7 ms·
Library Hand, the Fastidiously Neat Penmanship Style Made for Card Catalogs
- bonniemuffin 10y agoLibrary hand is beautiful to read, and in theory I'd love to have such nice handwriting. But in practice, I value writing speed over all other factors, and I'm usually the only one who needs to be able to read my writing. As long as it's legible to me, it's good enough.
- mmel 10y agoIf speed is your main concern, have you considered using a shorthand?
- tbirrell 10y agoShorthand is one of those magical things that seems nice to know but looks like learning a different language.
- ColanR 10y agoIt's not actually that bad. If you're half-decent with memorizing, it's just a new set of symbols. The speed comes from ease of writing (just like in this article).
- themodelplumber 10y agoI started with Ford Shorthand (.Com). It took me a few one hour sessions across 3 days to memorize the glyphs. 6 months of practice later, I was writing much faster and more freely--now it didn't matter where I left my notes. I now have a very hard time not automatically switching to this simple shorthand when I'm writing fast. It's just much more efficient. I also know how to write Gregg at a basic level but Ford was way better for a beginner.
- AceyMan 10y agoMy late mother was a executive secretary (old terms) in a corporate chemical engineering department [1]. She could type tables and such like a demon ... on a Royal manual typewriter, no less. She also could knock out quite decent Gregg shorthand, and I took a stab at learning it from a textbook I picked up used somewhere. I'd pick her brains for help when the book left me hanging. I achieved a decent proficiency for a moderate effort off-hours attempt at self-instruction. It certainly required some patience and effort but I found it fairly natural and well conceived, elegant even. Someday maybe I'll pick it up again. In fifteen years it will seem like alchemy to the young'uns of the future.
- vacri 10y ago> As long as it's legible to me, it's good enough. Reminds me of when I was a neuro tech, and one of the neurologists in the department had the worst handwriting I've ever seen. Usually we could nut out what the referrals said, but one of them was so bad that we had to knock on his door and ask for clarification. He couldn't read it himself and ended up saying "well, I know the patient, and what they need is...". Absolutely lovely bloke, but "doctor's handwriting" to the extreme...
- rootbear 10y agoThanks to arthritis and some nerve damage, unless I write very slowly, even I can't read my writing anymore. It's very annoying.
- rootbear 10y agoThanks to arthritis and some nerve damage, unless I write very slowly, even I can't read my writing anymore. It's very annoying.
- ph0rque 10y agoInteresting; is there a font based on this style?
- tbirrell 10y agoI'm aware of a the cursive version having a font, but I've never been able to find a print version (though I haven't applied much effort to the task). http://www.yuoiea.com/uoiea/index.php?id=255 http://www.yuoiea.com/uoiea/index.php?id=255
- sp332 10y agoHere's one based on a scan of "A Library Primer". https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/libhanddis https://fontlibrary.org/en/font/libhanddis
- angusbarr 10y agoIt's not directly based on this style, but some of the samples in the article reminded me of AMS Euler.
- Analemma_ 10y agoThere's also "architect handwriting" [0], designed to reduce potentially dangerous misunderstandings involving buying the wrong part. It used to be a required course in a lot of architecture schools before computers starting doing it all. It's cool that there's not just one, but multiple "profession-specific handwriting". [0]: https://artdepartmental.com/2009/10/12/learning-architectural-lettering/ https://artdepartmental.com/2009/10/12/learning-architectura...
- nkrisc 10y agoWe learned a similar style in my high school drafting courses. Before we got to use the CAD software on the computers, we had to do two years of drafting by hand, including learning to write in this style. Junior and Senior year we did the CAD stuff.
- function_seven 10y agoI owe my legible handwriting to the drafting courses I took in high school. Before we were allowed to draw anything, we had to get a perfect score on one lettering assignment. It involved filling an A-size sheet (9" x 12"?) with many lines of alphabet and prose. You'd finish, walk it up to the teacher, and he'd look it over. He'd give lots of praise, find one tiny little mistake, then mark it a '9' (10 needed) and cheerfully hand it back, "Almost there!" It was weeks of this before the actual drawing started for some students. And they'd be expected to catch up to everyone else.
- nkrisc 10y agoThat scoring approach sounds just about the same way my teacher scored. If two lines didn't connect perfectly but had a micron long tail sticking out he'd catch it.
- WalterBright 10y agoBoeing has their own font for use in mechanical drafting (probably long gone now due to CAD software). The point was to avoid misunderstandings, and to make it legible even after being badly microfilmed. They were very particular that it be done correctly, too. I wasn't aware of a course in it, one was just shown an example and told to do it that way.
- weberc2 10y agoIt seems remarkable that they couldn't justify the training time for a type writer, but that learning a penmanship style was reasonable.
- saalweachter 10y agoWhile there is a sunk cost fallacy, your sunk costs do determine future costs. If you've already sunk a thousand hours into penmanship so that it will only take you another ten to learn a new style, it's a better investment than spending a hundred on learning to type proficiently.
- ytjohn 10y agoAs I understood, library hand would be something taught in a librarian course. It could be used at any library that an aspiring librarian would end up working at, but only a handful of libraries would be implementing a typewriter system for the library cards.
- npunt 10y agoRemember these were for library cards and other short content. There are fixed time costs of loading and unloading from a typewriter which may negate some/most of the speed advantage, and using a typewriter may also bend the cardstock over time. And finally, typewriters were expensive machines.
- weberc2 10y agoThose are all perfectly valid reasons, but the article cited the training time to use a type writer.
- theoh 10y agoI don't know about the practical reasons but "learn to write like letterpress printing" is a pretty dehumanizing instruction. Which was apparently accepted.
- gcb0 10y agoif you think aligning text on a small card lines on typewriter is easy, then you are rigth. But it is not. Specially if they had several models.
- midgetjones 10y agoThat was fascinating! If only everyone would write in monotype.
- KWxIUElW8Xt0tD9 10y agoI am no expert but my recollection is that European handwriting had a large degree of standardization for long periods. Perhaps we have an expert here who could tell us more. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/researchguidance/medievaldocuments/handwritingstyles.aspx https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollection...
- eb0la 10y agoNot an expert, but I spent a lot of time looking at spanish 17th century notary books ;-) I guess handwriting in pre-press texts (incunables) is "designed" to be easy to copy. If you look at the textura (gothic) script it is based on the same pen movement with a flat pen. You cannot improvise too much with that kind of pen. This looks a feature to me, because the cost of writing on vellum, mistakes were very expensive.
- WalterBright 10y agoFonts that confuse 0 and O, 1 and l, are particularly loathsome.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAs a programmer and a pedant I agree, though the distinction may have not been important in practice in library context.
- DrScump 10y agoBack in the old days, it was pretty standard that the letter "i" was distinguished with serifs, but (and I found this perplexing) there was a lot of argument whether zero or "O" should have a slash. It was rather critical in the old, old days of filling out keypunch sheets.
- patrick_haply 10y agoI started adding serifs to my writing back in engineering school to help me decipher my own equations. I some moments where I couldn't figure out if I had written "+t" or "t+", or "is that a 2 or a z?!", and realized I had to create a script for myself and slow down a bit when writing. Particularly troublesome characters that I remember were: t vs + u vs v 2 vs z s vs 5 i (imaginary vs subscript marker) g vs q (might seem silly, but prior to that, my handwriting didn't distinguish between them much) o/O vs 0 (zero gets a slash, but never had situations where I was dealing with upper and lowercase o at the same time) d vs ∂
- gglitch 10y agoI don't know if there's actually a strong resemblance or if it's all in my mind, but I'm reminded of Dijkstra's handwriting. http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1001.PDF http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1001.PDF
- voycey 10y agoWhereas I can barely read my own name if I write it #digitalchild