#482： The Power of Penmanship
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Summary
In the 21st century, most of our written communication is done by typing on a computer or tapping digital buttons on a smartphone screen. My guest argues that we can increase our sense of humanity and our connection to the physical world and to other people by rediscovering the lost art of putting a real pen to real paper.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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In the 21st century, most of our written communication is done through typing on a
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computer or tapping digital buttons on a smartphone screen. My guest today argues that we can increase
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our sense of humanity and our connection to the physical world and to other people by
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rediscovering the lost art of putting a real pen to real paper. His name is Michael Soule. He's a
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master penman, penmanship instructor, and the author of several penmanship books. Today on
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the podcast, I talked to Mike about what it takes to become a master penman and what exactly a master
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penman does for a living. Michael then takes us on a tour of the history of cursive handwriting,
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including insights to how culture has influenced handwriting styles throughout the ages and why
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penmanship has declined in the modern day. Michael then makes the case for why people start writing
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in cursive again, how to get started with improving your handwriting, and why there's nothing like
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getting a handwritten note in the mail. Out of the show's over, check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash penmanship. Okay, Michael Soule, welcome to the show. Well, thank you. So you are a master
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penman, and up until a few years ago, I did not know the title of master penman existed.
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So the question is, how does a master penman become a master penman?
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Well, a hundred years ago, there were many schools, we would call them vocational colleges today,
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that focused on handwriting for professional use. In the days before typewriters, everything had to be
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done by hand, and so they had vocational training colleges to teach adults all of the different
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handwriting skills for detailed certificates, ornamental documents, and such, as well as
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business writing. If you worked in a bank and such, you had to write everything. Insurance policies were
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written by hand, and so on. When a person graduated from these schools, which are usually anywhere between
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12 to 24 months of duration, as far as the curriculum went, you had to make your own document, your own
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certificate, your graduation diploma. And based on how well you did it, you either, if it was just
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passable, today we would regard as a C grade, you got a green seal on your certificate. If it was what we
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would call today a B grade, you got a red seal. And if it was an A grade, you would get a gold seal.
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And the people who earned the gold seal were usually regarded as masters. And as they left the
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educational field, and they went into their professions, and their work became more well-known,
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they started to become, in a sense, sort of legendary. And they either taught at, or they
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submitted their work for the magazines of the major penmanship institutions of the day. So it was an
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honorary type of degree, you might say, that everybody regarded these men and women at that
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certain level. Well, the penmanship profession sort of disappeared after the typewriter really became,
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in a sense, a formidable tool in business. And that was, my teacher used to tell me that that was in the
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very middle of the 1920s. It had been, you know, invented many years before and was still used
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earlier in the century. But it really became a prominent figure, basically, due to World War I and
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the economic and business endeavors that were related to that, to that event. My teacher used to say that
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the penmanship profession went down the turlet in 28 because of the typewriter. So years went by,
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and nobody heard of Master Penman anymore. And finally, I sort of brought it back in the sense that
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there's a curriculum that we have now, where a person has to demonstrate certain skills in this
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penmanship arena. And if they, in a sense, bring their skills up to the level of the old masters,
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they can be certified as a master penman. So you created an organization that governs
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the certification process. Well, I created a program within an organization. The organization
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was, it's called IAMPATH. It's the International Association of Master Penmen and Grocers and Handwriting.
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And I, frankly, got tired of people saying many things about the old penman, but not really
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promoting it to exist so that people could still be trained and inspire students.
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The program lasted for 15 years. I was the director of it. And through that time, we certified,
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I think, 12 or 13 individuals as master penmen. The program has gone under a revision now,
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and it's still undergoing a revision. But there are still some people who are going through a
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master penman program at a facility called the Inc. Academy in California. And it's possible that
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some of the masters themselves can mentor students through their own program to become a master penman.
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So how did you get into this? Was this idea of being passionate about handwriting and penmanship,
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was this something you had as a young person? Or was this something, an interest that developed
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as an adult, and you decided to turn it into a career?
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Well, my mother was a very able secretary for many years. She was born in the teens.
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And like many women at that time, she was trained in handwriting. She became a secretary and did,
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you know, very beautiful handwriting and shorthand and such. And through our lives as children,
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we always marveled at her handwriting for Christmas cards, greeting cards, the letters that she sent to
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all of us when we were in school or at scout camp, that kind of thing. Later on, after I went through
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college and my stint into the Navy, I just wanted to pick up a hobby. And I thought it would be wonderful
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to write like mom. But there were no books on handwriting that were available in local business
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or bookstores. The thing is that handwriting is such a pedestrian activity that nobody really thought
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of just writing a book on how to write, you know, cursive handwriting. It's like there's no book out on
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how to brush your teeth. It's just such something that we all do. But at that time, which was in the
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mid-1970s, calligraphy was becoming very popular. And so I got into that and I really loved it.
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It was something that was consuming for me. I just loved to write like that. It was the closest I could
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do to writing in a beautiful way like my mother. During that period of time, I founded a calligraphy
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guild in Virginia Beach. And through that, I met two elderly gentlemen who were master penmen. One was a
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master and engrossing. At the time that I started all this, I was 30 years old. And this teacher was
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66 years old. He taught me how to do the old certificates, the very beautiful scrolled
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certificates. But the most amazing person I met was a man named Paul O'Hara. He was one of the last
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living masters from the golden age of penmanship. He earned his master's certificate in 1908 at the
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Zanarian College of Penmanship, which was like the Harvard University of penmanship schools during
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that period in our country's history. It was in Columbus, Ohio. And he taught me all that I know
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about penmanship. And it was interesting. He was a physical fitness enthusiast his whole life.
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In 1913, he wrote an article on physical culture for penmen, which showed him in a t-shirt with all
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of his muscles and telling everybody how you have to be a limber to be a penman. When I met him,
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he was 90 years old. And he was still in great shape and was still very good at the art of penmanship.
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And he took me in. Nobody had talked to him about penmanship at that point in 50 years. So I was very
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lucky and fortunate. And they inspired me, both of these teachers, to just work as hard as I could
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to do the best that I could at becoming a penman, master penman like them.
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So we'll get into the style that you learned from them and why that sort of went out into the wilderness
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for a little bit. But before that, like master penman, you know, as you said, the typewriter killed
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penmanship. The computer, I'm sure, just shoveled dirt on the grave of penmanship. Like what in a world
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that's become, you know, we're all just typing or tapping things on smartphones to communicate. Like, what
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Well, those of us that are, and basically all calligraphers and penmen who do a lot of this
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type of work or earn our living at it, do a variety of commission work. We still fill out many
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certificates and diplomas and documents. The biggest sector of the type of skill that we use
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is for the wedding industry, doing things like invitation designs, addressing thousands and
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thousands of envelopes and place cards, escort cards, doing marriage certificates. There are some of us
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who still do work on occasion for graphic design studios that need to have hand lettering done
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for various client jobs. It's not, most of the time, it's not the entire text of an advertisement,
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but just the heading of it or one particular word that may be the branding of the industry's name
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that commissioned this. We also, of course, design logos. We still do that. I design a lot of monograms
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and there are others who do that as well. So that's the kind of work that most of us do. We do some work
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Have you noticed that the demand for your skill has gone up in the past few decades?
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Well, it's interesting. When the computer came up, there was a big dip in the amount of work that all
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of us all of a sudden found that we weren't really as popular anymore for our skills. But about 10 or 15
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years went by and all of a sudden there was a resurgence of interest in hand-lettered invitations
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and hand-lettered documents and such because people start to value the hand-generated skill
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of recognition. It's sort of a recognition industry. Most of us who do this kind of work professionally
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I think are very, very fortunate because what we really do is recognize human achievement,
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whether it's memorializing people who have passed on, congratulating people who have achieved certain
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levels of skill in their profession, perhaps in their church, but anything that involves recognizing
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people or their accomplishments. So by hand, we still help people to recognize the human sense
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of achievement. And to me, that's very special. Now, we're very fortunate and it's ironic too,
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because the big hero has been social media. All of us who do this work, of course, are scattered all
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over the world, not just here in the United States. And now it's absolutely effortless for someone
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in Kansas, like where I live, for our work to be seen in Iceland or in Australia, all over the world.
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And there's an inherent beauty in hand-generated lettering that you don't find in digital
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reproductions of decorative or ornamental lettering. There's something very special about it.
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The certain styles that evoke a sense of gracefulness because of the curves that are inherent in its
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development are all based on nature. And nature is the same here as it is anywhere else in the world.
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And people really enjoy and flock to it because it's something very different than the somewhat
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arid type of environment that most people have to work in today with computers and corridor walls and
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such. There's a beauty to it that really brings back to mind a time from long ago when that was valued
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so much. The biggest response that I get is when I do people's names, because no one sees their names
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like they used to be written. And so it's very encouraging to us. And it's just ironic that
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the typewriter killed the art and now social media is spreading it all over the world. I teach in
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countries all over where English isn't even their native language. But the beauty of the penmanship
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attracts them and they want to learn how to do this kind of work.
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Yeah, I can definitely see an increase in demand for hand lettering. Because as you said, you have fonts
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on the computer that can look fancy. And you get that and you're like, well, I can just type and I can do
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that. But it just seems more authentic, more real when you see that, like, oh, this actually came from
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Very much so. I have a collection of vintage handwritten pieces, original pieces, specimens
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from our great masters, the pen masters from 100 years ago. I bring those with me to all my workshops
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and people are just amazed that what they're seeing isn't just a reproduction. It's not just a print. It's
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not something they see on the computer. But they knew that that penman 100 years ago was there at
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that piece of paper and their hand touched it. And that sings to them. It resonates with a tone
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that's very special. So let's talk about the different styles and the history of penmanship.
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Because I think it's interesting because it reveals a lot about a culture, right? How they style their
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handwriting or their writing. Because I can talk about how business has changed handwriting, politics has
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changed handwriting, education has changed handwriting. So I think this would be a fun topic to delve into.
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So there's all these different styles of penmanship out there. When did the penmanship or handwriting
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start looking really fancy, right? Has it always been that way, like in medieval times? Or was there
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a moment in history where people started getting really flourishing with their writing?
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Yeah, the answer is yes, there was a time. But you need to go back, as you say, to the
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Renaissance. The scribes back 500, 600 years ago, they created documents for the glorification of God and
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for their church. And so it was very special. The text, of course, the Psalms, you know, examples from
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scripture were very precious, very sacred. And so the scribes of long ago would take a great amount of
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time to write or describe the different texts that were illuminated to make them very special documents
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in praise of God. And that's when a lot of gilding, the use of gold took place. They started, oh gosh,
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in the 1400s, I think, where they would write these beautiful texts in a broad style of lettering.
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There were many names for these. There was Carolingian, there was Gothic, and many others. But they were
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all broad pen styles. The years went by, technology started to increase, civilization started to bloom
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with the mechanization, the industrialization of the different countries. And the certificates
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really kind of ceased in a way, starting really, oh, maybe like in the late 17th century, I think it
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was. But when America was founded, things really changed quite a bit. And it wasn't just because
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we're America. The big change really came with a man named Platt, Roger Spencer, and the invention of
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the steel pen point. When our country was founded in the 18th century, we were originally, of course,
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a colony of England. And so all of our people from that period of time, all of our founding fathers,
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Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, all of them, were taught as children, even if they were taught in the
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United States, but they were English colonists. They were subjects of England. So they were taught
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an English style of handwriting. It was called English round hand. Today, we call it copper plate.
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In that style of writing, all of the downstrokes are shaded by pressing down on the writing tool with
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a little more pressure. And so the point will spread with the pressure. The ink fills the gap between the
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two points, and you get a thicker stroke. On paper, that means it's a darker stroke. It's heavier.
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It's more bold. And so the writing becomes more emphatic or more respectful, such as for writing
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people's names. But all of the lowercase letters, all of them, were written with a downstroke, and so
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they were very heavy and shaded. And the letters were a little more based on a round shape than an oval
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shape. And capitals were fancy compared to what people write today, but they weren't really flourished
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very much. They weren't huge in terms of the proportion to the lowercase letters. And the idea
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was that if you and I were students back then, we would need to write just like our teacher and just
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like each other. So uniformity and consistency were the most important values. Now, in America,
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there was a man that was born in 1800. His name was Platt Rogers Spencer. And in the 1820s, he created a
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style that was very different. It was revolutionary at that time. He thought that people shouldn't have
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to write like everybody else. And America was founded on the principles of individual freedom,
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individuality, for us not to believe that we had to do everything just like everybody else,
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a sense of freedom. It was part of who we are. He felt that it should be based, handwriting rather,
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would be much more adept to human endeavor if it was based not on the strict disciplines of English
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round hand, but on all of the varieties that you find in nature. He felt that God created nature and
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God created people. Everywhere you looked, nature had several consistencies. And that was a sense of
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variety. That's why when you look out anywhere, you see different plants and different birds and
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so on. There's variety everywhere in nature. You also had the ideas of contrast. And contrast isn't
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just dark to light. It's a contrast of size, of shape, of color, of direction, of pressure,
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and so on. And all of that is part of this sense of variety. And the two most important parts were a
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sense of curvature because every living thing has a sense of curvature about its body. Nobody has cells
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in their body that are square. Every time anybody moves a muscle, it moves in a curve. Everything from
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insects to elephants, all moving parts of creatures move in a pivot type of direction, just like your
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fingers and your hand and your forearm. So curvature was universal. And the idea of movement, you know,
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every living thing has movement. Even if it's just cell division, that is a sense of movement. But all
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creatures that we know of that move, move. The wind blows, but the wind doesn't blow in the same
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direction at the same speed as if you put a fan in a room and just directed it in one position.
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When you see leaves blow in the wind, they also blow not just, you know, in the air, but they always
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move in curves when the wind blows them. The wind isn't like a fan. So he felt that those were, well,
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they were fundamental concepts that people could do and that we could use in the nature of our
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handwriting. When your hand and fingers and such move, they move in a curve. So that's nature.
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When you write, besides the movement, you write with curves. It's harder for a person to draw a
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straight line than a curve because our bodies aren't made to do that. We can, but it's a little
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more effort. If you close your eyes and just move your hand up and down, you know, basically pivoting
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from your elbow, you can make a curve, a perfect curve on a piece of paper. So those four fundamental
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concepts changed everything. And when he introduced them in the early 1830s, it was immediately popular.
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The reason why was because all of a sudden a farmer in Iowa or a mine worker in Pennsylvania or
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anybody that wasn't in those days what they called an academic, a doctor, a lawyer, a formal teacher
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who learned penmanship at a college or at a school, a university, the higher educated type of people.
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Now the common folk, anybody who worked anywhere could do penmanship and it would be correct.
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And they would have something that nobody else had. They would have their own style,
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their individuality. And that's what made it their handwriting. Spencer's idea was as long as
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the curves were smooth and the letters were consistently slanted, the same angle, and that
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the letters were consistently spaced, then that's all that was really needed. If you wanted to shade a
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letter, that would be great. If you didn't, that's fine as well. He felt that if you shaded all your
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letters, they would be pretty, but they'd be kind of boring. Everything would be the same.
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If you didn't shade anything, then it would also be kind of boring because it would all be the same.
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So shading of letters to him was an accent and it gave a sense of enthusiasm or respect.
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If you wanted to write someone's name and have it be, you know, very pronounced, you could,
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you would write it, but you would maybe make the capitals with more shade and a little fancier
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with perhaps more curves. It just changed the way everything was done in America. American
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script, which was called Spencerian script, became our national system of handwriting in the 1800s,
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in the 19th century. And it stayed that way until the 20th century, when a man named Austin Norman
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Palmer again changed it by modifying Spencerian script.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. Well, the other thing that was going on there, talking about how
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handwriting can reveal a lot about culture. I mean, you talked a lot about nature and like,
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that's part of what was going on with Spencerian. Like during America, during that time, that's when
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the romantic movement was going on. And you had Thoreau and Emerson talking about getting back to
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nature. And so the handwriting of an America at that time reflected that mood or feeling that was
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Oh, it definitely was a style for the time. It really was. You know, England, of course,
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had their Victorian era and that carried over to a certain extent into America as well, you know,
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with romanticism and such. And the, well, as you said, the literature that was coming out at that
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point with the naturalists and such, this type of writing was perfect for it. It was also romantic
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in the sense of people writing social correspondence and love letters and such, because now you could
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write your feelings in a much more ornamental way. And that, again, that just fostered more and more
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of the feeling that writing should be nice. And the other thing that was prominent during that time,
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of course, was how significant a person's signature was. Today, when people write, they just usually
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scribble their name and don't think much about it. Well, during this golden romantic period,
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your name was everything. Your name, the way that you wrote it on calling cards, that gave other
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people the impression of if you were educated, if you were, you know, a person of culture, if you were
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a business person of reputation, because you took pride in your name. And many times, a person's
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signature and a card is what gave them an entrance as far as applying to certain positions and
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different jobs. So it's sort of like an Instagram feed, right? That you could tell someone about
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someone just, you know, today we look at their Instagram feed, oh, this guy's a business person.
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They did that with your signature back in the 19th century. Yes, they did.
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Okay. So you mentioned Austin Palmer. He changed the handwriting game in America. Tell us about
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him and what changes he brought. Well, A.N. Palmer, Austin Norman Palmer, was actually
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from New Hampshire, but he lived most of his life in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And he went to a very famous
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college or institution of penmanship and, you know, graduated and was able to do very, very fancy
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penmanship. But he was more interested in education and teaching penmanship and the business of penmanship
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rather than just making a lot of diplomas, that sort of thing, as an engrossing studio would really
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exist for. And there were many of them in the country. So he developed a style. He began his
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professional career working for a railroad company and his job was writing cargo manifests,
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you know, the detail of cargoes on trains. And he saw that the men and women who were paid the most,
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you got paid by how many cargo manifests you could write in a day. So you were paid by each one you
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could create. And the ones who were paid the most and wrote the fastest did not put shade on their
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letters as Spenserian did. And they didn't put any extra curves or ovals on it for ornamentation.
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It was just the bare bones letters themselves. They were still spaced properly. They were still
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the correct shape, but there was no ornamentation at all. Well, they were using in that period of time,
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everybody who wrote was using their shoulder muscles. It's called whole arm movement,
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where your hand doesn't move a great deal itself. It's not like you move your fingers a lot,
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but your whole arm is propelled by your shoulder muscles. And he saw that the people who were doing
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that wrote very quickly and they were able to get paid more because they had a greater volume of work.
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But then he started thinking about this idea of teaching and he thought that it would be easier
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for children to learn if they were taught, not Spenserian, but sort of a naked Spenserian,
00:28:26.880
like those people were doing without any shades and ornamentation, but had their forearm on the table,
00:28:34.040
whole arm movement, the shoulder movement, your arm, your entire arm is off the table when you write,
00:28:39.720
just your fingers and the pen point are touching the table. So there's no friction and you can write
00:28:44.860
very fast. But children didn't need to write very fast. And he thought that if your forearm was on
00:28:50.300
the table with your elbow, just a few inches off the table, and you use a combination of your forearm,
00:28:57.560
your wrist and your fingers, you could easily write across a sheet of paper without fatigue,
00:29:04.160
as long as you kept your posture correct. He called it Palmer method writing.
00:29:09.760
And he started to write books and instructional sheets. He started his own penmanship magazine.
00:29:17.120
It was called the Western Penman. And he started to experiment with it by offering to teach it
00:29:23.940
to the nuns at some of the various schools in the Chicago area. And it was, again, it was an immediate
00:29:30.900
success. They really enjoyed it a lot. It was just easier for children to learn. It became a huge
00:29:38.740
popular method of handwriting. And at the World's Fair, I think it was in St. Louis, just at the
00:29:46.420
turn of the century, he introduced it with a display and he had some models there and he did
00:29:52.200
demonstrations. And one of the superintendents of the New York City school system saw it and took
00:29:59.120
it back to New York and adopted it. And it was a huge hit in New York City. And when that happened,
00:30:04.360
it wasn't long before the whole country took it over. So Palmer method writing surpassed Spenserian
00:30:11.300
script. And once that happened, and it was so popular, many of the other penmen jumped on board
00:30:18.680
and they started to write their own books on the same style and name it after themselves.
00:30:23.940
So there was McLean's system of handwriting and Behrensmeyer's system of handwriting. And
00:30:28.780
it just went on and on. But it was all basically Palmer method writing. And that lasted pretty much
00:30:36.580
through the 1960s. And beginning really in the very late 60s and early 70s, when the computer era was in
00:30:46.420
its infancy, that people started to think of it as old fashioned. They were forgetting about how
00:30:54.000
important it was in the sense of encouraging good posture and, you know, just the idea of having a
00:31:02.660
concept of language when you write. Because of course, the only way you can write is to think of
00:31:08.420
what you want to write, which means you have to think about grammar and, you know, proper usage of
00:31:13.860
language. So in the 1960s, and again, with the freedom movement that was part of the 1960s,
00:31:21.460
people started to get away from what today we would call the vintage styles of penmanship.
00:31:28.380
As you went ahead now another 10 years or so, now we're into the early 1980s, there were several
00:31:36.600
people who, because really of, you know, desktop publishing and the use of computers, there were
00:31:45.240
several people who became fascinated with handwriting and really thought that Palmer method writing was
00:31:51.260
too obscure and too dated and it was too fancy. And so they created styles, which I call compromise
00:31:58.220
styles, where lettering is really sort of a secondary thought. It's more of, we want to make it easier for
00:32:05.560
children to write. So they started to invent styles that weren't as slanted. They were more upright and
00:32:12.680
they were more boxy in terms of the way that they were shaped. And they tried to make it an easy
00:32:17.980
transition from printing or today what they call manuscript to an adult style of handwriting.
00:32:25.260
They did excellent marketing of these different styles. They became very popular and they're still
00:32:31.540
popular today, but they don't really foster good penmanship. So today there are several people,
00:32:38.820
and I'm one of them, who have been asked over the last few years to write books to bring back the
00:32:45.080
traditions of good handwriting, where you don't lean over your work, where your posture is correct,
00:32:50.880
where you don't get aches and pains in your shoulder and such, where you do what was done many years ago.
00:32:57.020
So because of this, and because of social media spreading the news about it, and because of all of the
00:33:03.100
various locations that now several of us are going to to teach, it's making a big comeback.
00:33:10.000
The books that I've written are unprecedented in the kind of sales that they're receiving.
00:33:16.440
I find it hard to believe myself. And my book on Spenserian was just translated into the Mandarin
00:33:23.560
language. I just came back from teaching in Macau and Taiwan, where the book was released. And
00:33:30.480
it's amazing the enthusiasm that people have there for writing these old styles because of the beauty of
00:33:37.840
them. So a lot to unpack there. Again, I loved how you talked about the Palmer method. It came out at
00:33:45.460
the same time in America when industrialization was really picking up steam. It sounds like the
00:33:50.800
Palmer method was sort of like Taylorism, right? Looking for efficiency in writing, but still looked
00:33:55.980
nice. But it was very efficient, and that kind of fit the ethos of the country at the time.
00:34:01.780
Absolutely. And remember, it was before typewriters.
00:34:04.220
Right. So yeah. I've read some of those books, and it's amazing how detailed they get on what you
00:34:10.820
hold your hand. It's kind of overwhelming sometimes.
00:34:15.500
Yes. You had to write a certain number of characters a minute. In the books, they would
00:34:20.740
say, we want you to write 60 of these letters a minute or 70 per minute because they were trying
00:34:26.840
to get you to write quickly so that you would be marketable to get a job in business as a secretary
00:34:33.820
or as even a manager. Because the faster you could write, the more productive you were.
00:34:41.460
Right. And so Palmer method, about the standard up into the 1960s, then you mentioned in the 70s,
00:34:47.980
they developed this more simplified version. The one I think I learned in elementary school was
00:34:52.440
Danielian script. Oh, yeah. That was the one I learned. And I think every kid who grew up in
00:34:57.180
the 80s probably writes exactly the same way. Well, yeah, that was one of the ones that became
00:35:03.540
very well marketed. And most people who, and I'd be criticized for this, but most people who
00:35:10.500
learned as children, those type of scripts that weren't really slanted and were more primary,
00:35:18.140
don't use them at all when they become adults. They just sort of forget about it.
00:35:23.280
They do today. Most people today write for only two reasons. One is to either give or receive
00:35:31.840
information and to write as fast as you can. And the only thing that's important is legibility.
00:35:38.120
And I have a term for it. I call it info writing. You're writing for the sake of information.
00:35:42.700
And so there's many people, probably 80%, if not more, of the adult population writes in a way that
00:35:52.040
is more or less a combination of cursive where you have joined letters and manuscript or printed letters
00:35:58.900
because they just write as fast as they can in the easiest way that they can make their letters
00:36:04.480
legible so that it can be read. You know, a lot of people say, I can't read my own handwriting.
00:36:10.740
Well, handwriting that can't be read is pretty worthless. But if you're conveying information
00:36:16.240
and you don't have a computer, so you have to write it, it's got to be legible. But again,
00:36:23.100
there's a real big surge in interest now of getting back to having pride in your penmanship,
00:36:30.900
having it look nice. A lot of people feel that their handwriting now does reflect themselves.
00:36:37.140
And even if it doesn't reflect it to other people, it does to themselves personally. And it makes
00:36:43.780
them feel more, how can I say it, more at ease, a greater sense of self-worth if they can write
00:36:53.980
So besides that sense of identity that comes with learning how to write nicely with penmanship,
00:37:00.260
why do you think, what are the other benefits of writing things by hand in a pleasant script?
00:37:06.140
Oh, there's many. Writing, handwriting is a purely human activity. We're the only creatures that we
00:37:14.780
know of that really write. And so there's something very special about it. You're actually transferring
00:37:21.920
your thoughts into visible language on paper for someone else to read.
00:37:29.100
There are two different styles, not styles, modes of handwriting. One is called business writing,
00:37:34.900
where you're basically just writing to give information. What style you use is up to you,
00:37:41.240
but it's just the sake of passing on information. The other is called social writing. And that's when
00:37:47.020
you want to write your Aunt Mary a letter and asking her how Christmas was, or you want to write a
00:37:51.580
friend and telling them how much you miss them. Writing by hand for the sake of social writing is,
00:38:00.000
it's a purely emotional kind of writing. You choose, because you don't have to do it for business,
00:38:07.880
you don't have to do it in a certain amount of time. And so you choose where you want to write,
00:38:12.820
what pen you use, the lighting, that kind of thing, what paper. And so it's an expression of
00:38:20.020
your own emotion to the value of the person that you're writing with. You're giving them the most
00:38:25.840
precious thing you possibly can. You're giving them your time. You're giving them a part of your life.
00:38:32.360
And so it's an emotional feeling that makes us as people feel a little more worth, perhaps,
00:38:40.500
in the way that we communicate. It's nothing that you can measure. It's nothing that can be
00:38:45.080
sort of regulated or measured by dollars, but it's very real. It's the way that we tell people how much
00:38:53.300
we think of them and how much we're concerned or what's going on in our lives. It's very special.
00:39:00.200
The other thing about writing is that, and this has been proven time and time again,
00:39:04.420
especially for children. When you write, you tend to remember what you're writing about because it
00:39:11.640
takes time to do it. And in order to do it, you have to think a lot about what you're going to say,
00:39:18.400
what the subject is, and how it's going to appear on paper. In other words, legibility.
00:39:25.500
It activates certain portions of the brain that are very conducive to cognitive thought.
00:39:32.200
So in children, handwriting is much more effective than keyboarding in teaching language skills and
00:39:40.760
having the concept of legibility. The idea of writing gives children also a sense of grammar,
00:39:49.760
sentence structure, and such, because you need to do that when you write. It's key for that. In the old
00:39:56.280
days, when Master Penman were the kings of penmanship in terms of teaching and telling everybody,
00:40:02.200
about all this that I'm describing, because there really aren't Master Penman anymore that do that,
00:40:09.000
if you want to call them the heroes of supporting penmanship, are occupational therapists and some
00:40:17.020
educators as well, because they recognize these things. Handwriting also fosters good posture,
00:40:23.560
so that whenever you do write, you're not going to get aches and pains. It's very conducive to
00:40:29.520
the cognitive and motor skill development in children.
00:40:34.800
I've seen that fact of you tend to remember more when you write things by hand. When I was in law
00:40:40.520
school, my first semester, I had my keyboard there and I would just type everything, like transcribe
00:40:46.040
everything my professor said. But I was like, I don't remember any of this stuff. I'd have to like
00:40:50.460
review over and over again. And then the second semester, I just started bringing a notebook
00:40:54.840
and just writing notes. And what it forced me to do was really listen to the lecturer
00:40:59.640
and process and think, is this really an important point? And because I did that extra,
00:41:06.580
a little bit of extra effort because I was writing by hand, I think there was a bit more payoff.
00:41:10.140
Oh, handwriting takes longer than keyboarding. So there's more thought involved in producing it.
00:41:20.480
And the other way where handwriting saved me in law school, there's this one day I showed up for a
00:41:26.580
test and my computer didn't work. So I couldn't take my test on my computer and I was just freaking
00:41:33.120
out. But I was able to handwrite it. And because my handwriting is pretty legible, did it in cursive.
00:41:38.840
I did well. So it was, it saved me at the last minute. So I'm glad I still kept up with that
00:41:44.040
skill. I'm glad you had that experience. Yeah, no. Let's say someone's listening to this podcast
00:41:49.160
and I'm sure a lot of people think this all the time. They're like, I just, my handwriting is
00:41:53.340
terrible. I wish I could improve it. Like what's the best way to get started learning or relearning
00:42:00.420
how to write in cursive, but do it well? Well, there's, there's several things. First thing you
00:42:06.040
just have to decide and agree upon is that you have to practice it every day. It's a life skill,
00:42:13.280
but your life as, as old as anybody is, has probably been doing handwriting in a certain
00:42:20.700
way for all those years. So it's a skill that you have to change and that takes time. And you have to
00:42:27.520
accept that and not feel that it's such a negative factor that you're not going to do it.
00:42:33.100
But writing every day can turn out to be something that's very special and very enjoyable. You would
00:42:41.140
start to write, you know, just notes to yourself or letters to other people, start journaling,
00:42:47.260
create a personal journal. In the old days, they call them diaries. So that's one thing you would
00:42:53.140
need to find the right writing tool that you're comfortable with. Now, most of us, you know,
00:42:59.060
when we were children, you know, we all had certain ballpoint pens that were inexpensive and
00:43:04.180
were pencils. Pencils are actually an excellent tool to write with because the graphite is soft
00:43:08.860
in the point. And so it's very smooth. You just need to sharpen it, you know, fairly often. If someone
00:43:15.080
really wanted to do this, instead of the standard pencils, which is what we call a 2H hardness in the
00:43:21.620
lead, I'd recommend for someone to find a 3H pencil because it has a little more clay in mixed with the
00:43:28.900
graphite. So it's harder. You don't have to sharpen it as often. There are, of course, many tools out
00:43:34.760
today that are absolutely excellent and don't cost very much. There's a lot of markers, roller balls,
00:43:40.060
gel writers, besides, you know, fountain pens and ballpoint pens. But it's easy for someone with very
00:43:47.720
little investment, you know, five, ten dollars even to find a tool that they're comfortable with. So
00:43:54.860
you should, but you should find it. You should find one of those. And then you should get yourself some
00:44:00.140
pads so that you, you know, you can start writing, not just post-it notes, not just something that's
00:44:06.640
something to scribble on the grocery list, but an actual tablet. And then probably the most helpful
00:44:12.760
thing is to find a book that focuses just on, you know, relearning or training yourself in cursive
00:44:22.600
handwriting. That's frankly why I wrote mine. Although I've written books on Spencerian, I've taught it for
00:44:29.940
a long time. At one point, many of my students were mothers who homeschooled their children. And a lot of
00:44:38.480
the primary grade instructional books for handwriting don't really have a great, not a great deal of
00:44:46.280
actual handwriting examples. They have short sentences and they're written or they're printed
00:44:50.800
at a very large size and they have a lot of, you know, cutesy illustrations, but they don't really have
00:44:57.340
a ton of lettering. And they're also, you know, you write in the books many times. And so there's not a
00:45:05.220
lot of, how can I say it, a lot of what I call onboard time where you're really writing sentences,
00:45:11.660
where you're really writing language. If you're writing, if you practice your handwriting by writing
00:45:17.080
A, A, A, B, B, B, that's good initially to get you started. But the best way of learning handwriting,
00:45:25.940
in my opinion, is as you learn to write the specific letters, then you practice them together
00:45:32.380
in words. Because I don't go up to someone and say, B, B, B, B. I speak to them in language.
00:45:40.280
And so if you start to practice your writing in sentences or with words, you're using your penmanship
00:45:47.380
in the way that we all speak. It's much better that way. They asked me to write a book on traditional
00:45:54.080
handwriting because they weren't pleased with these primary type of books, of handwriting books.
00:45:59.840
So I did. And it's a huge book. It's 350 pages. There's 122 lessons. It's the most comprehensive
00:46:09.540
book that's been written on cursive writing, traditional writing in probably 70 years.
00:46:15.060
And I called it because I didn't want to name it after me. And it was very much like what Palmer did.
00:46:20.620
I just called it American Curse of Handwriting. And I was amazed at how popular the book is.
00:46:26.860
And then about a year or two ago, I was asked to write a book for a commercial publishing company
00:46:35.080
for adults on handwriting. I said, I already did. But of course, my book had a lot of references to
00:46:43.980
teachers and grades and parents and educational, basically primary schools. So I re-edited it and
00:46:52.360
added some extra chapters on artistic writing, signature, fitting handwriting practice into the
00:46:59.440
adult schedule. And I called it The Art of Cursive Penmanship. That book came out this July.
00:47:06.580
And so it's still, it's only six months and it's already in its third printing and it's for adults.
00:47:13.140
So, but there are others as well. I don't, I'm not trying to just promote this, but there are other
00:47:19.080
books too that have come out in recent years on, you know, handwriting. That's not just a primary
00:47:24.780
grade type of book, but person who really wants to get back into writing well. It's invaluable to
00:47:34.580
have a good guide, a reference that shows all these things and talks not just about letters, but about
00:47:40.460
posture, about, you know, what's the difference between left-handers and right-handers, about the
00:47:46.760
tools, how to use the different tools. My book even has a chapter on how to write a personal letter
00:47:52.180
because nobody teaches that anymore. So something that really is a thorough curriculum in a sense
00:48:00.080
about all of these different aspects of handwriting so that the writer can enjoy it and use it as part
00:48:07.360
of their life to communicate, you know, visually with other people. If someone receives your letter,
00:48:13.500
you know, how you write is a reflection to them of who you are. You can't help it. And if you
00:48:21.260
scribble something that tells somebody that I'm not really worth their time, it's like speaking too
00:48:25.540
fast where somebody can't even understand what you're trying to say. It's very hard to hear something
00:48:32.620
That makes perfect sense. And I mean, I imagine too, learning how to hand write well and doing it
00:48:38.860
more often, it's going to set you apart because not a lot of people do that these days.
00:48:43.280
Oh, absolutely. You know, it's kind of an offshoot of this, but there are many places where in America
00:48:51.980
you can buy some nice paper to write on, but the beautiful, you know, either handmade or what they
00:48:59.840
call mold-made stationary papers are hard to find anymore in America. They still make them in Europe and
00:49:07.700
in Asia. But in America, people have gone from writing long letters to note cards, you know,
00:49:15.260
because they're short and you just basically can write a few lines to say, hi, how are you?
00:49:20.440
Without really becoming lengthy at explaining what you're trying to say. That's kind of sad in a way,
00:49:27.520
but people don't seem to have as much time as they used to that they allot for human communication.
00:49:34.380
So if you can find some nice stationary, and there are still some available in America. Some of them
00:49:41.980
that we have here are from other countries, but they're just, they're wonderful. They really excite
00:49:47.840
me to write on them because the paper itself is just glorious instead of just a line sheet of tablet
00:49:55.340
paper. Well, Michael, is there some place people can go to learn more about your work?
00:49:59.080
Yes, you certainly can. My website is Spencerian.com and my Instagram is Michael R. Saul. And so is my
00:50:10.180
Facebook, Michael R. Saul. And people can go on there. And do you post your work, some of your work
00:50:15.480
on your Instagram? You know, I really, well, my wife does. I'm not too good at the technical side of
00:50:23.260
things, but I do write quite a bit. My teacher, my teacher, my students and my wife post my work quite
00:50:31.820
a bit. People can also look up my name on the internet. And there's a lot of examples there of
00:50:38.300
things that I've done in the past and I'm doing now. Well, Michael Saul, thank you so much for your
00:50:43.000
time. It's been an absolute pleasure. Well, thank you. I hope this has been helpful. And I just really
00:50:48.120
would encourage people to remember that they're a human being. They're not just a machine that
00:50:53.500
punches, you know, a keyboard. You have thoughts and you have emotions. And the best thing you can
00:51:00.720
do is to share them with people through handwriting. It's part of you that you're giving to them and
00:51:06.200
people really appreciate it. So thank you so much for this time for letting me join you on this podcast.
00:51:12.720
My guest today was Michael Saul. He is a master penman and penman instructor. You can find out more
00:51:17.060
information about his work and find some of his books he's written on improving your handwriting
00:51:20.200
at Spenserian.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash penmanship where you can find links
00:51:25.820
to resources. We can delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM
00:51:42.460
podcast. Check out our website at artofmanliness.com where you can find thousands of free articles and
00:51:46.580
just about anything. Penmanship, personal finance, social skills, physical fitness, you name it,
00:51:51.180
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00:51:54.500
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00:52:01.140
As always, thank you for your continued support. Until next time, this is Brett McCary reminding you
00:52:04.340
to not only listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've learned into action.