The bubblegum pink loops barely join and the letter ‘t’ appears more like a plus-sign than an alphanumeric.
This is Miley Cyrus’ handwriting – a scrawled note by the Hannah Montana star, who, at the tender age of 18 is world famous thanks to the series. She is just one of a host of young stars who represent one of the trends of the era: the onset of poor handwriting brought about by our technology-dependent lifestyles.
Another notes that features in Habbo’s Advice to My Teenage Self book is by Justin Bieber. The 17-year-old pop sensation’s handwriting fares even worse. Awkward, wobbling letters hover alone, a misshapen ‘S’ seems to highlight the fact that there is not a single cursive word in the sentences.
Justin King, an autograph seller and paparazzi photographer, told CNN that the handwriting of today’s stars ‘is so atrocious, it’s talked about and recognised through the industry.’
(Left) Justin Bieber may be a star on the stage but his handwriting leaves a lot to be desired, say experts; (right) Youngsters today do not write cursively, instead dotting their ‘childish’ writing with graphics, such as Miley Cyrus’s heart.
Gone are the days of the swirling, elegant slants of cursive scripts, as seen in older celebrities.
“With stars ages 30 and above, they generally have a much more full, legible signature,” Mr King told CNN. “When you deal with these new people like [teen actress] Elle Fanning, you’re lucky if you get an E and F and a heart for her signature.”
Inevitably, handwriting isn’t what it used to be. From infantry, toddlers are able to answer the parents’ iPhones, sliding the ‘answer’ key deftly. Remote controls, computers, phones, games – and avid use of Facebook, Twitter and other social media means that most verbal communication, if not spoken, is typed.
It is a trend that is not helped by national teaching requirements, either, says CNN. Cursive handwriting is not required in the Common Core Standards guidelines – a teaching code that has been adopted by 46 states so far.
This autumn, the entire state of Indiana will drop cursive writing teaching requirements – students must instead be able to type on keyboards.
Jan Olsen, founder of Handwriting without tears, told CNN: “If you stop teaching handwriting in the second grade, you’re going to have a generation of people who write like second graders.”
And that could mean the death of a love of handwritten letters, poetry, even a beautifully grave signature on a legal document. As cursive handwriting diminishes, handwritten documents become rarer – their power heightened by the personality conveyed through the script.
Bygone days: The signatures of Winston Churchill, left, Queen Elizabeth the first, top, and Oliver Cromwell, right, are rendered more remarkable by their writing styles
The Watsons, Jane Austen’s earliest, unpublished, handwritten manuscript, recently sold for $1.6 million at auction. Crowds never fail to gather around Winston Churchill’s handwritten speeches, while handwritten diaries have provided some of the most powerful manuscripts from wartime Europe.
Davis Schneiderman, novelist and chair of the English Department at Lake Forest College, said: “Handwritten documents convey important cultural information about authors.”
“These documents also suggest an authenticity that electronically produced documents do not,” he told CNN. “The Declaration is an index of its time as well as clue to the physicality of its signers. Imagine John Hancock typed in an 18-point Times New Roman font. The proud fury behind his oversized signature would be lost.” Could it be that the contents of documents like these are taken more seriously because of their presentation?
Certainly, studies show that poor handwriting and sloppiness have a negative impact on the message the writing is attempting to convey.
Steven Graham, professor of education at Vanderbilt University said: “If you have sloppy handwriting, people make [negative] judgements about the quality of your ideas.”
There is not, then, simply a romantic nostalgia attached to old ways.
Retired schoolteacher Carol Collin told CNN that she believes children ‘miss the sense of pride they get when they can write neatly and elegantly in cursive instead of only knowing manuscript [print].’
She also believes that it stands youngsters in good stead for success later in life. “There are many times in school and as an adult where being able to write elegantly is an advantage. Prospective employers will be impressed by clear, readable, attractive writing.”
While most jobs involve typing rather more than handwriting – and most resumes and letters of application are printed from computer files, there are important relationships between development and handwriting.
In fact, handwriting links thought development and sentence structure, says Michael Sull, a master penman in Spencerian script.
More worrying perhaps, is the ‘great loss in the progress that could be made with children fostering their motor skill development, literacy training and concepts of communication.
“Without [cursive handwriting] you lose the sense of having your thought process through your hand movements to create your language and thoughts to someone else,” he told CNN.
Like language, handwriting will never remain a static. The childish handwriting styles of stars like Cyrus and Beiber may echo the typed scripts that are so much a part of lives today.
Indeed, as more children become more technologically savvy and keyboard dependent, will handwriting even exist in future generations? What do you think? Let us hear from you.
Disclaimer: One element of handwriting may be analysed at a time, but always look at the entire handwriting sample before arriving at any conclusion.
