On my drive home from work I listened to Amanda Vanstone interview Philip Hensher, the author of the book, The Missing Link: The Lost Art of Handwriting. Hensher commented that in today’s world of text messages, tweets and emails that it could be entirely possible for someone to marry a person without ever seeing their handwriting until the moment they signed the marriage certificate.
He pondered, and this is probably more a query for the female readers but guys you can answer too, how would you feel if, having never seen your beloved sign his/her name previously, if once you were married you became aware that he signed his name with a little heart over his letter i, or finished his sentences with a smiley face?
The dilemma, if I can call it a dilemma, occupied me all the way home, and I still not sure of how I would react. Does gender equality extend to handwriting too?
One of life’s bigger questions, isn’t it?
Flamingo Dancer's Blog 
It would be an interesting quirk–whether male or female–for an adult to write like that, but I doubt it would change anything if I had liked him enough to marry him.
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I am sure that wouldn’t be his only quirky behaviour anyway!
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Funny. I was just thinking about the lack of writing by hand.
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I read that it’s no longer taught at school, at least not in the US. Made me think it will be strange to see signatures which are all printed in the future.
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We still teach it, but of course not the copy book style we were all beaten into writing!
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My writing is pretty awful now as I rarely do any. I have to really concentrate when I do cards or postcards.
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My writing has become worse over the years. I always wrote back hand which drove the nuns crazy.
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I think if my beloved did either of those things I would be running for the hills!
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It might be a worry – I’d be concerned about what else I didn’t know!
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Couldn’t care less.
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I would hope that I had chosen wisely in the first place. Mr FD’s writing is so bad I can barely read it anyway, so I probably wouldn’t notice a heart or a smiley face!
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wouldn’t matter to me.
handwriting is a dying art though
I hand wrote all my uni essays and have a few different styles depending on whether I’m writing a personal note (mega rough), a readable list (block print), or say a card (best cursive).
Does make you wonder if people will even be able to do it in a few decades…..
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We are finding that students can’t write for extended period of time and so are finding extended written exams very difficult. They are lacking hand strength and cramp more easily!
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My handwriting is bad, but legible. My wife’s handwriting is AWFUL and barely legible (but she has a good excuse for that that I’m not getting into here).
Because my handwriting is the better of the two, I write 90% of the notes in Christmas/Birthday cards and address all envelopes. My wife’s friends probably all think she is a manly woman, lol.
As for me? I don’t care … although I’d wonder about an adult using emoticons in their signature …
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My brother in law always gets the job of writing the cards in their house too. He doesn’t use emoticons thank heavens. Mr FD always had bad writing, but it got worse after his hand was crushed in a piece of farm machinery almost 30 years ago. I guess if that is the worst of his injuries we can’t complain.
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