Today (January 23) is Handwriting Day. It’s celebrated every year on the 23rd — not coincidently, it also happens to be John Hancock’s birthday. His prominent signature on the Declaration of Independence has become synonymous with signatures in general. How often have you said, or been told, “put you John Hancock here?” Of course everyone knows that statement means to sign your name.
Another old saying, “the pen is mightier than the sword” may not be so true in today’s modern technology world, but its original meaning still holds today. The origin of the phrase may have been that no matter how strong and powerful a knight became, they could be “fired” by their king through nothing more than a piece of paper with the king’s signature (and probably his seal.)
Handwriting and/or penmanship were required subjects when I went to school and it was necessary because a lot, if not most, written communication was accomplished by hand-written documents. If the handwriting wasn’t legible, the document was pretty much useless. But neither of our kids were taught penmanship when they were in school and now there is a move afoot to abolish cursive writing all together.
Handwriting is unique to each person — much like fingerprints. No two people write exactly alike. Because it is unique, handwriting can be used to identify a documents’ writer. That’s one reason you see ransom notes made up of letters cut out of a magazine or newspaper.
Except for doctors, today penmanship has almost no bearing on job performance. Doctors supposedly have terrible handwriting. According to Time magazine, doctors’ sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people every year. Most of us write very little by hand. I usually wind up taking notes on my phone if I’m out and need to remember something — or — just tell Siri to remind me….
Throughout the years many have thought that there would be no need for handwriting — when the typewriter came along, the computer, fax machine and e-mails and texting would be the end of hand written communications. But so far writing by hand hasn’t been killed off. I think knowing how to write is important — for the same reason than you should know how to add, subtract and multiply and divide… What happens if your batteries run down or the power goes out?
Someone once said that handwriting enables civilization. Well, maybe not quite so much today, but it’s still important. Happy Handwriting Day….
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If handwriting is eliminated from school curriculums – individuals will not be able to read historical documents like the Declaration of Independence or do research to trace ancestry since all old documents were “written” not printed.