I miss handwriting

Seems to me with every year that goes by, my writing gets worse. Not that I was ever that neat. My sister, now, she has the kind of pretty, rounded, immaculate script that could almost sit on an architect's plan. Me, not so much. Especially, not any more. I'm quite proud of my 70wpm typing, mind you, but I do wince when I look at my handwriting. I don't even seem to be able to hold a pen properly any more. I get this tetchy cramp down the side of my hand. It's very disappointing. See, I really like writing, as a manual process. Especially with a nice, soft pencil. I like the whispering, rhythmic movement across the page. And on a good day, I like the way my writing looks. Curvy, with cute little spikes and long, sexy tails. Completely illegible, mind, but pretty. High on flair, low on functionality - the Manolo Blahniks of handwriting, if you will.

But that's the thing with handwriting: it's all about functionality. Any time you write something that anyone else is intended to read - which is nearly every time you write anything - it's a bit rude to assume that the reader will admire the original way in which you connect o to f and consequently not mind about the actual content being a closely guarded secret. And this is where block letters come in. Supposedly this is the failsafe way to make sure your scrawl is legible - hence the anxious instructions on all kinds of form: PLEASE COMPLETE IN BLOCK CAPITALS. As a courtesy, I try to write in block capitals quite a lot, for fax headers etc. I have to do quite a lot of these in the course of a day's work. And every time, I wince. Because my block capitals are hideous. They are ugly. I have never gotten the hang of capital letters. Spiky in all the wrong ways, unbalanced, wonky. And it seems the harder I try to even it out, the clunkier it gets.

But what I wonder is this. Given that once, I was able to write acceptable block lettering - not beautiful, but not ugly - and given that even my regular longhand is getting worse and worse; will I reach a point at which I can no longer do any better than a scrawl, and that when pushed? Is handwriting officially dead? Because it's not just me, you know. I bet everyone's writing, except maybe primary school teachers, is on a steady decline.

Maybe handwriting is becoming one of those antique skills that serves no real purpose for the average citizen. Maybe it will dwindle, become unfashionable, something only sad old women do, and try to teach their uninterested grandchildren. Maybe it will eventually be rediscovered by people with too much downtime, like actors on film sets, spawning a weird retro craze, with a few dozen adepts leaping out of the closet crying 'Away, latecomers! I've been doing this all along!'

Maybe handwriting is the new knitting.