Seeing my father's handwriting puts me in contact with the man he was at each stage of his life.
As historians, we spend days in archives, gazing at account books. We train would-be historians in the arts of deciphering letters and documents, early Latin, scribal handwriting, medieval French.
My handwriting was nothing to write home about, and I had this idea that calligraphy was like taking Latin in high school: that it was one of the bricks, the building bricks, that you had to understand about the forms of writing.
The drawings in 'Portal' were actually me scribbling that stuff... I had a funny moment when I realized that someone gotten 'The cake is a lie' tattooed on themselves. It was really interesting to see my handwriting tattooed on another human being. That... that's odd.
I've always had this identity thing. When I was little, I was always changing my handwriting because I couldn't decide which one I liked best.
I was filling entire school notebooks with stories by Grade 3. Of course, they were double-spaced, and the handwriting was huge.
I use my computer to take notes more and more because my handwriting is so bad. I'm a lefty and it's getting worse and worse.
Format is just the language. Content is the only thing that is important. Form is like handwriting. Whether you write in a scribble or clean handwriting or type it, the content remains the same. You want to write in clean hand, in a kind of a clear format only because it is aesthetically pleasing. I can scribble, that's also fine.
When I was seven we moved to Orpington, and in my new school, I was kept in for extra lessons to learn 'joined-up' writing instead of playing football. I still think that my poor handwriting and lack of soccer skills date from that period.
Handwriting challenges aside, I love paper cards. I love the endless stewing involved in picking them out at the store. I love buying holiday stamps at the post office, and I love that 'whoosh' sound the cards make when I drop them into the mail slot.
