I was talking to my brother over the weekend about his handwriting. My brother has, quite possibly, the worst handwriting I’ve ever seen. He’ll admit it, too, so I don’t feel that bad pointing it out. In fact, he told me that people routinely confuse his “ds” with “2s” because he draws his “ds” in one motion.

I’ve been thinking a lot about handwriting lately. I’m not quite sure when it happened, but in the past few months, I’ve started writing almost exclusively in cursive. I used to be an adamant print writer. Then I started to write lowercase “zs” and “ls” in cursive. Then upper and lowercase “es.” The “bs” and “ds.” And at a certain point, it turned into full cursive.

I was working on a paper last week and flipping through my history notebook. I watched my handwriting evolve thoroughout the semester. From standard print to print-cursive redox, to mostly cursive, to all cursive.

Then, I found this article, click HERE, on Good Magazine’s Web site. She argues that in today’s society, teaching handwriting is unnecessary and detrimental in getting kids to write.

I don’t agree with her article. I have a hard time believing that teaching handwriting is holding children back in this country.

But one of the arguments she makes is that handwriting does not express identity. Apparently I’m a romantic for believing that our handwriting is a unique piece of who we are. I guess I’m not surprised. As I’ve written before, I’m one of the last 10 people on the planet who sends letters.

I really do think, though, that our handwriting reflects our personalities. My best friend’s handwriting is the cutest, curliest cursive. Someone once looked at it and said, “It looks like cupcakes.” It fits her perfectly. It’s happy and cute; and it makes you smile.

My dad has the neatest handwriting out of everyone I know. He prints, always. It reflects his practical, grounded nature.