digs in furthest Cricklewood left us too exhausted to misbehave.

In the great moral cesspit of the wicked capital, we managed to see Julie Andrews onstage in ‘The Sound of Music’, (accounts of which thrilled Mother) and ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf’, a film which created mild ructions on its release, (which I didn’t tell Mother about).

The rapid rise of technology has transformed how we communicate. Few writers have a permanent dinge between finger and thumb. Instead, they have neck, shoulder, wrist pain – and eye-strain. Nursery and reception class teachers report that their infant charges’ chubby fingers are adept at keyboard skills but don’t know how to hold a pencil. The use of laptops and their ilk in schools has resulted in far fewer pleasing-to-the eye writers and social media has played hell with spelling and sentence construction. My friends mock me for sending texts in paragraphs with proper punctuation. There’s something deeply personal about the handwritten. It’s unique to the individual who wrote it and to its recipient. Personality, character and temperament are evident in every stroke, curve and loop of letters, tracing the journey from head or heart to hand and page.

Just so you know, I write everything by hand at random on A4 sheets, leaving gaps between paragraphs. Then tear between the gaps and creep about on the floor, jigsawing the bits into narrative order. This is called ‘editing’. I cobble it all together, pass a copy to Melanie who types and dispatches it to the Irish News. When, inevitably, technology goes belly-up and the article disappears forever into the ether, who’s got the handwritten original? Belt AND braces…..