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Script And Scribble: The Rise And Fall Of Handwriting (2009)

by Kitty Burns Florey(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1933633670 (ISBN13: 9781933633671)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Melville House

review 1: This is a fun, light-hearted but educational book about the origins of handwriting beginning with ancient Sumeria and going through to modern day writing implements. Florey also covers the history of different writing styles as technology and culture have helped to shift our perception of good handwriting over time. It is interesting and entertaining to see the slow evolution and the sudden leaps in new directions that have occurred over six thousand years spelled out over thirty-seven pages. After that first chapter my favorites were definitely four and five, which cover the benefits of good handwriting and the pitfalls of ignoring this skill to let it atrophy. In between there is a chapter on "The Golden Age of Handwriting" which finally explained to me what Spenceri... morean handwriting is and where it comes from. Let's just say I was way, way off before. The section on graphology I found a but wanting, but that might just be due to the fact that I owned a book on the subject as a kid and so I was not learning nearly as much novel information. As a chapter it covers the history of graphology, or the study of one's personality through handwriting samples, quite well. I would like to have seen more examples, or even a whole other chapter on how it works with samples, etc. As it stands I had to make due with a handful of signatures from historical figures. Poe had a beautiful John Hancock, by the way. I enjoyed Florey's autobiographical field trips through handwriting education and the heady days of typewriters as well. It may be in part because it mirrored so much of what my favorite aunt has told me about her life growing up and working as a perpetual secretary. But that just means that these stories have the ring of truth. It's also very interesting to consider the generational differences in the way people are taught to think about their handwriting and how it reflects on themselves (hence, I think, her choice to add the chapter on graphology) in the lives of one's parents versus oneself versus the current generation that is coming of age in the digital era. Most importantly, this book made me think critically about the way that I approach handwriting. On a subconscious level I have made changes to my style over time, and each time it was meant to be an extremely subtle statement of who I was at that point in my life as opposed to who I had so recently been in the incessant evolution of the self. And it made me want to improve my (already respectable) handwriting even further through consideration and purposeful practice whenever possible. What more could you ask of a book than to teach you something, to make you laugh, to provide you with insights into your family's history and to make you want to improve yourself? I suppose in the end I just wish it were longer.
review 2: While I'm interested in this subject from the standpoint that I had quite a good handwriting education, the whole book was rife with production errors like miss-associated footnotes, images running over text, and the overall format is kind of a burden. The content was much as I expected it to be, a brief foray into the history of the hand written word (particularly in Western culture). I felt the author imposed a bit too much of her own anachronistic ideals throughout. Myself, I would have preferred more academic content overall. less

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