Show us your handwriting!

I wonder where actually the root or this relating bad handwriting with avian legs is, because it seems international :joy::joy: . In Indonesia we call it tulisan ceker ayam or just ceker ayam which means chicken legs

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See, these conversations are why I love Postcrossing so, so much. I love learning about these odd things. :heart_decoration:

So I found this article on “chicken scratch” and it seems the earliest reference was either Shakespeare in 1909 or a Roman comedy (year unknown?) (read comments at the bottom of the article for a laugh! :laughing:)

Also, I came across the word “dysgraphia” which I had never heard of (dyscalculia, or dyslexia, yes, dysgraphia, never), which Wikipedia defines as:

Dysgraphia is a deficiency in the ability to write, primarily handwriting, but also coherence. Dysgraphia is a specific learning disability as well as a transcription disability, meaning that it is a writing disorder associated with impaired handwriting, orthographic coding and finger sequencing.

So this is me right now: :face_with_monocle: :exploding_head:

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I am thrilled that my prompt on lefties and illegible writing evolved into this discussion. :blush:

As a linguist myself, I absolutely love discovering differences and commonalities in sayings and idioms. Now, I do have to consult my nearest and dearest to check if we have “avian legs” related idiom for illegible writing.

Fun fact: There is another phrase related to offering gifts that appears to be common in quite a few countries/cultures and in my language (dialect) it goes as followed: šenkanemu konju se ne gleda v zobe (aka. don’t look a gift horse in the mouth), but I digress. :smile:

Anyway, @scrutiny thank you for the dyslexia vs dysgraphia facts. I have never heard of dysgraphia before and agree with your emoji :exploding_head:

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Bought a new color ink.

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I am quite shocked by the above calligraphy and felt it was a visual feast. It is a pity that I do not know calligraphy. I found some of my notes that show me writing in my daily life.

  • English

I looked for my old notebook of English words. Please do not laugh at the simplicity of the words I had written in it :joy::grin:


My characteristic in writing English is to draw down strokes very long. So I would be at a disadvantage writing postcards because a lot of space is wasted. My European friends say my handwriting is very old-fashioned, is that true?

  • Chinese

Maybe I’m a little obsessive and a perfectionist, but I always like to write my Chinese stroke by stroke without any mistakes in the standard script.


But if I don’t take my laptop to the class and the teacher speaks very quickly, I will write in the running script.


Or even cursive script!

Compared to the standard script without any mistakes, my friends appreciate my running script notes more. Now I also gradually feel that the running script is good-looking and labor-saving :grin:

  • Japanese

To be honest, I quite like writing Japanese. Because I feel that the fortitude of Kanji (Chinese characters) and the softness of kana are well combined. But sometimes hiraganas like そ ち な ひ ふ are hard to write well. Is there anyone from Japan who could teach me how to improve my hiragana writing skills?


Please ignore the grammatical mistakes in my composition if you know Japanese😂

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Gujarati language

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Russian (Lyrics from the musical)

English (You-Know-What-Isn’t-It?)

Japanese (hokku by my favorite historical figure. Kana because in this text I know in kanji only 水、北、山、月)

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Wow! There is interesting!

May I add something?

About lefties.
I am left-handed, no one tried to retrain me to write with my right hand. (Although, as far as I know, this was practiced in the 20th century. Horror.)
But due to the fact that my hand was rubbing what was already written, my handwriting was very sloppy. Also in Russian, if we talk about the correct spelling, letters are written with an inclination to the right. And it is convenient for right-handed people - the hand does not turn out at all. But the left-hander has to bend his arm a lot. At school, I noticed that I stretched my fingers more often when writing and was more tired than my classmates. However, my handwriting still slopes to the right.

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I wish my handwriting was as nice as how the rest of the world writes!

Sometimes I write in print, sometimes in cursive. Here are two old examples:

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Your handwriting is very neat! The hyperdontia skull is going to haunt me in my dreams tonight though :sweat_smile:

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Hello and soooo sorry for the super late reply! I decided to go into “exam term”-mode and stopped checking the forum for a few weeks. But now I’m back and I’m ready to process all the stuff I missed!

I’ve never heard of something like this! The only stereotype I know when it comes to lefties is that you guys are more artistically inclined and smarter than the general population. I remember I used to find left-handedness super cool, and even tried to train my left hand! I did manage to start writing in cursive with it, but I’m still super slow, and can’t move my hand naturally over the paper.

Omg! This is really beautiful! I’m in awe, and a little bit jealous too. Keep up the great work!

Sometimes I can recognise left-handed people’s texts by looking at the way the words are slanted. They go the opposite direction as opposed to right-handed writers. Would that not be acceptable in Russian? Although I’m right handed myself, I still can’t write slanted calligraphy or whatever!

I’m in love not just with your handwriting, but with the unique content of the postcards as well! This is definitely the most interesting thing I’ve seen today. Great watercolours!

EDIT:

How did I miss this! This looks sooo satisfying. I guess the censored part is the address? I can’t even imagine what the postman must’ve thought when delivering this haha

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If we talk about perfectly correct spelling, then yes, the tilt to the left is considered incorrect. But in real life they write as it is convenient. I think it looks like different spellings of the same letter.

It’s pretty impressive tbh, as a Malaysian high school student I’m pretty lucky to be able to “survive” with my kind of handwriting :joy: (I graduated in March 22)


Sometimes when I come accross postcards written in Mandarin from China, I kinda like the handwriting style :> It’s pretty artsy

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I recently moved house and came across some okd school books I’d kept hold of. I thought people might find it funny to compare handwriting from an 11 yo to me today at over 40. Thankfully I improved. Yes I am left-handed lol. I remember finding it seriously difficult writing with a fountain pen as I had to push the words onto the page and therefore would move over them with my hand. I used to go home with a blue palm everyday. I think this writing is from when I was beginning to realise you could tilt the paper. Nowadays I write with the paper at 90 degrees so that my words move down towards me.

Hopefully you can guess which is which. (My poor teacher lol)



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Hi! This is my first time participating in the forum!

This was how my handwriting looked like back in 2017.

I feel like it’s gotten smaller and rounder since. I will update this once I have an example that’s not on a postcard lol

My cursive looks like this

And I write Chinese like this

I’ve been told that my Chinese writing looks like my print. I am also left-handed

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This is how I write on regular basis, not pretty :laughing: :laughing:

My engineering notes

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:open_mouth:

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Your regular handwriting is amazing, almost like print.

They tell me that my handwriting is beautiful, they give away some vintage, but it’s completely incomprehensible … But I like it, I like it when there is time and you are not in a hurry, you can sign a postcard or text quite carefully. Although, I know that I have much to strive for and need to practice a lot in order to achieve truly beautiful calligraphy.

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