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.).

While some elite upper-class women were formally taught to write, penmanship was not considered an essential part of women’s education in the United States during most of the 18^th Century. However, many literate women still managed to learn rudimentary writing and phonetic spelling. From the late 18^th Century into the 19^th Century, more women (though still widely upper-class women) were taught reading and penmanship due to the clear need of these skills in managing a household and teaching young sons, as well as the growth in popularity of the hobby of correspondence.

Different styles were taught based on class, gender, and profession. Some of the more common styles used include the Flourishing Alphabet, Italian Hand, German Text, Round Hand, Spencerian, and the Palmer method. The Spencerian style of writing is named for Platt Rogers Spencer also known as the Father of American Handwriting. Spencer’s style of writing became the predominant style in the United States during the post-Civil War era into the early 20^th Century, due to his realization that to widely disseminate his approach to writing, he needed to bring penmanship lessons to normal schools (teacher training schools). Spencerian script influences can be seen in many of the hand-writing samples from the 1860s through the 1900s displayed here.

However in the latter 19^th Century, a new writing master challenged Spencerian dominance. Austin Norman Palmer disliked Spencerian script; he claimed “that Spencerian handwriting was all wrong for Americans” (Braden, 2017). Palmer had a number of complaints, including that Spencerian was too slow, ornate, and feminine (Braden, 2017). While women and their style of writing were expected to be feminine, femininity in general was considered a negative trait denoting weakness. He felt that Americans (males) needed an unsentimental, plain, and rapid style of writing that reflected the pace of business. Palmer’s style simplified the more artful script of Spencerian, and focused on teaching through repetition and the development of muscle memory. The influence of Palmer’s style and method can be seen in the writing samples from 1906 through 1929, especially when comparing the styles from the 1900 and 1906 samples.

Both a utilitarian skill and an art, penmanship and written language have changed considerably through the centuries. Although beautiful when looked at as a whole, legibility swiftly curbs many ardent researchers’ appreciation of handwritten records. 

To see all of the sources used to write this article, please check out the Bibliography Page, or to see full images of all of the writing samples from the Archives, check them out in the Writing Samples Folder. If this information interests you, please feel free to contact us by phone at 740-670-5121 or email archives@lcounty.com.