Yesterday I got my Spencerian Penmanship training workbooks. Spencerian script was the primary writing style in the United States from 1850 to 1925 and was important in business and personal correspondence. Not only that, but the writing style has an artistic beauty to it that I love. I decided to improve my penmanship for a few reasons.
- I’m a fan of old school stuff. I wear a fedora, a mechanical watch, drive a manual car and even make coffee without using electricity. I like old school ways because there is a beautiful simplicity to them. In our ever expanding and increasingly busy world this reminder helps to ground me in what’s important and what is not.
- I like to take physical notes, in a notebook, during meetings. My world is so tech-focused that I find that walking into a meeting with a nice notebook and pen is unique, I like unique.
- I also find that physically taking notes lets the person I’m meeting with know that I’m intently focused on them and nothing else. There are no alerts to clear, emails to answer while pretending I’m really typing notes or any of that mess.
- Taking notes by hand also increases what I retain from my meetings. Studies have shown that taking fewer notes by hand helps to retain information better than taking more notes by computer.
- Thank you notes are important. It’s a time-honored American tradition to send thank you notes for many things. This is a tradition I have failed at for most of my life. I intend to remedy that. A physical thank you note (soon to be written in nice Spencerian Script) makes quite an impression.
Penmanship is a dying art. I just want to be more of an artist.