In the 21st century, with keyboards, laptops, PCs and other electronic devices being the main means of non-verbal communications, more emphasis these days is placed on the importance of fast, accurate and smooth touch-typing, than upon almost any other computing skill. Being able to type fast and smoothly, with a minimal of errors, using both hands and all ten fingers across a keyboard is seen as both an essential skill, and as a desirable trait in our increasingly connected online world.

But as little as a hundred years ago, another skill was held up to a standard just as high as that of fast and accurate typing is today – the art of penmanship!

So, what exactly is penmanship? Where did it come from? How was it taught? How did it evolve over the centuries, and what’s happened to the art of penmanship in the 21st century? This, and other, related topics, will be the subject of this posting.

A Brief History of Writing

Before we explore the history of penmanship, we first need to explore the history of writing as an activity. The first evidence of writing of any kind took place in the Sumerian civilisation of the Middle East, and was comprised largely of cuneiform – a type of wedge-shaped text produced by pressing a stylus into a soft medium which could be used to record the marks – such as clay, or wax. Erasing or reusing the tablet was simply a matter of pressing out the incorrect marks, and re-marking the correct cuneiform marks on top.

Writing with ink started with the reed pen and sheets made from the reeds of the papyrus plant (which gives us the word ‘paper’ today).

Originally, writing was largely pictographic in nature – a person draw small images or representations of images, to express words and thoughts – similar to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. This led to what became known as the “Rebus Principle”.

In its most basic form, the ‘Rebus Principle’ involved the use of homophonic words joined to other words or sounds, to create new words. For example, the symbol or picture of a bee, plus the symbol for a tray or platter, could be written together to form the word ‘betray’, for which no other symbol existed. In this way, each individual sound within a given language could be represented by its own symbol – which became known as letters – and these letters could be combined to form modern text and writing.

The Evolution of Writing to Penmanship

Throughout much of history, literacy of any kind was limited to those with access to books, writing materials and educational sources – largely monasteries, wealthy noble families, universities, schools and churches. Emphasis on writing was less about learning how to write, as it was on simply copying texts. Before the age of the printing press in the 1450s, texts of any kind had to be laboriously copied out by hand, word by word, line by line, stroke by individual stroke.

This slow, methodical pace made for elegant, flowery and highly elaborate texts – but it took people ages to write anything, and the end-result could be nigh impossible to read! It’s for this reason that cursive script – that is – handwriting with letters formed swiftly, and joined together cleanly with loops and connectors to form a single, continuous stroke – started becoming common. It was just easier to write everything in a series of smooth, connected movements, rather than individual stop-and-start motions.

Cursive of any kind dates back centuries, but in this posting, we’ll be looking at the development of modern cursive script. So – where did it come from?

The first cursive script used by English speakers for which there was an established style, and which was recognised by name, was known as the ‘Secretary Script’ or ‘Secretary Hand’, developed in the 1500s, and was one of several styles of cursive then in use across Europe. Others included ‘Court Hand’, and even the ‘Italic Hand’ – and yes – it was the sloping angle of this style which gave this kind of Italic its name.

The problem with these hands or scripts was that there was really no solid uniformity, and while they were fast to write, they were equally difficult to read! To show just how hard, here’s an example of Secretary Script:

How much of that can you read? Not much, huh? And yet, this was written by one of the most famous people in the world – you’re looking at William Shakespeare’s handwriting. Secretary script, or a variant of it, is how he learned to write.

Advances in Cursive Script

The lack of uniformity in handwriting was clear for all to see. It’s for this reason that in the 1600s and 1700s, solid efforts were made to improve handwriting, and to make it smoother, and neater. This led to the rise of English Roundhand, a type of cursive which spawned many imitators, and a style which is still popular today.

“Roundhand” referred to a collection of script-types developed in the 1600s and 1700s. This all came about because of the frustration of French court officials in the 17th century – after all – you try and read important legal documents handwritten in six or more different styles of cursive! This became so intolerable that they demanded something be done about it! This led to the Controller-General of Finances in France, at the time – Jean-Baptiste Colbert – to decree that from then on, only three types of handwriting were to be used in legal documents! Probably much to the relief of everybody around him.

One of these three scripts was known as the ‘Ronde’ style, which, when it came to England, was anglicised as ‘Round’ or ‘Roundhand’, and started being publicised in copybooks printed as guides to people wishing to learn the newest, most stylish, and effective ways of writing by hand! This is probably the first instance of a uniform cursive script being spread around a given population.

Here, we can see a variation of French Ronde script. Still elaborate, but much easier to read! Or at least, much more-so than the cramped Secretary Script that preceded it in the 1500s. Curly letter-shapes were artistic, but also easily recognisable, making handwritten documents much easier to read. It was from this script that English ‘Roundhand’ and ‘Copperplate’ styles evolved, and which spread to places like the North American colonies, and Canada in the 1700s.

Above, we can see an example of Roundhand Script, inspired by the French ‘Ronde’ script of the 17th century. It was the first style of cursive handwriting really designed to improve both the speed of the writer, and the legibility of what was written, for the reader. Texts like the American Declaration of Independence were first handwritten in Roundhand.

Writing Enters the Machine Age

The invention of the electric telegraph in the 1830s and 40s, and the rise of steam-powered technology such as trains and steamships meant that correspondence started to grow rapidly. For the first time in history, efficient postal-systems allowed letters and documents to be spirited around the world in hours or days, instead of weeks, or even months, just a generation before. This led to further improvements and refinements to the art of cursive handwriting.

One of the biggest developments in the history of cursive script happened during this time – the arrival of Spencerian.

Spencerian, developed by American teacher Platt Rogers-Spencer, was, like most scripts which preceded it – a rounded cursive script, designed to be neat, fast, and legible. To make handwriting easier and faster, Mr. Spencer looked through various examples of previous styles of handwriting to see what he wished to keep and what he desired to discard. His aim was to have a script that was both fast to write, but neat to read. To this end, he largely eliminated most of the excessive curls, swirls and flourishes found in earlier handwriting styles, such as English Roundhand.

Spencer recognised that business was starting to grow, and aimed his new style of writing at businesspeople and others in professional occupations, as a type of cursive which anybody could understand, and to ensure this, he simplified it a great deal.

Here we can see an example of Spencerian script from 1884, roughly twenty years after Spencer’s death. While still fairly elaborate, it is uniform, neat and quite legible to modern eyes, barring a few stylistic changes between then and now.

Spencerian script remained de-rigeur in much of the English-speaking world for the better part of a hundred years and lasting well into the 20th century, only dying out with the rise of typewriters in the mid-1900s. Before then, it was held up as a prime example of neat, professional cursive handwriting. One of the most famous examples of Spencerian script still seen emblazoned upon millions of cans and bottles all over the world today is the Coca Cola logo!

Designed by bookkeeper Frank Mason Robinson in 1885, the logo is simply a variation of his own Spencerian handwriting – and has remained virtually unchanged for over 130 years!

The Palmer Method of Writing

Efforts to improve cursive script continued throughout the 1800s, and by the 1880s and 90s, a new script had emerged: The Palmer Script.

Like Roundhand and Spencerian which preceded it, Palmer was an attempt to cut down on needless frivolity and improve legibility. Lowercase letters such as ‘s’ and ‘r’ were given more distinctive shapes to make them stand out, and flourishes on capitals and ending-letters were kept to a minimum to ensure clarity of text. As with other scripts, the aim was to improve the flow of writing, without introducing needless frivolity, leading to a cleaner end-result.

Developed by Austin Palmer in the 1880s and 90s, the “Palmer Method” as it became known, relied on ease of motion, and muscle-memory to produce good handwriting. Palmer reasoned that the easiest shapes for people to draw in quick succession were circles and loops.

To this end, his system of cursive relied heavily on letters and letter-forms being made up of curls, curves, circles and loops. This made the script easier to remember, easier to flow, and easier to read, since there would be greater uniformity between the letters. This is clearly seen in this writing sample from a Palmer textbook:

The Palmer method, and similar styles of cursive which followed after it, became the preferred methods of writing because they were fast, easy, and without the time-wastage of needless embellishments like loops, curls, and excessive flourishes which were seen in preceding handwriting styles, such as Spencerian from the the 1820s.

The A to Z of American Zanerian Script

American calligrapher Charles Paxton Zaner invented Zanerian script in the 1880s, which led to the establishment of the Zanerian College of Penmanship. This turned into the Zaner-Bloser Company, which offered instruction manuals, copybooks and writing guides, as well as penmanship courses, to people in professional careers looking for an effective and clear style of cursive writing.

As with other styles of cursive at the time, Zaner was inspired by the clear, but overly flowery Spencerian script, and sought to simplify it, especially when it came to giving instruction to school-children in their penmanship classes. A more clean-cut script would be easier and faster to learn, and would help students produce consistent handwriting. A variant of Zanerian script – D’Nealian script, invented nearly 100 years later in the 1970s, is the style of cursive which I learned at school in the early 1990s.

Teaching Cursive Script – How Was it Done?

I’m sure most of us can think back to our days in school when penmanship was one of the main classes that we had to take. Copybooks and pencils, slates and chalk, or even sand-trays – were used to teach children how to write effectively!

Before the 20th century, and even for the vast majority of it, teaching children the art of neat and efficient cursive writing was seen as a core part of any educational system’s curriculum. Teaching penmanship was essential, and for almost everybody, ‘penmanship’ meant ‘cursive’.

So, how was it done?

For children to be taught their letters effectively, schools needed easy, cheap, and effective methods for teaching students the repetitive tasks of letter-formation over and over again, without wasting huge amounts of money on paper, ink or pencils. To achieve this, they had some pretty ingenious solutions!

Back in Victorian times, writing of any kind started with copying down letter-shapes which were drawn on the blackboard by the teacher. Copying of basic letter-shapes was done using a sand-tray – which is literally exactly what it sounds like – a wooden tray filled with soft, fine-grained sand. Using their fingers, or a stick, children could trace the shapes of letters in the sand to get a feel for how to draw them correctly. Resetting the tray for a new letter was a simple matter of smoothing out the sand and starting again.

Once students had learned the basics of letter-formation, next came the task of learning how to do this with an actual writing instrument. In most cases, this involved a slate tablet and a pencil, or even a piece of chalk. Using a slate and pencil allowed students to familiarise themselves with the act of writing, and not just trying to get letter-shapes. Penmanship classes using pencils and slates would last until the children were deemed to be old enough to handle a pen and ink, and to write on paper.

For the longest time, learning how to write in ink involved a dip-pen and an inkwell – even after fountain pens became commonplace. This was largely due to cost – it was cheaper to buy cheap dip-pen ink in-bulk by huge bottles, and to issue students with simple wooden pen-holders, than it was for students to buy fountain pens and bring them to school. At the turn of the 20th century, fountain pens were still extremely expensive luxury items, and certainly not something that a parent (or teacher, for that matter) would wish to spend on a child who was only just learning how to write! Well into the 1900s, hundreds of schools around the world still relied on dip-pens, inkwells, pen-holders…and the services of an ink-monitor – a student nominated by the teacher to walk around the classroom and refill each student’s desk inkwell with fresh ink at the start of the school day.

Writing with a dip-pen and inkwell was rather more involved than today’s practice of just yoinking the cap off of a pen and scribbling away with it. Knowing how to correctly orient a nib, how to control the ink-flow, stopping to re-dip your pen every few words, and not dribbling ink everywhere meant that writing with a pen was a much more daunting prospect for a child than it might at first appear to be.

For this reason, teachers would give out penmanship certificates, or pen licenses to children as an incentive, to show that a particular child had mastered writing enough to be allowed to use a pen, since it meant that they could be relied upon not to make a huge, godawful mess on the page when they reached for the latest prize in their quest for cursive greatness! I still remember being ten years old, and being given my pen license in school – a rectangular sheet of thin cardboard – sky-blue in colour – with the teacher’s name, signature and date on it, and a brief message saying that I had qualified to use a pen!

Once students had graduated to using a dip pen and inkwell, the next step was familiarising themselves with their copybooks. A copybook is exactly what it sounds like – a book where you copied out the letters, letter-combinations, words, and sentences within to build up muscle-memory, and to train your hand to produce neat, legible handwriting. The exercises inside the book taught students how to form letters, common pairs or groups of letters, like th, ing, sc, and so-on, and common words, phrases and sentences.

Apart from being practice, a copybook also served as a record of the student’s progress in improving their handwriting. Students who were clumsy, inattentive or otherwise careless might dribble ink across their penmanship homework, resulting in them ‘blotting their copybook’, an expression which would later evolve to mean taking part in (or having rumored to have taken part in) any activity which might leave an indelible mark upon one’s personal character and reputation.

Writing Right with the Right Hand

You’ve probably heard this in a hundred books, been told this by your grandparents, or seen it mentioned in movies and TV shows all over the world.

In schools, left-handed children were forced to learn how to write using their right hands.

But why? What’s the point of it? Why bother?

While loads of people will tell you all kinds of elaborate stories and myths and biblical passages and so on…the truth of the matter was that kids were taught to write with their right hands as opposed to their left, due to the materials given to them to practice with.

The human eye naturally looks from left to right, which is why the vast majority of languages are written in this direction. A right-handed writer therefore writes away from the text that they’re putting down on the page. A left-handed writer, by comparison, writes towards the text as they go along the page. This means that their hand hovers over the freshly written text as they write. Doing this with a slate and pencil, or even worse, a sheet of paper, a pen and fresh ink, could cause stains, smudges and streaks across the page…and across the student’s palm.

It was in an effort to prevent this from happening, that teachers insisted that all students had to write with their right hands, whether they actually could, or not. Fortunately, such practices no longer exist, and today, lefties can write as they wish!

The Decline of Quality Penmanship

Emphasis on quality penmanship, and, especially – cursive script – has been on a steep decline since the turn of the 21st century. While handwriting, out of necessity has remained part of most school curriculums, teaching students more than the basics in penmanship tends to have fallen by the wayside, with greater emphasis being placed on computing skills, typing, and keyboarding, in our much more digital and online-oriented world.

Last but not least…

Throughout this posting we’ve covered various styles of cursive handwriting, watching the gradual evolution from 1500s to the 1900s. But, practice as you might, nobody’s handwriting is going to be exactly like the exercises in their copybooks, and nobody’s handwriting is going to be exactly like any other person’s.

We change strokes, letter-forms and styles according to what is most comfortable to our hand-movements, our grips, and our personal tastes, to form something which is entirely unique to our own personality and preferences. So what exactly do you call a person’s individual style of writing? Ever wondered?

The answer is “hand“! This is the name given to a person’s individual style of script or longhand writing, and is as unique as a person’s fingerprint. And now you know!