Saturday, February 21, 2009

Patrick's Saturday Six #254





With everything going on at work, the past couple of weeks have been exhausting, with the result that I haven't posted much. So I'm easing back into the water by playing Patrick's Saturday Six. If you want to play too, click here.

1. When you write a note to a friend, do you tend to write in cursive or manuscript?

Most of the time when I write to friends now, it's via email. But if I'm writing to a friend on paper, it would generally be in cursive. However, all through college and graduate school I took notes in manuscript. A physics professor once said my notes looked like they were typed. I took it as a compliment.

2. Think back to grade school when you learned how to write: which manuscript letter gave you the most trouble? I absolutely loved learning to write, and I don't remember any particular letter giving me trouble. However, I do remember that my first grade teacher insisted that when writing anything, we must space it so that our right index finger could fit between each letter, and she would check this and make you start over if you hadn't complied. I found this requirement infuriating because even at the tender age of six, spatially that simply was not pleasing to my eye.

3. Did you find cursive easier than manuscript? Not that I remember, but I was quickly seduced by the curves of cursive, and eventually that led to a fascination with calligraphy, which I spent some time (and many pens) trying to master.

4. How do you type on a computer: the four-finger “professional” method, the “hunt and peck” method, or something in between? The professional method. I learned to type in summer school while I was in high school, and I still type about 75-90 wpm. It was not considered the cool thing to do, to learn to type, back then, in the dawn of The Age of Aquarius. I remember there were feminist posters of Golda Meir (later to become Prime Minister of Israel) that read "But can she type?" Uh-huh. There was no question in my mind when I was young that whatever I ended up doing in this life, typing would be a handy thing to have mastered.

5. Take the quiz: What Keyboard Key Are You?


You Are "alt"



Some people might find you to be strange, mysterious, and even a bit off putting.

You tend to be drawn to and influenced by alternative lifestyles. You're definitely not normal.

Once people get to know you, they realize you're interesting, intriguing, and very intelligent.

You have a lot of knowledge stored in that big brain of yours. Most of it is useless knowledge, but some of it is very useful.


6. As a general rule, how often do you use the key mentioned in the answer to the previous question? For what it's worth, I find that I end up using the Alt key many times a day.

3 comments:

TJ said...

"It's not rocket science" I couldn't believe that was one of the answers...I USE that way to often. I too am ALT...funny.
Good to see your post, I wonder if you was posting when I tried your blog...it was empty for the longest time.
Thinking of you,
TJ

Chris said...

Glad you are keeping your head above water at work!

I used to get horrible grades in handwriting until I took physics in 11th grade and I started writing everything in tiny block print. From then on everyone says how neat and perfect my handwriting is.

I write with a more flowing style when I write cursive but I hate reading my own cursive handwriting, bit of a catch 22.

Hang in there at work!

KateGladstone said...

Did you know that research shows that the fastest legible handwriters avoid cursive? The fastest legible handwriters tend to use print-like shapes for the letters that "disagree" between printing and cursive, and also join only some letters, NOT all of them (making the very easiest joins, and skipping the rest).

Learning to write cursive takes months (or longer), and often fails even then -- learning to *read* cursive takes 15 minutes to an hour, and then you have the skill for life. So why not teach kids to read cursive (you can teach this to five- and six-year-olds once they can read print), teach them to write the way that the fastest legible handwriters REALLY tend to write (which isn't cursive), and use the time saved to teach other important things?

Even signatures don't legally require cursive, and never have. (Yes, I checked this out with legal counsel. Anyone saying that "signatures require cursive" has misrepresented the law of the land.)


Kate Gladstone
Founder and CEO, Handwriting Repair/Handwriting That Works handwriting instruction/remediation service
Director, World Handwriting Contest
http://www.HandwritingThatWorks.com