My handwriting at school was so spidery that I was signed-up for handwriting lessons. Insanely, they gave me an italic pen, and had me practising italic letter-forms.
Unsurprisingly, my handwriting turned into a mess of italic letter-forms and spidery crap. I'm told that my handwriting is not just readable, but even clear; but hell, if I can't read my own writing, I don't see how anyone can describe it as "clear". It's an ugly mess.
It's good for signatures, though; I have a signature that seems pretty hard to copy. In fact I can't copy it myself; every time I sign my name it looks different.
[Edit] There was another guy at school who was taught italic; he favoured green ink, and wrote in the most beautiful italic script you can imagine - very regular. It must have taken him hours to write his school essays.
I do not have a learning disability! I think my spidery scrawl was more legible before I had remedial instruction. My handwriting was damaged by my teachers. Sure, it was ugly to start with; but the remedial instruction just made it worse (and I ended up writing slower). Lose, lose, lose.
> I'm told that my handwriting is not just readable, but even clear; but hell, if I can't read my own writing, I don't see how anyone can describe it as "clear". It's an ugly mess.
Well, sure. I'm 66, I was badly concussed a few years ago, I drink a lot, my hand is unsteady, and my eyesight is fading. Occam's Razor hacks away any diagnosis of learning disability.
Same here, unless I am concentrating super hard my block letters don't even look like another of the same letter. My handwriting is just not consistent. I've long theorized that nice handwriting is like 90% "do you make letter consistently the same" verses anything else, I can't do it (or have no patience to spend seconds on each letter, which still look wiggly). Typing is just better in every imaginable way IMHO.
What is an italic pen? I'm aware of italic fonts (slanted letters) and italic script (the same but handwritten), but I can't find anything about a specific type of pen used for it.
The kind of pen I'm referring to is a pen with a nib that is a flat blade of metal, cut across, making a straight edge, then slit to make an ink channel. If you drag it horizontally, e.g. left-to-right, it makes a very fine line; if you drag it vertically, it makes a line as broad as the width of the nib. Sometimes they are cut on a slant; sometimes you hold them on a slant. So take "horizontal" and "vertical" with a bushel of salt.
Basically, these things are metal replicas of quill pens, which are made as flat blades cut across to make an edge and then slit.
That wide-stroke/thin-stroke business isn't anything to do with italicness, as far as I know; nor is the business of everyone leaning to the right. It's about serifs, and related orthographic flourishes, isn't it? [Edit: the kind of script I mean is angular, straight lines, with vertical strokes meeting diagonal strokes; rather gothic.] Well, those flourishes are facilitated by that kind of nib. Whether that's italic or not, I don't know; but the pen-and-nib sets used to be sold as "Italic pen with set of nibs", or something like that.
Unsurprisingly, my handwriting turned into a mess of italic letter-forms and spidery crap. I'm told that my handwriting is not just readable, but even clear; but hell, if I can't read my own writing, I don't see how anyone can describe it as "clear". It's an ugly mess.
It's good for signatures, though; I have a signature that seems pretty hard to copy. In fact I can't copy it myself; every time I sign my name it looks different.
[Edit] There was another guy at school who was taught italic; he favoured green ink, and wrote in the most beautiful italic script you can imagine - very regular. It must have taken him hours to write his school essays.