GILLING AND THE PRACTICE OF ITALIC

PETER ROBINSON (A61)

On a recent visit to the passport office the young lady in front of me, when asked for a signature, responded “Can’t I just print it?” The officer behind the counter scowled. “No, I need a signature. And not just squiggles and dots.” The clerk looked at the chicken scratch and shook her head. For this pleasant twenty-year-old the experience was humiliating. Yet I wondered was it fair to judge her generation for lacking what is apparently a basic life skill? Today, iPads and laptops already dominate the classroom and many schools have pushed aside the study of penmanship. As the world spends an increasing amount of time on electronic devices, are handwriting skills even needed?

At Gilling Castle, thanks to Fr Christopher Topping, we spent productive hours learning how to write in cursive italic. I practised signing my name until I developed a one-of-a-kind italic autograph. Today kids who are old enough to produce a signature certainly don’t write letters to their friends; they text. If the need to write a note, they more often than not print, but not in longhand. And on the rare occasion when a signature is required – like on an iPad at the checkout counter – a fingerdrawn squiggle usually suffices. Recently I signed some sale papers via Docusign, so it’s clear that we can all get by without even a ballpoint pen. Until we can’t.

I fear that if signatures go the way of the manual typewriter, future generations will miss out. They may never experience the nervous pleasure of signing a love letter and dropping it in the mail. They may never sign a cheque for a significant amount of money, then dramatically say “Yes, I’ve finally paid off this loan!”

Recently, Norman MacLeod (B57) shared his Common Place Book entries with me and there, in magnificent italic, were bon mots from another era. (Ah yes! Those days of the Common Place Books reminded me that the last one I reviewed was Monsignor Gilbey’s, my old Cambridge Chaplain, as good for practical tips as spiritual advice: ‘always choose your main course first and then your first course to go with it’.) Each year, I receive fewer holiday cards in the mail and more through email and Instagram. It’s clear we are going into both a handwriting-free and paperless direction This is great for the environment, but are there costs? Apparently, I’m not the only one to lament the disappearance of penmanship.

Studies show that penmanship provides certain academic benefits. Experts say writing in cursive boosts brain development in the areas of thinking, language and working memory, and that children composing essays by hand can more quickly generate words and ideas. A UCLA/Princeton study found that college students remember lectures better when they’ve taken handwritten notes rather than typed ones. So maybe cursive – like all things retro – is slated to make a comeback. Until then, the up-and-coming generation will continue to send ‘hbd’ text greetings to friends, announce their adoration for crushes on Snapchat and, yes, hold up passport renewal queues as we wait for a signature.

Italic handwriting has long lost its grip on the public consciousness. There was a time in the 1950s when, to judge from the extensive newspaper cuttings, everybody knew about it and tried to reform their writing styles. Not being able to do it of course didn’t prevent anyone being Prime Minister or a lawyer, and certainly not a doctor. It was about projecting an image of yourself as you wished to be seen on the page. This was an age of quick brown foxes and lazy dogs that was firmly aspirational.

Now it would have to be a website, an interactive DVD or even a text message. It is strange however, at a time when society is so obsessed with appearances, that writing Italic should be such a little sought out art. We have experts to vet our wardrobes so that we may project the right image and yet who hasn’t received a note or letter where a poor impression of the writer was formed because of the handwriting?

The well penned handwritten note, in an age of texts, emails and Blackberries, may well be a way of adding significance to that message you wish to convey. Sadly, this is a generation for whom the usefulness of handwriting has largely come to an end, in the same way that old buttons and fountain pens have gone.

Cursive eulogies are everywhere these days but they are reserved for the sole formality of diplomas and wedding invitations. On those rare occasions when we do trade the keyboard for the quill, there’s the nagging worry readers will find our scrawl totally illegible, or at the very least, unconventional.

Cursive, which comes from the Latin currere, meaning ‘to run’, refers to any script where letters are joined and the pen only lifts from the page between words. It is, quite literally, a ‘running hand’ rather than a texting thumb. Perhaps a handful of teachers still teach the older handwriting styles, maybe owing to a sense of tradition. Gone are the days of a large selection of high quality steel nibs and oblique penholders … so has penmanship lost its value?

On a personal note, I still prefer to hand write my first draft for an article or broadcast as I have that strange belief that the words run from the pen to my hand up my arm and then to my brain. And imagination and memory are all flowing and kicking in on that journey. Recently, when preparing a broadcast on The Spiritual Value of Doubt in Graham Greene’s novels, I was thumbing through old copies of The Third Man, The Power and the Glory and The Quiet American and my doodles in the margins were all in legible italic. For me that handwriting was an imprint of my earlier readings and brought with it an awareness of all the historic changes that have happened as time passes.

And then I wondered about Gilling Castle and all our yesterdays! When it was sold did they sign a cheque with a signature or was it just another electronic transfer? Quod Scripsi, scripsi.

Peter Robinson is the editor of ‘San Francisco Books & Travel’ magazine and critic at large for NPR in San Francisco at KALW radio. Reach him at sanfranit@aol.com