Whenever I sign my name, the result looks like a fifth grader has taken control of my pen.
One of the things I thought would automatically happen when I became an adult was that my signature would turn into one of those fancy scribbles. One that you can really only read a letter or two from. Like those often referred to as a “doctor’s signature”. But I’m still stuck in my awkward style of signing.
I blame it on my handwriting classes in elementary school where we were taught to write in cursive, and got points taken off if we’d write a capital “M” in print instead of a cursive one. I would try writing what I considered to be a “fancy M” with a curl coming off the bottom of the letter instead of the top, but that wasn’t accepted. I was taught to write a certain way, and I guess it stuck.
I always liked trying out new ways to write letters. In second grade I saw a classmate begin one of her words using an “A” with a rounded top. I thought that looked cool, so I decided to write one of my “A”s like that. On a spelling test, I wrote one of the rounded “A”s in the middle of a word, thinking I had improved the look of my word. When I got my paper back, even though I spelled the word correctly, it was marked as wrong because I had used a capital “A” (which I didn’t know that was strictly a capital “A” at the time) instead of “a”.
For our handwriting assignments in fifth grade, we would be required to copy a poem in cursive. I enjoyed putting on some music and copying the letters. It was an easy homework assignment. Fifth grade was also the year where the girls in my class would dot their “i”s with little circles instead of dots. Enough of them started doing this that the teacher had to make an announcement about it, that the letter “i” was in fact topped with a dot, not a circle. I remember handwriting being so specific. What are they even teaching about handwriting these days?
As I grew up, I realized that adults wrote however they wanted. Even teachers in other subjects didn’t have good handwriting. The world wasn’t nearly as strict as I thought it would be. So I now write in cursive, print, and a mixture of both, depending on the mood of my hand that day. So there!
Even when people check out at the credit card machine in a store, I’ve seen signatures get accepted when they’re nothing but a line or a dot. No signature required! What’s up with that? Cashiers probably think I take forever when I check out because I have this inner need to write out every letter of my 17-letter name. Sorry!
I’ve seen friends practicing their signature in hopes of changing it to be more fancy-looking. Maybe that’s what I need to do. Did you guys ever naturally develop a fancy signature?
great post i like your post thanks for sharing....
I used to wonder about the same thing when I was learning cursive in school! I did however develop an interesting and illegible signature from watching my Dad and then copying him, maybe it really is all practice. BTW, I am a curator with @ocd and would love to nominate your post for consideration.
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@mk40, I used to try to copy my Dad's signature and then tell him I could forge his signature now! (Even though I never did, ha)
Cool, thanks for the nomination! Sure, you're welcome to share away! Following OCD now :)