A Shorthand History of Penmanship
Record of the Month! For the month of May, we are featuring a wide assortment of records from 1812-1929 that showcases the variety of hands they were written in. The ability to express oneself in writing has been a long-developing skill in our species for thousands of years. The earliest known written records can be traced back approximately to the end of 4 th Millennium BCE to the city of Uruk, written in Sumerian pictographic representations and cuneiform script. As languages have developed, evolved, and gone extinct across the world, so too have the writing systems that express them. Throughout the 18 th and 19 th Centuries students were taught penmanship (writing) by copying different writing styles known as “hands” in a copybook, which contained the alphabet and several phrases. Due to the cost of quills, paper, and ink, penmanship was reserved for the wealthy upper classes (usually white males) and those whose professions required it (clerks, merchants, businessmen, etc