We all learned to print as children. Handwriting, hopefully, followed, though I’m not convinced everyone had the same quality of teaching in this discipline. I’m tempted to write, ‘When I was a child we...’ but I’ll spare you that lecture.
I went to a school in London, England, where we practised handwriting on a daily basis. Our stern headmistress was hell-bent on perfect penmanship. I recall one afternoon when she came into our classroom and walked to the chalkboard at the front. On it she instructed us that she no longer wanted us to write the letter ‘p’ so that the circle met the stick (of the ‘p.’)
“From now on, children, (we were never referred to as kids) we shall write our ‘p’s like this,” and proceeded to show us how we must not join the circle to the stick. “It must be left open.”
She then meticulously wrote the amended letter ‘p’ all the way to the end of the line on the board. Good pupils that we were, we took out our handwriting books and practised this new way of writing the letter ‘p.’
This was part of the Marion Richardson handwriting technique. The following is a short description of her method:
“Marion Richardson, who was a London Schools Inspector, introduced in 1935 recommended joining most but not all letters. She based her system on a series of writing patterns which were intended to provide a natural preparation for a handwriting style that could then be used throughout all school years. The letters are more complex than the Print Script forms, but they do not have the loops and curls of Looped Cursive; the most distinctive forms of the Marion Richardson system are the long open /f/ and the open /b/ and /p/.”
When I moved to Canada in 1969, Richardson’s method was not used, nor do I think anyone would have known who Richardson was. I don’t recall practising handwriting after landing in this country, at least not with the emphasis London placed on writing.
By the time I graduated high school I was handwriting the Canadian way - with loops - and was also a touch typist. In retrospect, learning how to type properly was one of the best and most valuable things I ever learned. I only wish I’d learned shorthand.
After typing on manual, electric, then electronic typewriters, the world progressed to word processors in the early 1980s. Bulky machines, but at the time they were marvels of technology. Micom, Wang, IBM, Xerox, Olivetti... they all came out with what we called ‘dedicated word processors.’ However, even these became obsolete with the introduction of personal micro-computers. At this point the word processing software programs were, comparatively speaking, quite rudimentary by today’s standards. DisplayWrite, MultiMate, WordPefect and Word, the latter being the up-and-comer from a new company called Microsoft, were programs that came on 51/4” and later 31/2” diskettes. They were pretty slow, didn’t use a mouse, but relied on templates that fit over the keyboards. The function keys were then used in conjunction with the Shift, Alt, and Ctrl keys, so that each function key would be assigned four attributes, or more. They were also colour-coded for greater ease of use! When I look back now, I have no idea how I could keep all the codes in my head when I taught those software programs on a daily basis.
Today, most people use Word. I’m not a big fan of Word. My favourite years ago was WordPerfect, a beautiful program, but like the proverbial bull in the china shop, Microsoft took over the market and WordPerfect was bumped down the food chain. Since 1999 I have preferred to use an Apple Mac computer. In years past I have used Word on the Mac, but with the advent of Apple’s iWork software, I am quickly becoming a fan of Pages, and have not used Word in some time.
Months ago, I took a look at a number of dedicated writing programs, of which there are a number out there. I eventually decided on Scrivener. It is an expansive program with a few bells and whistles that writers find very convenient - places for character details, research, submission standards for literary agents, etc. My next novel will probably be written in Scrivener.
Before all this, before typewriters, dedicated word processors and word processing software programs for computers, writers wrote with a pencil or pen using ink out of ink bottles. No editing on screen, no software to help out, simply the writer and their writing instrument. My favourite author, Graham Greene, used a Parker 51 for most of his writing and I have a picture of him in a chaise longue editing his work with his favourite fountain pen. I keep it pinned to a bulletin board to remind me how far we writers have come.
Or have we?
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