A March 1593 letter from England’s Queen Elizabeth I to King James VI of Scotland, where she acknowledges his “cumber [i.e., trouble] to read such scribbed lines.”
(Folger Shakespeare Library)
While the rise of smartphones and typing impacts handwriting, bad penmanship is far from a new phenomenon. People have struggled to read each other’s handwriting for centuries.
Older generations have sometimes been shocked that some younger people can’t read a handwritten note.
(Shutterstock)
The making of graphic marks in the form of letters was one of the first activities of early humans. Written words are the visual representation of our spoken language, and handwriting is a personal representation…