And so, the next time that you must compose an email message, write it out on blue-lined paper, add your signature, scan the note, and attach it to your email. It would add a friendly touch and allow you to practice your cursive. No printing, please; that would make the communication look – well – too electronic.
6
Today, 2018, in many sites in Europe a job application will include a requisite message of several dozen words followed by the applicant's signature to be written in cursive. That handwriting sample will be analyzed by an expert to determine various judgments, attitudes, emotions, skills, strong and vulnerable character traits. A skilled analyst can conclude with consistent accuracy whether people work well alone or thrive best in groups, sense of humor, preoccupations with intellectual or social skills, anger management, views of past, present and future, organizational abilities and a litany of other individual traits which when bound together reveal a compelling distinct individuality which no human can escape in forming a unique spiderweb of habits, character expressions and skills.
Handwriting is the collective tracks of your mind upon the page. If you doubt this try to forge the handwriting of another, any other writer.
Silver Bill, Missouri
5
Signatures do not matter.
Sure, hand writing requires a bunch of skills.
But those skills have little use today.
Move on.
4
You can tell a person's age by the way they write, even if it's just how they sign their name. There's humanity in pencil and paper.
5
There's still a quiet minority of us who lurk in the inky shadows of modern life, who take great pleasure in the aroma of opening a box of bright white 24 lb. uncoated wove, preparing the nib and filling the ink tank with aurora blue. Who are steadfast enough in their thoughts who can lay ink to paper in one continuous flow, straight and without error. Who have no use for the crutches of spell check and auto align margins. Each sheet is an original that cannot be duplicated, modified or edited. It is addressed not to the world, but sent to the one that our thoughts seek. Our signature and our seal is our blessing and permission for what was written. There will come a day when all this selfish pretense has passed that the written word will once again take it's place as the voice of the soul.
14
Will we also lose all the metaphors that go along with signatures? Signatures meant permanence.
Sign on the dotted line, signing your life away, I need your John Hancock, signed, sealed and delivered...
Oh well. Permanence is out of fashion nowadays
2
Each signature has unique characteristics. Although I was not a good student in school that my writing was lousy and signature ugly, but I love it because it is mine and represent part of my uniqueness to the world. Just like Trump whether you like him or not, his signature is quite different and unique.
2
We need to fight for laws that will give everyone the option of a written, rather than electronic, signature. The same rule should apply for everything that is only accepted online at the present.
7
I have an inflammatory form of arthritis in my hands which makes it hard to grip a pen. My signature has devolved into an unrecognizable scrawl. Writing on a computer is so much easier for me than handwriting.
3
Signing credit card receipts was not a security method. I always laughed at the clerks that thought they were forensic hand-writing experts, checking the card signature vs the receipt.
Under the signature line, it typically says something like, "I agree to pay the above total amount according to the card issuer agreement." When you signed the receipt, you entered into a contract.
The signature was merely an intentional action to agree to the transaction. Swiping the card, or pressing OK on the screen also counts as an intentional action, acknowledging that you have entered into a contract to repay for the goods you accept from the merchant.
3
It's a pity that signatures, along with cursive handwriting are a thing of the past. Another casualty of the digital times in which we live.
I like my signature. It's distinctive, original and impossible to copy. I will continue to use it as long as I can.
15
Do you also miss Morse code, smoke signals, and the Pony Express? How about the lost art of carving pictograms into stone tablets?
Facebook may be destroying civil discourse, but electronic communications is replacing all other forms of communication because it is superior in speed, clarity, durability, and and accessibility.
3
My grandmother and all her sisters were drilled in the "Palmer method" back in the 19-teens. Far from being individualistic, their handwriting was nearly identical. They told me of raps on the knuckles with a ruler from the teacher if they violated the curves specified by that program.
2
Good. I hate standing in line behind some oldster that is surprised they have to pay the cashier and act like it's the first time they've ever used a credit card. Then when they sign it's like they're writing a book. Almost as bad as the ones that have to balance their checkbook in line.
The point is a signature means nothing to the card company, I often use a x or a line when I sign just to see if they notice.
1
I find my handwriting to be an indicator of my current mental condition. Sometimes the writing is smooth, elegant and legible, and sometimes I keep cramping up mid-word and it all becomes an illegible mess. Another thing: for smooth and nice handwriting, a sharp pencil beats the fountain pen.
5
I love hand-writing and often get accused of not being a doctor because my handwriting is so legible. When I see chart notes that I hand wrote on patient encounters done years ago, the entire interaction comes back to me vividly- courtesy of the note I wrote, along with sidebar notes I made on their family history, their current activities, my drawings of their abdomen showing where the pain was. I could "see" the patient and the encounter years later. When I read my patient encounter note out of the "electronic medical record" I see no one.
15
There was a time when penmanship and the signature was an identifying characteristic of an adult. My Grandparents- now long deceased and without a formal education had beautiful handwriting. My Grandmother's signature looked like calligraphy. My own parents, now in their late eighties also have beautiful cursive writing.
Recently, I had the task of teaching graduating high school seniors how to sign their names; most had never learned cursive writing. Trying to hook printed "a's" and "e's" and "o's" and make them into cursive letters, was an eye-opening experience. Most grumbled about the rationale for "having" to learn this task until I explained they might like to sign their paychecks one day or take out a loan to buy their first vehicle or even cash their Financial Aid checks.
I'm not so certain, the Signature is a relic of the past or an effort at Planned Obsolescence by credit-card companies.
4
So now who ever holds the card with the chip is the owner of the funds? I was a teller in the seventies and remember the rigor we used to compare signatures on checks to signatures on account cards. Do we pay such high finance charges on our credit accounts in order to cover the expected and accepted forgeries and theft that will be occurring now that we don't have to prove the card belongs to me?
12
I'd be interested in what the handwriting of your friend, the architect, looked like. I was an architect. Befofre computers, we hand lettered notes on the drawings. This practice seemed to conflict with maintaining any trace of clarity in our cursive writing. I suppose most of ended up lettering notes which couldn't be typed. And I think that wasn't all that clear either.
But there's more.
We once submitted five sets of drawings to a midwestern city for permit review. They were to be signed and sealed, the seal being a 1 1/2 inch very nice embossed impression made on each sheet of the sets. The project was complex and 1,000 sheets comprised each of the five sets. It took two days to apply the embossed seals to all of them.
But the signatures? I asked if an inkpad stamp of my signature would be accepted.
No.
I signed every sheet - all 5,000 of them. There was a significant difference between signature number 1 and number 5,000. I got blisters on my fingers.
My signature never recovered. It has been illegible ever since.
Nuts to the idea that this is a reflection of my self-worth. Anyone who thinks this has obviously never had to do this.
7
When I sign a paper, laying flat on a table, my signature looks like my signature. When I sign on one of those small screens at a store, where I must sign with my hand in the air because there is no place to rest the heal of my hand, I have given up and just place a squiggle. As far as I am concerned, I quit being able to sign for things a long time ago, but I appreciate the sentiment of loss.
11
Patrick McGoohan in "The Prisoner" foresaw this whole digital future and the loss of our humanity to numbers and databases. This was some fifty-one years ago, no less. The signature identifies us as ourselves more than any digital alter-ego representation.
His character in the series, "Number Six," in the opening scenes would protest, "I am not a number, I am a free man." To which the inquisitor, known as "Number Two," would, like the march of the technology and the world around us, only laugh in response.
Be seeing you.
11
I miss signing in on election day. I signed my name to register to vote as an 18-year old, decades ago. My signature changed in some ways over the years, though always all lower-case, and each election it was compared not to my registration but to the most recent signature. My signature was reliable proof that it was indeed me at the polls, and that pause to sign in collected me and reminded me of the utter seriousness of the occasion.
5
Hand writing, penmanship, hand lettering, calligraphy & even long division requires several skillsets, including hand/eye coordination, spatial recognition & the ability to plan the use of available space over a period of time. These skills are in addition to the thought processes needed to construct sentences, work on mathematical equations & convey ideas to a third party.
These disciplines help sharpen one's mind & focus our thoughts.
While there are tools & inventions meant to do away with the need to perform mundane tasks, I fear more is lost than the ability to sign our names with nothing new to fill the void left in its wake.
22
One of the treasures of studying genealogy? Draft card registrations....all signed by my long-deceased ancestors, and carefully studied by me. I also make sure to hand write my nieces at least twice a year, so they can enjoy the pleasure of curling up with a real letter...just like in the old days.
10
I agree! And related to that, I could tell that my 18-year old father took HIS father with him when he registered for the draft, because it was my grandfather's writing on most of the card, but my father's signature.
I still get a little choked up when I see their handwriting, because I can imagine the scene.
8
My Dad, a mechanical engineer, often had to take business phone calls at night and on weekends while at home. He was an inveterate doodler when he talked on the phone, but the doodling he did while sitting at his study desk was always the same: He would sign his full name over and over and over again on a note pad.
When I asked him about his habit, he said something I have never forgotten and, given my age, probably never will: "A man's pride in his name should be reflected in his signature."
He died far too young--at 51, in 1976. About six months after his death, I was sitting at the kitchen table writing checks to pay the monthly bills. My wife was standing behind me and seemed to have a more than usual interest in my check-writing. I soon found out why. She said, "Your handwriting is completely--completely--different than it used to be." I asked her what she meant and she replied that I had begun to sign my full name--l was a Jr. to my father's Sr.--exactly the way my father had signed his. And, when I compared my handwriting from a year or so past, I realized she was spot-on.
To this day, all those years later, my signature replicates the signature of my Dad--excepting my Jr. to his Sr.
I yet handwrite letters to my 91 year-old mother and she likes it that I don't sign with my nickname but my full name. Preferably, with a fountain pen--which was my Dad's preferred writing instrument as well.
13
Let's hope baseball players never forget how to sign their names!
9
Anybody who wants to see beautiful cursive need look no further than older census records -- all hand recorded, in flawless cursive.
13
Nice article: An astute and intelligent exploration of the totemic importance of the signature. I got a flavor of its centrality when I was living in Italy in the 1980s. I traveled to Spain once and had traveler's checks in peseta. I returned home with some of the checks unused, and put them in my drawers. I returned to Spain three years later, and went to cash one of the traveler's checks. My signature had changed in that three year period, something that does happen in adulthood. I tried and tried. The teller looked at me at one point and said, "Prueba otra vez, pero BIEN!" No pressure there. I had someplace to be, too. Finally, my signature passed the test, but the experience was unsettling.
1
A handwritten signature in ink on paper is more secure than any virtual, digital, PIN. Moreover, it is physical evidence of an agent who is an actual person not an emulation.
Wield your Parker with panache as an act of authenticity!
24
You'r eobviously not discussing signatures as used to document identity, but handwriting as another dimension of a correspondence.
It's been so long since I actually hand wrote a letter (or received one) that I see this as an artifact of a bygone era. But I do write quite a bit (is "typed" now subsumed in "wrote", and "email" in "letter?")
The extra dimension of that Mr. Petrow so values in his handwritten letters now has to be conveyed by the tone of the text of the email. I spend the time to re-read every one of mine, as only then can I detect and refine my message, its tone and degree of urgency.
I understand that cursive is no longer taught at many schools, so this is just one more item of change in this revolutionary period we are graced -- and challenged -- to be living in.
1
Thanks for this pleasant distraction. I had clicked on this piece fully expecting to read about David Dennison's failure to sign the non-disclosure agreement with Peggy Peterson.
8
I'm lucky. My job involves people signing papers and me writing instructions. My father was a drafting and architecture teacher. He drilled into us the importance of having good penmanship.
6
My Dad was the Auditor of a bank. His penmanship was as precise as if using a cursive typewriter (remember the daisy wheel?). Mom died in ‘88 her’s Was so bad only some could figure it out, I was one. Dad in ‘89. I don’t think I signed my name after that for decades. I do my banking online. So, use few checks. But, late last year I became my older brother’s guardian after he had a ‘few’ minor strokes. Now I sign my name a lot. On his checks, his forms, his tax returns. With a ,POA after it. My brother’s penmanship is similar but worse than Mom’s. He’s hard of hearing so we send letters back & forth. Seeing his hand on an envelope gives me as much joy as all the years he called at 4:15p on every other Sunday. He worked with computers & hates them with a passion. I never did, but, love them really without reason. I’ve lost all the family’s writings. As brother let the house go so bad it’s to be condemned. I miss them now that I know I won’t have them. The next generation won’t miss them. Text messages & emails will take their place & actually be easier to save. Oh, I found an old photo album started by my brother when he was about 8. His handwriting was beautiful. I asked him what happened. He said he stopped caring about it, once he was out of grammar school. No one said anything. I write in a combination of cursive styles. The one taught in my school & some flourishes taught at the Catholic school across the street. It’s not bad.Though arthritis is starting, so it’s downhill.
1
As I aged beyond elementary school my cursive writing became indecipherable even to me. My penmanship was poor to begin with and never improved. So I devolved into printing. But that went down hill too. However, I always took care and pride in my signature.
4
For Christmas, friends gave me a fountain pen. When trying it, I was shocked to find I couldn't write. Years of typing and poor pens had taken a heavy toll. As I kept trying, I was happy to see my old penmanship coming back, stroke by stroke.
I know what you mean sir... Mine is not the best penmanship, not even good, but it is mine... and more important it is me. Through my fountain pen I found myself again.
13
I would argue that with keyboards, both cursive and printing are out of style. Once, while hand-printing a form for a forty-ish woman, she commented that I print my 'e's' as her late father had. (I form a 'c' and then connect the top with a slanted line.) By the time we finished the form, the memory of her father had brought tears to her eyes.
8
"I also still have the five-page letter my mother wrote me in 1981, shortly after I told her I was gay. She starts out in her usual formal hand, but as she goes on the pen quivers and she strays outside the lines. That told me so much more about her inner monologue — her fears for me — than her actual words."
What on earth makes you think that her handwriting reflected her emotions or concerns or worries? Isn't there a possibility that her hand was getting tired after writing 5 pages? I think it's way too easy to try to read people's minds or hunt for emotional responses in every clue, whether it be a look on a face or a pen that wavers a bit.
It's very, very difficult to perceive what someone else is thinking, but it's very easy to believe that one can know what another is thinking, especially if one tends to interpret things in a way that is helpful and meaningful to themselves.
2
There are many alternative explanations. But since I have no clue about Mr. Petrow and his mother, I give him the right and won't speculate. Handwriting makes that interpretation possible. That would not be a possible explanation for a typed letter.
At the end, does it matter if Mr. Petrow is right? It is a beautiful story, it is a human story. Isn't that what we all are?
14
In the past, we had statesmen; today we have politicians. Much of the change can be attributed to the changes in communication.
When one writes with a pen, one thinks as one writes; the messages are thoughtful. The slower the method of writing, more thought goes into the message.
Today, a reporter shoves a microphone in a person's face and demands an instant analysis. Take time to consider an answer and you're trying to be deceptive; if you consider options, you're waffling; if you respond to new information, you're indecisive.
Writing and thought are rare today in the electronic 24-hour news cycle.
7
When a came across a dusty piece of mail from my mother nearly a year after her death, the very sight of her confident, lovely penmanship in the return address made me burst into tears. That cursive is inextricable from the woman. Thank you for assuring me that others feel the same.
34
Endorsement policies have not changed just recently. When I started to keep the books for a family business in 1963, the bank gave us a rubber stamp to endorse checks. It certainly saved time as we processed at least 100 checks every two weeks when the state issued its payroll. I'm sure we had the same bank policy many years before that.
But the checks could only be deposited into an account with that business name. A cardholder would sign to prove he was the cardholder.
2
Last year I bought a replacement fountain pen; so much more distinctive than a ballpoint.
8
I prefer them. But, refilling is a pain. I found some that you use like a ballpoint Bic, when empty, toss it and get a new one. Comparable in price too, won’t leak.
Before I read the article, I thought it is about the philosophy and meaning of signature, such as I am signing this to affirm my approval of something. That discussion would include Trump's lack of signature on Stormy's NDA. Signature does reveal character.
The author wrote such lovely ode to old-fashioned signature, I hope someone as eloquent might write about my topic.
3
Have you noticed Trump’s signatures on Executive orders? Done in felt tip marker, a squarish D then some jagged up & down lines. Not a signature of someone who can write at at least third grade level, let alone high school. And he’s older than me. So, he learned cursive as I did 60 years ago. Shows an infantile mind, to my thinking. Then he holds it up, like a student hoping for praise. Everyone there dutifully claps. Would be sweet if he was 8 years old, but, he isn’t.
10
Beautiful essay, thank you. My children are mystified that I still practice my penmanship--they see no point. I find it pleasureable.
11
I agree the signature is outdated, but we should take the next step and require a PIN for each in-person transaction.
3
I would require a PIN for online transactions as well. I would like a more secure system so that perhaps it would cut down on those maddening transaction refusals by my bank (BofA) over supposedly suspicious activity, like shopping at my local market -- a process made even more maddening by some functionary's repetition of the lie when I make the obligatory call to enlighten them that the refusal was for my protection.
6
RUN: I also have BoA (it's my primary credit card) and have never been declined.
They kept me from my brother’s account for close to 6 months. Dolling out what I needed to get to it, one thing at a time. They kept telling me to put him in my car & drive him 2 hours to them to prove he was alive. Until I told him ‘he’s in an assisted living locked ward’. Didn’t bother to say it was so he wouldn’t get lost. Let them think he was dangerous. I now have control except I can’t access the account online, which is where you order more checks. So slowly I’m moving the money out of BofA to where I can use it for my brother’s bills.
He confuses handwriting with signatures for credit cards. Nobody -- truly not a single human -- ever looks at the signatures on checks or credit card receipts unless they were contested. Few have signature cards in advance, and fewer still could ever validate such a signature is real or forged (a reasonably good forgery will trick any normal person).
He may have a love for handwriting, which is fine for nostalgia, but it has zero use for authentication and identification.
3
Last year I decided that my penmanship had deteriorated to the point of illigable, so I made a decision to change my signature in an effort to slow down my writing.
After paying the monthly bills I received a phone call from Fidelity asking whether I had changed my signature. They now have my new signature on file.
7
I have been signing President Obama's and Tom Brady's names to my credit card transactions for many years now
simply because it amuses me to do so, and never been called down for doing so. Of course it helps that I resemble both of them closely.
22
As an avid correspondent, your column touched my heart. Thank you, Steven. I love writing cards and letters to friends. I know that I am always touched by notes I receive from friends. I must admit I am not surprised to learn about the credit card signature, or lack of. A few months back, when I was in the grocery store, the clerk told me that the signature was meaningless...I'm guessing she meant you could write anything in the space provided...wow.
My Father had the most beautiful penmanship. His writing was flawless. He was born just after the turn of the twentieth century and was taught to write by Catholic Sisters. I have notes he wrote to me and will always treasure them.
I suppose one might say that you don't know what you've lost until it's gone...but this is a big one. The joy of writing with a fountain pen will never be lost on me.
Thank you, again for your heartfelt column.
12
I hate that my family history will not be known to my grandchildren. I will never understand why cursive is not being taught in schools (in this state anyway).
18
My signature is an illegible scrawl, which has been acceptable to most.
One exception is Macy's and their subsidiaries. When signing on their touch screen, they do not accept my signature. They do, however, accept my printing "That was my signature, you stupid idiot."
Also once, when signing mortgage papers, I had to sign a separate document that said, in essence, this is my signature.
7
Oh, how I miss the days when books were lovingly copied by hand in scriptoriums over a dozen months with beautifully ornate figures, each unique and expressive of the holy words they represented. The cold lead of moveable type, where each repetition of a letter is exactly the same as every other, sucks the joy and beauty out of prose and poetry rendering the words unconnected to the God who wrote them, sending civilization into the heathen state we now find ourselves in. No longer can the common educated man either read or write those beautiful calligraphic scribbles or find joy in their each loving stroke. Alas, what have we become? Little better than the beasts of the forest. The gates of Hell fully enclose us as we can no longer even sign our golden credit cards.
7
Do you realize those men who worked in the scriptoriums most often could not read what they were copying? Reading & writing were considered to separate things. When you had a contract copied, you didn’t want anyone else to read it, so used a scribe. Some Lords could read, but, usually not write. Some could write, but, not understand it afterwards as they could not read. Seems funny to us now, but, reading & copying by hand are 2 different things. As is reading and touch typing. Hence that language, typonese, most everyone can write in, but, hardly ever read. AKA typos.
1
I prefer the vast majority of time when humans couldn't read or write whatsoever. I think we should have stopped advancing writing at the hieroglyphics stage.
Time to revive the seal! Nothing says “You” so well as your personal design impressed on wax or clay. Ink is immaterial in comparison.
3
Seals had the same flaw as a PIN - no necessary physical identity with the individual represented, a proxy.
1
My wife is Japanese. Japan requires a personal seal for legal documents. We have a stamp with the family name in Japanese and a specific type of ink they require.
3
Did you know some states are phasing out seals for notaries? They are given stamps now with their signature, notarie number & other pertinent information. Why? Embossed Seals do not fax. The changeover is wrecking havoc in things needing to be notarized.
I subscribe to a newsletter called MLL, More Letters of Love. I do it to help others, but also so that I have a chance to write with pen and paper.
People write in and request letters of encouragement for family member and friends who are struggling through rough times.
Last month I sent a birthday note to a 102 year-old woman in Spain who is alone.
I am a pen and paper addict! Forget the shoe store! Give me a stationery store! (Well, I'll hit the shoe store later!)
On my wall, I have a framed note my dad sent when I was in college, signed "Love, Dad" with a smiley face. I touch the frame each time I pass it. It connects me to him.
10
Handwriting is invaluable! I can't stress this enough to my students...some of whom cannot write their own names. To add, they are not much better using their devices. Wonderful article.
13
Cursive writing is no longer being taught - how stupid! Cursive helps your brain grow! https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/memory-medic/201303/why-writing-...
Yes, cursive is anti-tech in some senses. But, rarely have I ever seen a computer keyboard taught "typist" type as fast as those of us who learned on a typewriter as "touch typists". (yes, we also learned cursive!) And cursive is just more personal, more beautiful. So even those of us who can touch type 80 words or more per minute write in long hand cursive when we want to give a missive the personal touch of our own distinctive penmanship. It's just dumb to banish cursive from the curriculum. Just lazy and dumb.
29
The advantage of home schooling my children for a few years was that I was able to include cursive in the curriculum. Studies do indeed show that students learn better and retain more when they take notes by hand--but schools are lazy and dumb.
2
I'm 61 years old now, and I remember the time in grade school when I discovered the beauty of writing "cursively" in a straight-up-and-down manner (i.e., orthographically). Now I am not left-handed. But as a child I simply hated writing cursively, with the letters all at a right tilt. I thought it aesthetically hideous. Then I discovered I could slur my letters together, as in "ing" endings could be written as "ng" and still be legible. Lol.
Who knew penmanship could be scribbled rather creatively and in slight disarray?
1
Should schools still teach how to use slide rules too?
My father was a doctor who had beautiful penmanship, except when he wrote prescriptions. My mother was a teacher whose penmanship was mediocre at best. My wife teaches grades 3 to 5 depending on the year and handwriting has been removed from the curriculum, though she still teaches it. There is definitely a connection to learning when one is writing notes versus typing on a computer. Our kids are in university and their handwriting is decent, though when they transcribe music, it is very accurate and precise. My kids writing is very different from my own, I tend to print in block capitals, which I've done since probably late high school as I could take notes much faster in that format than writing.
It is a little sad that people do not write as much as they type now, especially for cards. I know that in our recognition programs, handwritten cards are much more highly prized than e.cards - people seem to recognize the time and effort made to find a card and actually write the words in longhand format.
For learning, there have been a number of studies that link a higher degree of understanding and retention when notes are handwritten rather than typed.
13
The students take ownership of the information far better than anything digital. I see it everyday in class. I love the engagement and personal style of handwriting.
15
No, this is not a good development. The signatures make it possible for the consumer to challenge fraudulent charges. Now the company is the final arbiter. Giving private corporations the final say over the validity of our transactions, with no recourse, is not to benefit the consumer.
30
As usual in his ruminations and analyses, Mr. Petrow is here smart at finding the juncture of technology, change, culture, and the often beleaguered feeling self. Pen in hand and online reading in mind, he suggests that we must find other ways to leave our signature on time and place.
5
As time goes by, I observe that my son’s hand is increasingly like my own, and that my own hand is increasingly like my father’s. Our signatures, which have also evolved, have many similar features: large capital letters, small and almost illegible letters in the names themselves, long trailing lines at the end, and so on. None of us write in cursive, but four generations of work in science and engineering has made us all very precise with writing implements, something learned at a very young age. Two of us can also write in Japanese, which makes additional demands on our penmanship. All three of us can draw, and although our abilities vary, sketches and maps are not unusual in our correspondence. I don’t buy the argument that cursive writing is worth learning in this day and age, beyond giving children an acquaintance with historical writing systems and the implements that gave rise to them. It’s a very linear form of expression and somewhat constipating to the thought process. I can’t say that I’ll miss signing my name on routine credit card transactions (I already use chip and PIN), or having to ridiculously fax an inked signature to a bank or a lawyer’s office. The signature in these cases has become so debased that it’s hardly worth the effort to preserve it.
1
Nothing can be valid without a signature in ink. In preparing my will, I used acid-free paper and indelible ink for the signature and initials on the page margins.
Some signatures are so illegible, that they have to be kept in a master file like hieroglyphic writings.
3
As a journalist, whenever I got stuck about how to begin or put a column together, I always went back to pen and paper from the computer. I think of all my recipe cards written by mom, grandmas, friends. I know their writing and it brings back more memories than the dishes do. I am willing to not sign my credit card bill but I am not giving up my fountain pen!
13
Signatures have their rappeal in magical thinking, in which there’s some kind of magical connection between the signer and the mysterious marks on the paper. And for those who were able to actually write out their name, rather than just “make their mark,” was evidence of literacy (another form of magic.)
5
To be fair, I would say 80% of the time I'm signing for a transaction, I'm doing it on one of those electronic machines anyway. The signature never looks anything like that finely crafted one I use for paper documents...
3
Yes, and the machine accepts it no matter what it looks like.
2
I write poetry. I prefer to do it the old fashioned way; with pencil on paper. Sometimes I compose on my computer but I find the slowness of writing on paper and the need to savor the words in order to make sure that they convey my meaning to be more satisfying.
I remember as a teen testing out different ways of signing my name. I remember learning to print and then to write in cursive. I also recall how proud I was whenever someone told me that I had a lovely signature. I will be sorry to see distinctive handwriting disappear. It was an art form of sorts and a statement of one's individuality.
14
Ah, waxing nostalgic over handwritten letters. This makes perfect sense to me. It represents people who are putting their hearts on paper, communicating their thoughts and feelings.
What this has to do with a receipt printed on thermal paper that will sit in a drawer fading to illegibility baffles me. It's like waxing nostalgic about an excellent TV show like Mad Men to justify the juvenile light beer commercials they play during the show.
By all means, encourage penmanship and physical communication. But accept that this is very different from the scrawl you put on a slip of paper at the end of a night out.
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You are right--email can not do this: "...pen quivers and she strays outside the lines." This gave me such a strong insight into your mom's thoughts. Wow!
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For several years now I’ve been making my mark, an x, on the credit card screen, and every time my “signature” is verified. The cashiers sometimes ask for a license but the signature isn’t a part of what they’re looking for. It’s about time that that signature goes away.
I closed on an equity credit line recently....more signatures on more papers than ever before and a notarized signature to accompany all those other signatures so I’m guessing that the only signatures going away will be the useless signatures.
I will still sign letters and cards, write letters infrequently, and sign checks (that nobody checks) so I’m happy that I’ll no longer need to make my mark for credit card purchases.
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There are clearly a large group of educational geniuses in charge of our public schools. Cursive writing must be thought to be the Devil’s tool. None of the schools my 6 nieces and nephews attend teach cursive. I’ve asked for an explanation and have yet to hear from any school representative. I’ve been waiting 7 years.
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Most of us have no real notion of how to seal an envelope using wax that we have embossed with our family crest. We also don't know how to properly prepare vellum or to trim a quill pen, much less how to carve runes in stone. Technologies change forms of communication. There are pluses and minuses to most such changes.
But in all events, scrawling a signature on a credit card slip or touchscreen is not something most of us will miss in the least.
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It will be interesting when folks have to think about the spelling of their name. Just as one may question a phone number. "Gee, it's always been 2 on speed dial."
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My grandchildren may never be taught how to write in cursive.
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My nieces and nephews (6 of them) were never taught cursive in a wealthy Chicago suburban public school.
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How will this impact the game of getting celebrity signatures? Will baseball players soon not know how to write their names on a scorecard? Will there soon be an app for a player's cellphone to electronically transfer a "signature" to a fan's cellphone?
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This won't affect it at all. Most people whose signature is actually worth money practice it specifically as a skill. They want something distinctive, identifiable, consistent, and one that reduces fatigue for long signing sessions.
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[Shrug] I have looked at quite a number of famous professional sports players' signatures, and most of them are illegible. Consider the signatures of Reggie Jackson, Joe Montana, Tom Brady, Barry Bonds, Derrick Jeter, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Dustin Pedroia, to name a few. All illegible. But the men from an earlier era -- Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe Di Maggio, Sandy Koufax -- fairly legible.
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In Britain the signature seems to be surviving. I get birthday cards and Christmas cards where the only clue to the sender is their signature and never have any problems.
Though I use a PIN number to verify some credit card transactions in most cases I just swipe it across a reader.
1
As a poll worker I hear some voters and some of my co-workers disdain the system of comparing signatures in our voter books with the ones the voters sign on election day or on their absentee ballots. "Why not photo ID's instead?", they challenge. I reply to them, as I reply here, that photo ID's (or credit card chips) are not perfect either, but more important, signatures have been the legal standard here since the colonial charters, the Declaration, and the Constitution were, ahhh, signed.
We can set another legal standard, hopefully one more secure, but which one and how secure? Meanwhile, the president signs acts into law and signs treaties. In college I signed up for my draft card, then signed it. I have signed contracts, tax forms, birth certificates, my driver's license (a "photo ID!"), estate forms as executor, employment contracts, mortgages, bank loans, and the voter book in every election since 1970.
My point is not that signatures are perfect. Illiterate folks still sign with an X. A salesman once forged my signature on a false contract. The point is rather that the signature is the legal standard and is enforceable, from arrest for voter or contract fraud to the firing of that salesman forger I mentioned. We are moving away from a single legal standard of >1000 years to a bunch of alternate ways that may or may not be better. If not signatures, we need a single legal standard.
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Imagine the Declaration of Independence in the modern world: Congress would not have gathered in July 1776 and voted, but sent in "early voting," and the bottom of the document would be marked with 50-some "signed by e-signature" marks.
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John: Congress did not write nor sign the Declaration of Independence-- there was no congress to do so. After the war (which Americans won) we fell into the Articles of Confederation-- the ultimate states rights document. The constitution is of course the antidote to the failed federation, and was signed by congress. In 1789.
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Although I suspect you are right Karen, it was the members of the Continental Congress who signed the D of I. Perhaps that is what John meant.
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karen: There was a Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Never thought of it quite this way, but you're right. Thanks for the insight.
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Cursive writing is more than symbolic. Cursive writing is the tool for expression that outshines the typed word. Not only does it require the teaching of the correct way to hold a writing instrument, but it allows then for a freedom of stream of consciousness expression found nowhere else.
We are turning the population into a sea of non-communicative drones; never before has conformity been so prevalent as today. The young people function solely on trends.
I am old enough that I was entering NYU Film school when Sesame St. first aired. At that time educators warned that teaching essentials like reading with 30-second tv commercial formats would turn the young into uncontrollable "consumers" unable to resist tv commercials for life. And thus, we stopped being the People, or Population and are now termed "consumers".
Isn't it bad enough we see minions walking, heads tilted down, in heavy traffic, unaware of their surroundings? Isn't it bad enough the young are driven bring Alexa into their homes to virtually "spy" on them?
Someone must try to speak to reason; not go along with the dehumanization of Mankind.
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Cursive may support a flow of consciousness, but it's a pain to edit. I suspect that few of us naturally produce our best work by simply putting pen to paper. I can assure you that it's far from the case for me. With a computer, I can revise, reword, rearrange my thoughts easily. It lets me easily experiment with exotic expressions without the tedium of recopying for each draft. In fact the concept of a "draft" is less apt as I work with a more continual flow of editing.
You speak of the dehumanization of Mankind. And I am laughing at the seriousness of that phrase. Humans experiment, they iterate. They find tools and make variations to make those tools better. Which leads to a variety of tools to meet the incalculable variation in humanity.
I suspect that your preferred style of pen is the result of many iterations and improvements. People have spent lifetimes working to make better writing instruments. Other people have spent their time making better ways to record our thoughts electronically. Both allow us to express things based on our individual preferences. That is what humans do.
4
what sometimes lost with the loss of handwriting is the evidence of editing which can give such insight to the thought process. I try to save versions of my digital writing work, I guess I'm hoping someone will care.
1
And when your electricity fails and you cannot write anything you might do well to learn handwriting, or, will you silence your expression until the power comes back on? Humans have become completely de-humanized, compared to the humans of 50 years ago.
1
I do still write letters to special friends, for the tangible delight they bring. That they go from my physical hand, to the hand of one I care for.
Atavistic? perhaps.. but the thrill of receiving a letter, and the joy in carrying to around to read and re-read,or to sniff if it is perfumed.... cannot be equalled by an email, no matter how touching the message.
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Absolutely!! Cards or letters that come in the mail are a joy, and mean so much more than emails, or, God forbid, tweets!
5
Oh, I wish I could have seen your signature at the end of this! I enjoyed reading the memories of what penmanship evoked for you, especially those of your grandmother.
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Steven, I am probably at least a few years older than you, and I can identify this as yet another topic of trivial nostalgia. It doesn't matter that people will stop scrolling illegible signatures for credit card purchases. The whole point of a credit card purchase is to obtain the goods or services that you want, not to showcase that you can sign your own name, and that requirement was certainly not providing us any more security.
Your illustration of the postcard test is a little disingenuous. A signature would not have provided anything more than simply the name of each person on the card, so you knew who had sent which sentiments. I think that the abandonment of signatures is a non-issue. Soon enough we will see what the new standard is for quickly identifying ourselves in transactions personal and financial.
14
Kudos for this article. I totally identify with the author. I was lucky in that my mom was raised in a time when good penmanship was highly valued and taught at school, so she made me take calligraphy classes when I was a teen. I learned to write and sign my name in full, in a clear and elegant cursive. Few people can say the same. I don't sign credit cards or checks anymore, but I do write special messages to my students and inscriptions on books, nicely signed. Things from the heart, that find expression in my hand.
Using a pen is like using a tool - something our brain is very used to doing since time immemorial. As we write we activate the brain-hand connection that has been key to the evolution of our species.
The author is right - One's signature is precious, absolutely individual. We should cultivate it and treasure it as a part of ourselves.
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Yes. Think of Chinese calligraphy, which managed to survive the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Or, in the Middle East. Art, as communication. As noted in an NYC newspaper ..
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/arts/design/calligraphy-as-visual-poe...
I still write out and sign checks.
But year after year, my students emerge from elementary school increasingly unable to write in cursive. The administration decided that since learning penmanship is onerous, it should be abandoned. That's too bad.
Writing on laptops is the thing, but laptops' auto-correct function makes it harder for teachers to see where their students' writing needs some shoring up.
(Besides, there's something lovely about putting fingers on pen, and pen to paper, and letting ideas go directly from brain along the arm and to the hand. The direct connection is hard to beat.)
And of course no one will be able to read earlier generations' correspondence or historical documents. But then, fewer people want to. That's the real pity.
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Yes! Cursive is dying! Someone please tell the writer!
" .. Handwriting, once one of the most instantly identifiable elements of an individual, seems to have been lost to the ages, trampled into dust under the relentless advance of keyboards, touch screens and voice recognition software .."
See previous, in NYC newspaper ..
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28cursive.html
Welcome to reality. We’ve been using Chip and (6 digit) Pin for over 15 years.
And do signatures given to strangers in a financial transaction have any emotional caveat? I think not.
11
The signature on most credit card pads resembles my best pre-kindergarten efforts more than my actual signature. I might as well draw a horsie.
And my real signature - the scrawl of my entire name - is big and messy, a giant "C" with loops and waves until I get to the swirl of the my final initial. It looks nothing at all like the signature of my twenty something self, which was careful and legible. Which one is me? My actual handwriting has morphed from the round school, loopy school girl to something that is a cross between my grandmother's strident scrawl and my father's back slanted authority.
My recent foray into standardized testing identified me as a driver, and a credit card holder, with a photo and pawprint. Not even a fingerprint- they took the whole hand. My signature was agreement, but not identity.
So what does it mean? More that we no longer exist on paper, we are an e-file. And e-identity is something else. My signature is more art than authority.
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