What's your handwriting like?

No. The handwriting comes from your ability to mimic whatever your teachers modeled. They don’t even teach handwriting anymore. These kids are printing their signatures like Jethro from Beverly Hillbillies

I've always been quite proud of my penmanship. I was born left handed and when I started using crayons as a toddler my mother saw I was favoring my left hand. She immediately set out to put a stop to that. She got me started doing simple doodles on a chalk board when I was 3, but only with my right hand. When I turned 4 she taught me the alphabet and how to print all the letters right handed. When I turned 5 I graduated to cursive. By the time I started first grade the next year my penmanship was great. I remember my first grade teacher being astounded that that I could already write and in cursive no less, and my penmanship was better than most adults.

Atrocious.

R2, nowadays your mother would be arrested for that. child abuse!

Pretty bad, no one ever taught me how to write properly so if I have to handbomb something I print.

When I see the contortions most lefties have to go into just to write I am very proud to be a righty.

I've liked an inordinate number of lefties, but I am hopelessly right-handed. I used to have "Perfect Palmer," but arthritis kicked its ass. I have to slow down to write anything if I want to be able to read it afterwards.

Mine is pretty awful. I'm so used to typing everything that when I actually have to write something (the rare check, for example), I struggle to make it legible, and some characters (for example, an '8') are nearly impossible for me. I'm old, too, so there's no excuse.

Gay handwriting.

On the contrary. Mother did me a great favor teaching me to be a right handed writer. Most people favor one hand or the other for most tasks. I favor my right hand only for writing. I can do anything else equally well with either hand, and I believe it's because mother trained me to write with my right hand. And besides, that was in the mid 50's. People werern't so outlandishly reactionary about things they now call "child abuse".

Another example of gay handwriting.

OP, dot his "i"s with hearts and his "t"s look like penises.

When I was a teenager I was told my handwriting was feminine. I deliberately changed my handwriting from “pretty” to “legible.” In the long run legible is what really counts. I changed all the cursive capital letters to printed style, which is as quick and easy as fancy cursive capitals.

Illegible if I use a ballpoint pen, somewhat better with a gel or ink pen.

Mine is and always has been beautiful. I’m in my 30s, so I’m an anomaly in my age group. It’s an art that has to be practiced.

female here and I have beautiful handwriting. My son who is straight also has my handwriting. Flourishes and all.

In school, we learned the D'Nealian method, which is quite ugly compared to Palmer. My current handwriting is basically a more elegant D’Nealian.

I have beautiful penmanship, which is oft complimented.

Forensic scientist can tell a lot by your handwriting as cursive styles differed by even decades.

It's very neat, yet "instructional" looking. I was taught the Palmer script, and I never varied much from it once I got the hang of it.

Tragically, r2’s efforts were for naught when another student was awarded the class penmanship medal at the school picnic.

Great, legible, "feminine". I can't write cursive for shit, but print is different. My father made me practice my handwriting when I was a kid. He considered it as a marker of intelligence.

What's "handwriting?"

I used to have beautiful handwriting. Now it resembles a doctor's.

When I take the time to write slower, it’s relatively unchanged from my elementary school penmanship. But arthritis is taking a toll, and my signature has evolved into illegible.

I'm left handed and until the 8th grade it was atrocious. Then it suddenly became kind of beautiful. Now I'm 58 and because I don't write a lot, it's just OK. I'm really sad that none of my nieces and nephews can't write in longhand. They have printed signatures.

How do kids who don't learn cursive in school anymore sign their names?

This is mine

^^Linky stinky

R27, they either print, or they just make a squiggly line.

Pres. Trump’s signature looks like a seismograph during a moderate earthquake.

I’m a lefty Millennial with poor handwriting.

I write in a tiny messy quasi-cursive, though I never properly learned as it was not part of the curriculum and my parents had little interest in my academic education as far as penmanship (if I turned up to class everyday and brought home Bs & Cs I was golden). Naturally my handwriting tends to spiky and erratic, and when I’m in a rush or not focused on making it look neat it’s illegible to anyone but me. On lined jotter pages my words tend to hover above the lines and my sentences drift away. Some of my consonants have very long straight stems and others big loops. In my haste I will sometimes skip letters or only half-finish them. It’s a horror but I don’t care.

I’m adamant I won’t follow the ‘lefty wrist’ protocol whereby the writer holds their wrist at a cramping right-angle to prevent smudges. I simply use biro or pencil where possible, and otherwise smudge the fucker. Down with lefty oppression, I say.

When I write quickly, it's barely legible. If I take my time, it's fairly attractive. Like you, OP, I've been told since elementary school that my cursive handwriting looks like a girl's. I think there is a link between gay males and "feminine" handwriting.

Here's mine. People often tell me I have the ugliest handwriting they'd ever seen.

Uh, what language is that, r34?

That’s not that ugly, R34. Mine is worse.

And to answer the OP (wherefore art thou?), yes there is such a thing as gay handwriting. My best friend in high school was a major queen and his handwriting was extremely bubbly like a girl’s.

Since then, I have noticed really femme gays have girlish handwriting. It looks *just* an unsophisticated woman’s handwriting/printing. Such a turnoff.

*just like*

Awful. Chicken scratchings on a good day

Has anyone tried to learn Russian here? My teacher was an absolute nazi about cursive (Russians are big into it) and told me, “even your Ah look American!” The Cyrillic lower case “a” is basically a cursive “a” with a really round top. She also told me I sounded like a Ukrainian when speaking Russian. She was kind of a bitch.

And this wasn’t too long ago. I’m an old millennial - born in the early 80s.

R35 It's Serbian, which is funny because I'm not even a Serb. But R28 put down lyrics to Manic Monday so I decided to scribble down some songs lyrics as well and that Serbian song was the first one that came to my mind.

Too bad we don't have any Georgians posting here because I'd love to see how their handwriting looks like. They have a really crazy-looking alphabet, with many of the letters looking almost identical so it's probably crucial how you write them down.

Two things you can't tell through handwriting are age and gender. One may have "girlie" writing but that does not mean they are female.

R34 is crazy smart and thinks very, very fast. You don't suffer fools and little things that you feel slow you down annoy you. You don't have a big circle of friends and often prefer being alone to socializing.

R42 OK, that was creepy because you got me down to a T. I used to think graphology was full of shit but I see now there must be something to it.

Horrid ...typical left handing writing

My ex-BF has the most beautiful, feminine handwriting. I can tell when he sends me anything, just by his handwriting. I don't know where he learned it. We're both very working class guys in Ohio. My own handwriting is awful. I can sign my name, but writing anything else is miserable. I'm old-fashioned, and send out Christmas cards every year, but I think my friends and relatives must wonder if I've had a stroke.

Thank you, R43.

I have always been fascinated by graphology and studied it for a few years. Graphology will not predict the future like astrology, tarot cards, psychics, etc. It just shows the traits of the writer. Handwriting is considered brain writing. Even if you held your pen in your feet, the same character traits would show up.

Also, a person's signature is how they want the world to see them. A person's handwriting is how they really are.

I have beautiful handwriting and penmanship was one of my favorite classes. Yes, many gay men, especially the Catholic school trained, have superb handwriting.

Bold and capitalized.

I'm reposting R28's pic because someone said they can't see the link. Can you analyze him/her too, R42?

R28/R49: This person also likes their space. Doesn't much like having too many activities without down time time between them. This person lives more in a day-to-day kind of way without a lot of long term goals or planning. They are honest and straight-forward. They don't like a lot of unnecessary shit or frills (Marie Konda probably not needed here). You can trust this person to keep a secret. Not a million friends but more of a select few that they are close to.

Doesn't R28 write in cursive?

My handwriting is shit and always has been. I still remember my first-grade teacher mocking me in front of the entire class, insulting my "chicken scratch". 😭😠

I broke my wrist at age 10, and never went back to actual writing after that, only printing.

But yeah, even when I try really really hard to have nice handwriting, it looks pretty bad. Plus I always get distracted and forget to try so hard, so then it gets even worse!

Lefty here.

I used to have nice handwriting then I started doing a lot of gothic black letter calligraphy. Now I print everything. Straight up and down. No frills.

It may be plain but it is very legible.

I think handwriting can be effeminate in a similar way as mannerisms and voice. All of them can make me wonder if a guy is gay.

I have great handwriting and take great pride in it. The chicken scratch some people have is trashy.

My straight brother's handwiting is far more "feminine" than mine, well it's much neater than mind, anyway. He prints flawlessly, mine definitely looks more masculine in comparison. I don't think handwriting is a very good indicator of orientation.

Some people need to remove "trashy" from their vocabulary. It's fucking tired.

R34 That is torture to try to read, it looks like alien language.

But we love you anyway.

R28 and R49, you there?

I'm R49 and I'm here but I'm not R28 -I just reposted his pic. R28 must be too busy listening to Manic Monday on repeat to let us know how accurate your analysis of his handwriting was.

I learned handwriting in Catholic school, so my cursive was best from fifth grade through my senior year of high school. In college I typed most papers, and took notes in shorthand. I took so many notes over the years, my handwriting began to resemble that shorthand. After thirty-five years at a keyboard, any writing I do resembles my father's cursive-printing hybrid. I think handwriting is inherited on some levels.

Mine seems to vary. The other day at the bank they made me resign a form because it didn't look like the one they had on file in the computer. Odd. I don't know how to have a consistent signature.