RECORD STORE TALES Part 309: Penmanship
Penmanship: something we all learned in school, forgot, and don’t think about anymore due to the advent of the computer. Very few jobs today require good penmanship. What might surprise you is how important penmanship was in the CD store days.
In the early days, buying and selling used CDs, we maintained a manual log. Every CD we bought was logged, along with the seller’s name and identification. Every CD had to be named. We couldn’t just write down “15 CDs”. You had to write down each title. “Puff Daddy – No Way Out”, “Dance Mix ‘96”, “Titanic OST” (original soundtrack), and so on.
One of my staff had very, very “girly” writing. You know what I mean – each letter looks like a balloon animal. It was mostly readable, but apparently not to the police detective who used to collect our log books.
“Can you read this?” he would ask me, trying to make a point. “Can you please tell this person to print legibly?”
“Well, I did speak to her about this a few times. That’s her handwriting, that’s about as neat as it will get. She really is trying.” The detective was not happy.
One afternoon, he called me, really pissed off. He had absolutely had it with the bubbly balloon writing. He asked me to read off every single title that this person had written down in the log. Admittedly there were a couple that I could not make out. He went through this exercise largely just to make his point. He did it again the following week. He picked the longest page from the log book that he could find, and I painstakingly read every title to him, one by one.
“Are you sure about that last title?” he would interrupt. “You say it says ‘Metallica’? That’s an M?”
Then a week later, we went through the same exercise again. He made his point. Eventually we switched to a computerized log system, which they had been pushing us to do for a while. That at least ended the long phone calls with the detective, trying to read the girly balloon letters.
My own handwriting is pretty shit, but according to him it was better than big balloon letters!
mikeladano.com 
In my first teaching post, my Head told me that I was a poor example of handwriting to children.
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Have you improved your penmanship since? Mine keeps going downhill.
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My blackboard writing has but when I put pen to paper, it still sucks.
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I’m big on decent handwriting too, my own being perfect of course!
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Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof!
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You’ve reached the voicemail of Mr 1537, I’m on holiday right now. Please leave a message after the tone. Please also note that handwriting dudes can swing for it coz he ain’t got nothing to prove.
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I have no come-back.
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I have horrible penmanship. I can barely read my own writing.
My signature, a scribble. I follow my dads example and handwrite in all capsif its something I will need someone else to be able to read. Otherwise I just send texts and emails. Of course I do try to spell and punctuate properly at least in an email. Texts, hey well if you don’t know what lol means then idk u r sol. :)
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I much as I hated Blurred Lines, I do like Word Crimes.
Texts are tricky, it’s so hard for my big fat fingers to hit the right keys.
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Another lost art in the digital world.
More important for me is the spell check and grammar correcting features of the modern age…without that keeping me in some kind of check-I could not write—-I can proudly say that I failed English on two continents as a kid in high school. — now an obsessive blogger. :)
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Spell check helps me a lot, I won’t lie. It seems even after all these years, there are still some words I forget how to spell.
My big beefs with today are mostly grammar related. There their they’re. It’s its. Stuff like that really drives me nuts!
Hope you’re doing well Wayne! Thanks for the stop-by!
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Thanks Mike…I am going real easy with the diet and am almost back to full strength.
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You should have had her write out an entire days log in farce. It would have been the same NWA song over and over. I think he would have gotten the point.
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BWAHAHA. Yeah if only. No, we had to play nice with them. We had no choice.
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My handwriting is scribble…and I am a lefty so the scribble gets smeared. My Mom came from a time in Nursing School (’60s) when handwriting and logs were super important. They would make nurses in training write loops upon loops – very distinct handwriting. So my mom’s writing is beautiful and feminine petite. My sister also has nice handwriting. Mine is scratch that has actually improved over the years, but it’s still scratch.
Writing scratch, I have developed quite a talent of decyphering bad handwriting – true! I can also read bad handwriting upside down. It was great when I was a kid, standing in front of the teacher’s desk with her marks book in front, being able to read what she wrote upside down. Ha!
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I too am good at reading bad hand writing, a talent I gained at the record store in fact, and then honed in the scanning department at United Rentals!
I still make fun of my sister a bit for this. She has the handwriting of a 9 year old. She’s in her 30’s. It’s hilarious. Her hand writing has not changed since she was 9, I swear.
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I have beautiful handwriting and it bothers me no end that I am the only one in the family with decent handwriting. I am told it doesn’t matter. Well it does to me. A lost art indeed.
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This is true, and I also know you take pride in it. I recall getting Christmas cards in the mail from a relative (I won’t say who), and you commenting that you couldn’t read her writing!
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My Mom used to leave us notes with chores she wanted us to do while she was at work and would always be upset when we didn’t do them when she got home.
We did have a great excuse though, we couldn’t read her writing!
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My handwriting has always sucked. It’s a kind of printed-scrawl-thing that looks like ants being struck by lightning… I’ve been told many times I should’ve been a doctor – just for the handwriting part, of course. But now… I think pretty much my lovely wife is the only person who can read my day-to-day handwriting with any accuracy. If I’m writing for others, I usually have to slow down and write like I’m in grade 2 again. And big letters, to make it clear. Yeesh.
It’s always something I’ve meant to correct, however. Guess I need to go back to grammar school. I’d love a flowery, beautiful cursive.
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My Mom was a medical secretary for years, learned short-hand back in the day. She used to write her Christmas shopping list in short-hand and then say ‘hey kids! wanna see what you’re getting for Christmas?” Of course we did. And… oh man.
My Dad can do caligraphy very well. It’s cool.
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I learned caligraphy in grade 9 art, and I had a kit and everything that I bought, but I never continued it.
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For the record: I have never had an issue reading your handwriting! You throw a note of some kind into every single package and I can read every one.
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Excellent. That is because care and caution are taken, and my usual pace of writing is halved, in order to maintain legibility.
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Great story. Judging by the response, I think you should start a hand-writing blog.
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It’s on the back burner. It’ll happen eventually.
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My dad, being an academic, had all sorts of weird books. One of them was a book on decyphering handwriting and how it was associated with personality. They’d also look at children’s drawings. It was cool… yet disturbing. Some of the writing samples and drawings they’d use were criminals and psychologically disturbed children. Freaky. There are secrets in the handwriting!
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I kept most of my kid drawings. Most of them are of airplanes and weapons of war. Blame my dad!
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Airplanes, weapons of war… and boobs.
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