Growing up, I had the worst handwriting. I could hardly decipher it to study which, probably explains a lot of my issues in elementary school.
However, in these past few weeks at Penn State I've noticed that my handwriting has become significantly neater and honestly just really pretty, which makes me very happy.
BUT WHY?
Could it be the smaller sizes of the desks that force me to write in a smaller space? Or the fact that I'm in college now and should probably be acting/writing like an adult.
Now, on a slightly random subject, my mother has the prettiest handwriting ever. It could be the most used font on Microsoft Word if she wanted it to. I've always wanted to be able to write like her and recently I've noticed little accents in my handwriting that are similar to hers.
(This is not my handwriting btw)
So, is handwriting hereditary?
Some research shows that because of a person's anatomy there may be similarities between the handwriting of a parent and their child. Reasons could be a person's bone structure, hand-eye coordination, mental ability in learning proper penmanship, and other characteristics that are inherited.
Others say that maybe as we grow up, we subconsciously copy our parents handwriting. This would probably be the reason for my change in penmanship. Either way I'm glad that my handwriting has become legible and neat for all my notes to look lovely.
This is interesting, because I do feel like my mom and I have very similar (albeit very messy) handwriting. I also wonder if handwriting could have more to do with a child's schooling. While mostly everyone learns cursive, some elementary school teachers stress handwriting practice and cursive practice a lot more than others. It might also depend on a child's future teachers to keep stressing handwriting practice.
I don't think that I write like either one of my parents, but I know people whose writing is identical to that of their parents. The question is it is heredity that is causing is causing these similarities or is it caused by kids simply observing their parents write and simply learning through observation. This brings up the classic Nature vs. Nurture debate. Is our writing style ingrained in our minds since before birth because of genetics or was our style developed by the way we learned. I personally believe it to be the latter, but your blog was very interesting nonetheless.
I think this is so interesting, both of my parents write with a slant, as do I, and they also like to emphasize things by drawing squares or circles around certain words in their notes, as do I. Other than that, my parents write kind of adult-like, with a cross between cursive or all capital letters, while mine is just usually whatever comes out when I am struggling to take decent notes in class.
I looked up some other factors in handwriting, and found an article with different theories on how your personality can play into the way that you write. Different things like spacing between words explaining how much you like to be around people, or a vertical slant in your words showing that you are guided by logic rather than emotion.
http://www.divinecaroline.com/22321/73133-personality-written-handwriting
I think handwriting is a very generation thing and peer influence has a lot to do with handwriting. Most of our grandparents have similar looking handwriting, the handwriting in primary source handwritten documents all look similar, and overall students in our age group write similarly. For example, I remember in 4th and 5th grade making actual circles for the dots on my "i"s and "j"s was super cool, and thus everyone did it. My mom would always ridicule my handwriting and said that I didn't learn "proper penmanship" like she did in elementary school (yet another reason why most of our parents have similar handwriting, it was taught usually by nuns who were adamant about proper penmanship). And I certainly don't think it's at all genetic: my dad's handwriting is practically eligible, my mom's is perfect, my older brother's is girly and neat, my younger sister's is sloppy but cute, and mine is average with a touch of slant. So, perhaps handwriting is a reflection of peer-analysis and is just a generational thing?
I found the idea for this post to be very fresh and new. It's not something I would have ever thought of. It's interesting that this research has been done because personally, the handwriting between my siblings, my parents, and I is completely different. I feel like its more likely to be related to environmental causes. For example, in school, my friends and I all wrote similar. It seems to me like it's likely to be cause by visual stimulation and what is constantly seen. I also feel as though handwriting now a days, as opposed to back when my parents learned how to write, is more centred on block handwriting as opposed to cursive. In a sense, we're trying to write similarly to standard fonts in computers. It could also be related to an individual's personality. For example, people who are very neat and organized never tend to have messy handwriting while the contrary is often times true. It could be a natural thing to have a specific handwriting, but the evolvement comes through education and the environment a person is surrounded by.
This is interesting to me, because for all intents and purposes, I am just like my dad. From our looks, to our habits and personalities. And now that I think about it, our handwriting. Contrary, my brother is just like my mom in all the same ways, and his handwriting more mimics hers. As many kids do, growing up, we always forged our parents signatures and just recently we were talking about it when I said I always did my dad's and my brother always found it easiest to forge my mom's! Definitely not scientific, but interesting nontheless..at least to me. :)
This is interesting to me, because for all intents and purposes, I am just like my dad. From our looks, to our habits and personalities. And now that I think about it, our handwriting. Contrary, my brother is just like my mom in all the same ways, and his handwriting more mimics hers. As many kids do, growing up, we always forged our parents signatures and just recently we were talking about it when I said I always did my dad's and my brother always found it easiest to forge my mom's! Definitely not scientific, but interesting nontheless..at least to me. :)