Or Reeling and Writhing, as Lewis Carroll said. I have often wondered how reading and writing relate to each other. Digging deep to when I was a four-year-old doesn’t really help. I remember what was done but not how it was done.
My mother taught me to read before I went to school. There was none of the slow method that came later in school, of studying the alphabet then moving on to schoolbooks with words of a single syllable. So far as I remember the process of learning to read, it was word recognition with a growing vocabulary. I didn’t learn to write at that point. That happened in school.
Looking back on it now it seems a convoluted process. We spent hours reproducing letters, but in something resembling their printed form rather than the cursive we later learned. I believe it was more difficult than learning to read. Once we had mastered drawing the twenty-six letters we abandoned that form and learned cursive instead. I don’t remember how easy or difficult that adjustment was. For the first two, maybe three years we practiced writing, first by pencil, later by dip pen. There was much emphasis on legibility and neatness.
As adults (perhaps I should say older adults) we deal with two written forms – almost two written languages. I know that’s excessive but I think the difference between the typefaces we read and the cursive we write is so great. We think nothing of it because our younger, more elastic brains learned to deal with it. Many children and younger adults cannot read cursive because they never learned it themselves. It seems almost a code that must be taught or it remains illegible.
It’s likely that this phenomenon of two scripts applies to other alphabets and means of written communication. Is there a cursive Arabic or Chinese script? Of the two, I think learning writing must be harder than reading. Of course many people never truly master either. In my experience quite a large number of people are never truly relaxed with either a book or a pen in the hand.
I have been assured that my handwriting is legible and acceptable but I don’t think anyone has ever suggested that it is beautiful. This is, I think, because I’m poor at an analogous skill: drawing. I can’t draw a cat and I can’t accurately draw copperplate letters either. Is this down to poor observation or poor manual dexterity? I don’t know and it’s a bit late to learn all over again even if I wished to. I don’t.
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We are lucky that we don’t have to learn the Japanese method of writing. Japanese uses 3 forms of writing; hiragana and katakana both represent sounds, while kanji represent meanings. And one has to know when to use each character within a sentence to convey proper meaning. (At least from what little I understand.) I have a hard enough time with comprehending “American” english vs “British/Scottish” english. Thankfully, the letter characters are the same.
Thank-you Deb for your wonderful Blog, and keep up the good work!
Thanks for your kind words, James. The Japanese way of writing sounds very complicated indeed! I’m in the middle, between the Scottish and American modes of expressing English. The differences pop up all the time and it’s a constant subject of discussion for us.
I do tend to write with a mix of both lower and upper case in the same words. It is borne from quirkiness, not rote, I suppose. At 68 years old now, I find my lettering has changed subtly into different shapes over the decades. Drawing? I cannot draw either. My ability to close my eyes and bring up imagery is not possible. Having the condition known as Aphantasia, it provides me with a dark black canvas when I close my eyes. So with no images seen, no imagination springs out to draw the reality or cartoon of, as you say, a cat. In any form other than the simple naive outline. Very interesting write up. Thank you.
Hello again Gray. Good to hear from you. I understand about the changing lettering. That happened to me too and in recent years I’ve been working to change back – with some success but far from complete! I hadn’t heard of Aphantasia. That’s a difficult thing to deal with. I can call up images but they are fleeting and often incomplete which may have something to do with my poor drawing. The years are advancing for both of us – not always entirely a bad thing. There’s a little less foolishness than in my salad days!
Good to hear from you too. I suppose the quirky writing experience I love to use replaces the lack of drawing abilities. Especially using a variety of the dip nibs you recently wrote about. Nicely turned wooden nib holder you wrote about recently by the way. I have returned to songwriting again and recording music again. But still use my vintage Swan and Blackbird pens for writing down lyrics, recording equipment bought and project progress journalling. All the best Deb.