Sometime c. 1980 I turned in an assignment for a journalism class I was taking at the University of Texas. My professor was the great Red Gibson, a truly wonderful teacher.
The class was Editing and Layout, and we had to submit several pages of annotated headlines—the headlines literally cut from various newspapers and pasted onto heavy paper, and then annotated by hand, commenting on font, size, how they were written.
Gibson looked skeptically at my submission. He said, “You know, in twenty years you’ll be the only person who can read this.”
I said, “Yeah….”
“The more you write, the more it’ll look like you,” Gibson said. “Right now it looks like a dog wrote it.”
Well, Gibson was right. Forty years later I'm pretty much the only person who can (easily) read my handwriting. Even thirty years later, in the early days of my teaching career, students were complaining about my handwriting.
I mean—yeah—it’s all kinds of slurred-up.
The class was Editing and Layout, and we had to submit several pages of annotated headlines—the headlines literally cut from various newspapers and pasted onto heavy paper, and then annotated by hand, commenting on font, size, how they were written.
Gibson looked skeptically at my submission. He said, “You know, in twenty years you’ll be the only person who can read this.”
I said, “Yeah….”
“The more you write, the more it’ll look like you,” Gibson said. “Right now it looks like a dog wrote it.”
Well, Gibson was right. Forty years later I'm pretty much the only person who can (easily) read my handwriting. Even thirty years later, in the early days of my teaching career, students were complaining about my handwriting.
I mean—yeah—it’s all kinds of slurred-up.
But, so what? So it’s slurred. I see it as a big part of who I am, like having blue eyes or being bald. I like it. It’s me.
Still, I’m aware of the hard-to-read slurringness. I type almost all my comments on student work. Almost. Because sometimes, when pressed for time, I just—write….
And occasionally some people get pissed. Here’s a comment from my evals:
It’s not fair that we have to type and he just writes and nobody can read it
and another
He expects us to read his illegible handwriting
So…a few years ago, when I was teaching in Kansas, a couple of students made snarky rude comments about my handwriting. My feelings were hurt. But then I had a moment of inspiration—I thought, I'll prank those youngsters and digitize that thing! Ha!
And I made my own font--LMW Olblique.
Still, I’m aware of the hard-to-read slurringness. I type almost all my comments on student work. Almost. Because sometimes, when pressed for time, I just—write….
And occasionally some people get pissed. Here’s a comment from my evals:
It’s not fair that we have to type and he just writes and nobody can read it
and another
He expects us to read his illegible handwriting
So…a few years ago, when I was teaching in Kansas, a couple of students made snarky rude comments about my handwriting. My feelings were hurt. But then I had a moment of inspiration—I thought, I'll prank those youngsters and digitize that thing! Ha!
And I made my own font--LMW Olblique.
Still, I got a nice font out of it....
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