Penmanship is the technique of writing with the hand using a writing instrument. The various generic and formal historical styles of writing are called hands, whilst an individual personal style of penmanship is referred to as handwriting.
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The earliest example of writing is the Sumerian pictographic system found on clay tablets, which eventually developed around 3200 BC into a modified version called cuneiform.[1] Cuneiform is from the Latin meaning “wedge shaped” and was impressed on wet clay with a sharpened reed.[2] This form of writing eventually evolved into ideographic system (where a sign represents an idea) and then to a syllabic system, (where a sign represents a syllable).[3] Developing around the same time, the Egyptian system of hieroglyphics also began as a pictographic script and evolved into a system of syllabic writing. Two cursive scripts were eventually created, hieratic shortly after hieroglyphs were invented and demotic in the seventh century BC.[4] Scribes wrote these scripts usually on papyrus with ink on a reed pen.
The first known alphabetical system came from the Phoenicians, who developed a vowel-less system of 22 letters around the eleventh century BC.[5] The Greeks eventually adapted the Phoenician alphabet around the eighth century BC. Adding vowels to the alphabet and dropping some consonants, the Greeks developed a script which included only what we know of as capital Greek letters.[6] The lower case letters of Classical Greek were a later invention of the Middle Ages. The Phoenician alphabet also influenced the Hebrew and Aramaic scripts, which follow a vowel-less system. One Hebrew script was only used for religious literature and by a small community of Samaritans up until the sixth century BC. Aramaic was the official script of the Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian empires and ‘Square Hebrew’ (the script now used in Israel) developed from Aramaic around the third century AD.[7]
The Romans in Southern Italy eventually adopted the Greek alphabet as modified by the Etruscans to develop Latin writing.[8] Like the Greeks, the Romans employed stone, metal, clay, and papyrus as writing surfaces. Handwriting styles which were used to produce manuscripts included square capitals, rustic capitals, uncials, and half-uncials.[9] Square capitals were employed for more formal texts based on stone inscriptional letters while rustic capitals freer, compressed, and efficient.[8] Uncials were rounded capitals (majuscules) that originally were developed by the Greeks in the third century BC, but became popular in Latin manuscripts by the fourth century AD. Roman cursive or informal handwriting started out as a derivative of the capital letters, though the tendency to write quickly and efficiently made the letters less precise.[10] Half-uncials (minuscules) were lower case letters, which eventually became the national hand of Ireland.[9] Other combinations of half-uncial and cursive handwriting developed throughout Europe, including Visigothic, and Merovingian.[11]
At the end of the eighth century, Charlemagne decreed that all writings in his empire were to be written in a standard handwriting, which came to be known as Carolingian minuscule.[12] Alcuin of York was commissioned by Charlemagne to create this new handwriting, which he did in collaboration with other scribes and based on the tradition of other Roman handwriting.[13] Carolingian minuscule was used to produce many of the manuscripts from monasteries until the eleventh century and most lower-case letters of today's European scripts derive from it.[14]
Gothic or black-letter script, evolved from Carolingian, became the dominant handwriting from the twelfth century until the Italian Renaissance (1400 AD – 1600 AD). This script was not as clear as the Carolingian, but instead was narrower, darker, and denser. Because of this, the dot above the i was added in order to differentiate it from the similar pen strokes of the n, m, and u. Also, the letter u was created as separate from the v, which had previously been used for both sounds.[15] Part of the reason for such compact handwriting was to save space, since parchment was expensive.[16] Gothic script, being the writing style of scribes in Germany when Gutenberg invented movable type, became the model for the first type face. Another variation of Carolingian minuscule was created by the Italian humanists in the fifteenth century, called by them littera antiqua and now called humanist minuscule.[17] This was a combination of Roman capitals and the rounded version of Carolingian minuscule. A cursive form eventually developed and it became increasingly slanted due to the quickness with which it could be written. This manuscript handwriting, called cursive humanistic, became known as the typeface Italic used throughout Europe.[18]
Copperplate engraving influenced handwriting as it allowed penmanship copybooks to be more widely printed. Copybooks first appeared in Italy around the sixteenth century; the earliest writing manuals were published by Sigismondo Fanti and Ludovico degli Arrighi.[19] Other manuals were produced by Dutch and French writing masters later in the century, including Pierre Hamon.[19] However, copybooks only became commonplace in England with the invention of copperplate engraving. Engraving could better produce the flourishes in handwritten script, which helped penmanship masters to produce beautiful examples for students.[15] Some of these early penmanship manuals included those of Edward Cocker, John Seddon, and John Ayer. By the eighteenth century, schools were established to teach penmanship techniques from master penmen, especially in England and the United States.[16] Penmanship became part of the curriculum in American schools by the early 1900s, rather than just reserved for specialty schools teaching adults penmanship as a professional skill. Several different penmanship methods have been developed and published, including Spencerian, Getty-Dubay, Barchowsky Fluent Handwriting, Icelandic (Italic), Zaner-Bloser, and D’Nealian methods among others used in American education.[16]
While Roman handwriting has influenced American and European text, different writing systems have developed in the East, including Chinese and Japanese. Chinese characters represent whole morphemes rather than individual sounds, and consequently are visually far more complex than European scripts; in some cases their pictographic origins are still visible. The earliest form of Chinese was written on bones and shells (called Jiaguwen) in the fourteenth century BC. Other writing surfaces used during this time included bronze, stone, jade, pottery, and clay, which became more popular after the twelfth century BC.[20] Greater Seal script (Dazhuan) flourished during 1100 BC and 700 BC and appeared mainly in bronze vessels.[21] Lesser Seal script (Xiaozhuan) is the precursor of modern complex Chinese script, which is more stylized than the Greater Seal.[21]
Chinese handwriting is considered an art, more so than illuminated manuscripts in Western culture. Calligraphy is widely practiced in China, which employs cursive scripts such as Kaishu, Xingshu, and Caoshu.[22] Chinese calligraphy is meant to be represent the artistic personality in a way western calligraphy cannot, and therefore penmanship is valued higher than in any other nation.[23] Standard Script (Kaishu) is main traditional script used today, except in the People’s Republic of China. In 1949, the People’s Republic of China introduced simplified characters (jiantizi) to replace Kaishu characters and Singapore has since adopted this script.[21]
Japanese writing evolved from Chinese script and Chinese characters, called kanji, or ideograms, were adopted to represent Japanese words and grammar.[24] Kanji were simplified to create two other scripts, called hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is the more widely used script in Japan today, while katakana, meant for formal documents originally, is used similarly to italics in alphabetic scripts.[25]
Platt Rogers Spencer is known as the "Father of American Penmanship". His writing system was first published in 1848, in his book Spencer and Rice's System of Business and Ladies' Penmanship. The most popular Spencerian manual was The Spencerian Key to Practical Penmanship, published by his sons in 1866. This "Spencerian Method" was taught in American schools until the mid 1920s, and has seen a resurgence in recent years through charter schools and home schooling using revised Spencerian books and methods produced by former IAMPETH president Michael Sull (* 1946).
George A. Gaskell (1845–1886), a student of Spencer, authored two popular books on penmanship, Gaskell's Complete Compendium of Elegant Writing and The Penman's Hand-Book (1883).
The dominant copybooks in North America at the start of the 20th century included those produced by A. N. Palmer, a student of Gaskell, who developed the Palmer Method, as reflected in his Palmer's Guide to Business Writing, published in 1894. Also popular was Zaner-Bloser Script, introduced by Charles Paxton Zaner (15 February 1864 – 1 December 1918) and Elmer Ward Bloser (6 November 1865 – 1929) of the Zanerian Business College. The A. N. Palmer Company folded in the early 1980s. Zaner-Bloser continues, and accounts for roughly 40% of handwriting textbook sales in the USA.
Later styles include D'Nealian Script and Getty-Dubay — both published in 1976. D'Nealian (named after its designer, Donald Neal Thurber) is a derivative of the Palmer Method and uses a slanted, serifed manuscript form followed by an entirely joined and looped cursive of the typical American variety. Getty-Dubay (named after its designers, Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay) is an Italic hand and uses a slightly slanted, optionally serifed Italic manuscript followed by a partially joined, unlooped Italic cursive with letter-forms similar to those of Italic manuscript. D'Nealian accounts for 40% of American handwriting textbook sales; Getty-Dubay, which accounted for less than 1% of American handwriting textbook sales in 1995, by 2003 had come to account for 7% of American handwriting textbook sales.
Other copybook styles comprise more than 200 published textbook curricula, many differing from these and from each other in a variety of ways.
By the nineteenth century, attention was increasingly given to developing quality penmanship in Eastern schools. Countries which had a writing system based on logographs and syllabaries placed particular emphasis on form and quality when learning.[26] These countries, such as China and Japan, have pictophonetic characters which are difficult to learn. Chinese children start by learning the most fundamental characters first and building to the more esoteric ones. Often, children trace the different strokes in the air along with the teacher and eventually start to write them on paper.[26]
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, there have been more efforts to simplify these systems and standardize handwriting. For example, in China in 1955, in order to respond to illiteracy among people, the government introduced a Romanized version of Chinese script, called Pinyin.[27] However, by the 1960s, people rebelled against the infringement upon traditional Chinese by foreign influences.[27] This writing reform did not help illiteracy among peasants. (However, it does help speakers of phonetic languages learn Chinese.) Japanese also has simplified the Chinese characters it uses into scripts called kana. However kanji are still used in preference over kana in many contexts, and a large part of children's schooling is learning kanji.[28] Moreover, Japan has tried to hold on to handwriting as an art form while not compromising the more modern emphasis on speed and efficiency. In the early 1940s, handwriting was taught twice, once as calligraphy in the art section of school curricula, and then again as a functional skill in the language section.[29] The practical function of penmanship in Japan did not start to be questioned until the end of the twentieth century; while typewriters proved more efficient than penmanship in the modern West, these technologies had a hard time transferring to Japan, since the thousands of characters involved in the language made typing unfeasible.[29]
With the increased use of and dependence on computers and word processing systems, many question the relevance of learning penmanship at all. While handwriting was necessary for documents, reports, etc., this is no longer the case today. The majority of formal documents are expected to be typed and most people only use handwriting for informal notes and reminders.[30]
As a result of the change in technology, penmanship and cursive specifically are losing emphasis in schools, especially in the West. Children in the United States usually learn block letters through second grade and move on to cursive in third grade; however, after third grade, handwriting is no longer taught in schools and often students lose the techniques which they learned. According to College Board, in 2005 and 2007 only approximately 15% of students taking the written portion of the SAT preferred to write in cursive over print.[31]
Instead of teaching handwriting, there is increasing importance given to teaching new technology, typing skills, and program familiarity.[32] Even standardized testing is employing the new technologies which have become a part of most aspects of society. For example, rather than writing by hand, 8th and 11th graders will be required to compose the writing test of the National Assessment of Educational Progress on computers in 2011 and 4th graders will have the same requirements by 2019.[33]
This is not just a concern in American schools either; similar trends are seen in schools across the world and many fear that technology will cause handwriting to disappear from schools and everyday life. In China, one study reported that Chinese youth are having increasing difficulty remembering how to write characters by hand.[34] According to the study, conducted on 2,072 people, 69% of respondents claimed that they have not received handwritten notes or letters in more than a year and 83% mentioned that they had difficulties writing by hand. This lack of handwriting is seen as a detriment to Chinese culture by many (over 71% believed that this shift will weaken the identity of the Chinese people and civilization).[34]
Efforts to preserve handwriting in the face of computerization include the development of computer software utilizing touch screens to teach handwriting.
Handwriting requires the motor coordination of multiple joints in the hand, wrist, elbow, and shoulder to form letters and to arrange them on the page. Holding the pen and guiding it across paper depends mostly upon sensory information from skin, joints and muscles of the hand and this adjusts movement to changes in the friction between pen and paper.[35] With practice and familiarity, handwriting becomes highly automated using motor programs stored in motor memory.[36] Compared to other complex motor skills handwriting is far less dependent on a moment-to-moment visual guidance.[37][38]
Research in individuals with complete peripheral deafferentation with and without vision of their writing hand finds increase of number of pen touches, increase in number of inversions in velocity, decrease of mean stroke frequency and longer writing movement duration. The changes show that cutaneous and proprioceptive feedback play a critical role in updating the motor memories and internal models that underlie handwriting. In contrast, sight provides only a secondary role in adjusting motor commands.[38]
Types of writing
Studies of writing and penmanship
Penmanship-related professions
Other penmanship-related topics