> “Hell, my penmanship ended in 1965 in radio school when I saw my printing was waaayyyy nicer than my Palmer Method.”
I’ve been printing since the sixties too. My cursive was always clear but rather infantile, and I decided that printing would create a better impression. The major drawback was that it slowed me down a bit in taking notes and on essay tests (though not much because I learned to print very fast). I suspect that on tests the teachers were so glad not to have to read somebody’s handwriting that it may have worked to my benefit.
Some individuality is lost in printing personal letters, of course, but people rarely write them anymore.
THAT was the deciding factor for me ... I had to learn to take morse code at (I think it was 45wpm .. but I honestly forget)
It was radio school I learned for the first time crossing sevens and zees (european style) and boxing the letter U so it doesn't get mixed up with the V.
To this day, if and when I have to spell something to a telephone jerk, they ALWAYS repeat with an entirely different phonetic.
My Sirius XM is MU7Y72WV and when I called about a problem I identified; Mama Uniform 7 Yankee 7 2 Whiskey Victor, which was repeated back to me, Michael Umbrella 7 Yes 7 2 Wonder Victor.
I congratulated the person on the other end for getting one of them correct.
I think you would be surprised at the numbers that still do. I know I still do, as does my husband and our just turned teenager daughter. In fact when she gets home from school this afternoon she still has 3 more to write. While she does have a tendency to procrastination, she gets it from me, she still does write thank you notes.
As I mentioned in another post, one of the requirements on her application for Governor's School was that the 3 essays had to be done in the student's handwriting, which drove her nuts because one of the essays was about the applicant's computer skills.