It's called Spencerian script, after the man who invented it, Platt Spencer.
Spencer was born in 1800 near the Hudson River. His family was too poor to afford paper so he practiced on whatever was handy – leaves, bark, snow and sand – everything was a canvas for handwriting. At 15, Spencer began instructing others in the art of penmanship. He worked obsessively to perfect his own script, which was filled with flourishes and meant to be "rhythmic and comfortable". After Spencer died, his 5 sons promoted the script tirelessly and it became the first standardized handwriting in the United States.
Spencer is considered “the father of American handwriting”. He was a fanatic, and advised his students to practice six to 12 hours a day. Mastering his script would, Spencer believed, make someone refined, genteel, upstanding.
Coke's bookkeeper Frank Robinson was likely trained in business and penmanship at a Spencerian school.
Handwriting must die, argues Anne Trubeck in a compelling essay, in order for us to evolve as writers.
"Conventional wisdom holds that computers are devoid of emotion and personality, and handwriting is the province of intimacy, originality and authenticity," she says. "But what we want from writing is cognitive automaticity, the ability to think as fast as possible, freed as much as can be from the strictures of whichever technology we must use to record our thoughts. A system that can become streamlined through specialization and automaticity has more time to think.
This is what typing does for millions. It allows us to go faster, not because we want everything faster in our hyped-up age, but for the opposite reason: We want more time to think.
Touch-typing is a glorious example of cognitive automaticity, the speed of execution keeping pace with the speed of cognition.”
However, a recent study by the University of Washington discovered that children write better and longer essays at a faster pace when using a pen as opposed to a keyboard.
"We need to learn more about the process of writing with a computer," said Professor of Educational Psychology and study head Virginia Berninger. "We need to help children become bilingual writers so they can write by both the pen and the computer. So don't throw away your pen or your keyboard. We need them both."
