Writing in Rochester

What is sexism in writing? It is the assumption that people are all male or all female. Men are choosing professions that were once considered for women only, and women are branching out into professions that at one time were male-dominated. Sexism in writing can occur in several ways. In writing, using pronouns that refer to men only ignores half the population and sends the message that all humans are male.

There are ways to avoid using male pronouns that refer to both men and women in your writing and to avoid alienating 50% of the population.

Here is a list of indefinite pronouns that are considered singular:

· Another, anybody, anyone, anything, each, either, everybody, everyone, everything, little, much, neither, nobody, none, no one, nothing, one, other, somebody, someone, something

Here are a few indefinite pronouns that can be considered singular or plural, depending on how they are used in the sentence.

· All, any, more, most, and some are plural when referring to plural nouns all, any, more, most, and some are singular when referring to singular nouns or collective nouns.

To avoid sexism in your writing, follow these basic tips:

· Use singular pronouns to refer to singular nouns;
· Use singular pronouns to refer to singular indefinite pronouns
· Use plural pronouns to refer to plural nouns;

Correct: If a student wants to take the class, he or she can register tomorrow.
Incorrect: If a student wants to take the class, they can register tomorrow.

Correct: If anyone wants to take the class, he or she can register tomorrow.
Incorrect: If anyone wants to take the class, he can register tomorrow.

Correct: If students want to take the class, they can register tomorrow.
Incorrect: If students want to take the class, he or she can register tomorrow.

If you do not know whether the person referred to is female or male, follow these basic tips:

· Use “he or she” or “his or her”;
· Make the sentence plural by using plural nouns and pronouns;
· Rewrite the sentence to avoid using pronouns altogether;

Correct: Everyone wanted to know his or her grades.
Incorrect: Everyone wanted to know their grades.

Correct: The students wanted to know their grades.
Incorrect: The students wanted to know his or her grades.

Correct: The students wanted to know the grades.

Incorrect: The students wanted to know his or her grades.

If you do know the gender of the person being referred to, follow these basic tips:

· Use “she or her” to refer to a female;
· Use “he or him or his” to refer to a male

Correct: The postman left his mailbag on my front doorsteps.
Incorrect: The postman left her mailbag on my front doorsteps.

Correct: Ask the policewoman if she can direct you to the courthouse.
Incorrect: Ask the policewoman if he can direct you to the courthouse.

Using these simple tips will help improve your writing and keep your communication clear. You won’t go wrong, and you won’t alienate half the population by using sexism in your writing.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Katrina Parker Williams is an English Instructor who teaches English Composition and Grammar at a community college. She is also the author of a fictional novel Liquor House Music and publishes writing and publishing articles online. Visit Katrina’s website at stepartdesigns.com stepartdesigns.com for more writing and publishing tips.

Everyone knows how to ask questions. But are you asking the right questions in an interview, on the job, or in a social situation? Knowing how to question others effectively is both a skill and an art.

How to Begin

Learning the art of asking questions effectively requires a little forethought. For example:

• What is it you really want/need to know?

• Why do you need the information?

• How much detail do you require?

• Who is/are the right resource(s)?

• How do you gain access to these resource(s)?

• What do you need to know about a resource in order to get the resource’s best response?

• What form of response do you desire?

• What are your criteria for satisfaction?

You may consider these factors unconsciously most of the time. However, make not mistake, asking yourself these questions before you approach a resource saves time and makes all the difference in your success at getting the result or information you desire.

Be Prepared!

No successful interviewer or journalist goes into an interview unprepared – neither should you. Lack of preparation will severely limit your chances for success. It is imperative that you be clear about the exact nature of the information you seek, and why you are asking the question in the first place. This keeps you focused, and provides justification for the request.

1. Are you looking for information, a perspective, expert advice, a referral or introduction, directions, reassurance, support, and/or a potential starting starting point?

2. How much do you need or want to know? What level of detail do you require? What are your criteria for satisfaction?

3. What is the level of security associated with the information you seek?

4. What form of response will suit you best? Answers can take many forms – words, sign language, pictures, schematics or blueprints, mathematics, music, or some other sensory format.

5. What is the relative importance (priority) associated with your query?

6. How urgently do you need a response?

Be Clear About Your Intent

People, especially strangers, are more likely to answer your questions when they understand your reason(s) for asking. Obvious? Yes, but if you are walking away from a conversation feeling cheated or dissatisfied with the exchange, part of the problem may be rooted in whether or not you asked the question(s) that you intended to ask.

Approach the Appropriate Resource(s) in the Right Context

When requesting information or clarification, do you make your questions count by consulting the most knowledgeable resource available, or do you simply start asking questions of whoever is around and hope for the best? Ask around – consult the media, the internet, professional organizations, or a trusted friend or associate. Credentials may give you a clue, but a successful track record is more important. Find out what you can about a targeted resource. Even comments made by enemies or rivals can be revealing.

How do you know whether or not your targeted resource will speak with you or be willing to answer your questions? You don’t. However, as the saying goes…”Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” If the person snubs you or doesn’t return your calls or e-mail, be persistent, but polite. If that doesn’t work, try someone else. One more thing – never assume that anyone is the absolute authority on anything – get a second and third opinion where possible.

Are you being sensitive to the best timing, both with regard to when a question is appropriate and the duration of your questioning? Approach each targeted resource in a respectful manner and at an appropriate place and time – be creative, but not intrusive or obnoxious. Seek an introduction through a mutual contact. If that’s not possible, take a chance and call or e-mail the targeted resource – whether or not they respond is always their choice.

Build Rapport

Once you make contact, try to establish rapport with the resource by making your C.A.S.E.

Common experiences – Start by asking questions about experiences and/or perspectives that you may have in common.

Abilities and knowledge – Share your skills, knowledge, and abilities in a manner that is helpful to your resource. A dialogue is a mutually beneficial exchange. A monologue becomes either a soapbox harangue or a self-promotion.

Sincerity – Be sincere. Be yourself! (Who else could you possibly be?) Speak from your heart and with conviction.

Etiquette – Be polite and respectful. This builds rapport more easily than demands and sarcasm.
Don’t waste time asking questions of people who can’t (or won’t) give you a satisfactory or complete answer. There are lots of resources available. Take your best shot and don’t allow yourself to become discouraged when your attempts don’t always work out as expected.

Speak a Common Language

Proper preparation, clarifying and focusing on your intent, and targeting the appropriate resource in the right context will all contribute to your success as a questioner. However, the way you compose and express a question – the “language” and delivery used – is equally important.

The language of your question needs to be in terms you and your resource both understand. Even when speaking the same ethnic language (English, Spanish, Russian, etc.), your choice of terminology, phrasing, and non-verbal cues make a difference. For example, you may think you are asking one question, while your resource “hears” a different question. In turn, the response you receive may seem unclear or be misinterpreted by you, simply because you and your resource are not speaking the same “language.”

Practice, Practice, Practice

Granted, given the circumstances and time constraints, you may not always have a pre-planned list of questions handy, but the art of asking pertinent and useful questions can become second nature to you. It can be developed and mastered with practice.

Remember: Learning to ask the right questions takes both skill and creativity, but anyone can become a competent practitioner if willing to put in the effort.

Yvonne Ryan, the Techie Leadership Coach, is founder of Leader’s Edge CA. Through innovative programs like Techies on the RiseTM, Techies in TransitionTM, and a FREE weekly teleforum called Beyond the CubicleTM, Yvonne helps technical professionals develop the skills to become effective leaders. Visit her Web site at: leadersedgeca.com leadersedgeca.com

With more than fourteen years as a professional speaker, trainer, and storyteller, I have learned many hard-fought lessons that work to make presentations powerful. These techniques work whether we are speaking, giving workshops, or leading meetings.

Repeat, repeat, and repeat! Winston Churchill stated, “If you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time with a tremendous whack.” Thinking that people listen and hear what we say, We assume that people hear us the first time. To really make a difference, we need to repeat with force and passion. The time tested formula for planning an effective speech is “Tell them what we are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what we told them.”

Remain in control! When giving workshops and leading meetings, I always encourage participants to interrupt and ask questions. I have found, however, that if the question is way off the topic or is even a “gripe” of some sort, the best way to handle the situation is to say that I will cover that point later, or will be glad to discuss it at the break or at the end of my presentation, workshop, or meeting. Otherwise, the rest of the participants can be turned off completely and we lose their attention.

Be present and audience focused! The audience must know that they are the most important people in the world to us at that moment. Rather than worrying about what we are going to say next or how we are doing, we must focus all of our attention, being, and concern on how the words we are saying are affecting the participants.

Help participants visualize! Realize that people learn when they can visualize our points. Use clear, professionally produced visuals that enhance but don’t detract from the presentation. We need to help the audience see and be a part of our stories, so they start to visualize their own stories.

Watch the words! When giving advice to the audience, it is easier for them to accept and digest the material if we use more “We should …” “We could …” “We need to …” instead of “You should …” “You could …” “You need to …” And, profanity will NEVER enhance a presentation.

Be yourself! Using other people’s material, trying to be like another presenter, or playing the role we think our audience expects can rob us of our credibility, sincerity, and enthusiasm. If we are not expert in and passionate about the topic an audience wants, we shouldn’t accept the invitation to speak. The audience can tell. Give the audience something unique and special. You have what it takes!

Chris King is a professional speaker, storyteller, writer, website creator / designer, free agent, and fitness instructor. Sign up for her eclectic E-newsletter, Portfolio Potpourri, at PowerfulPresentations.net PowerfulPresentations.net You will find her information-packed E-book How to Leave Your Audiences Begging for MORE! at OutrageouslyPowerfulPresenter.com OutrageouslyPowerfulPresenter.com and her business website at CreativeKeys.biz CreativeKeys.biz

There are several effective advertising methods that a content provider can use to land lots of clients for themselves.

The most basic content provider advertising is placing an advertisement at a high traffic freelance writers′ site. But probably the most effective one is using keyword phrases to attract traffic via search engines of prospective clients or site owners looking for content providers. This targeted traffic would then be directed to a simple web site or blog where you can then showcase your online writing services.

Whichever method you choose for advertising your content provider services, it is important that you focus on the needs of the clients that you are targeting. It is also extremely important that you establish what kind of budgets they are working with or what they can afford for your services. In spite of the fact that content is one of the most important ingredients at any site, the limited resources in the hands of the webmaster have to cover other expenses like web hosting, web design and so on.

Web content provider advertising that is done in the dark without taking into consideration these important factors will just not work. However by being just a little sensitive to your client needs, you will find yourself attracting a good number of clients irrespective of the method you opt for in advertising your web content provider services.

Read the rest of this article and get more information at the writer’s 100grandonlinewriters.blogspot.com/2006/06/content-provider-success-easiest-way.html content provider secrets blog.

My Dad has this old joke that goes, “What’s the most important thing about humor?” After a short pause, he interjects, “TIMING!”

I’ve rolled my eyes many a time over this joke.

But here’s a new version for writers: “What’s the most important thing about writing funny? …… WORDING!”

Whether you′re talking about stand-up comedy or humorous writing, surprise is one of the biggest elements of laughter. (Yes, Dad, I know, “Surprise″ is what your little timing-joke is really all about.)

Readers become accustomed to seeing things written a certain way. As a writer, you have a choice: give it to them they way they expect, or surprise them with something different.

Here’s an example:

In my article “Does Target Shun Veterans?” I say that Internet Urban Legends are “stories that scare readers into believing such things as rat urine contaminating the tops of their canned peaches, and so forth.” I could have just as easily written, “Internet Urban Legends are stories that scare readers into believing the tops of their canned food is dirty.” But that wouldn’t surprise anyone, and it would have made my piece just another bland “news story.”

I also shook up the sentence about Internet Urban Legends by including some humorous exaggerations. Simply writing “canned food” isn’t nearly as funny as being super specific and writing, “canned peaches,” and being “dirty″ is far more typical than having “rat urine” on your lid.

The idea of being very specific is what comedian (and my hero) Jerry Seinfeld has built his entire career on. He doesn’t just talk about flying on an airplane, he mentions everything from the really small bag of peanuts to the pilot announcing the flight play-by-play. As an audience, we laugh at these things because it’s something we’ve experienced but never given much thought to. Who else but Seinfeld could have an entire 30-minute television show about toxic glue on envelopes?

Drawing attention to things that are common to all but seldom discussed makes people chuckle. This is mostly due to their slight embarrassment when they realize “wow, I do that,” but it’s also because for the first time they are paying attention to something they might not have otherwise.

But aside from timing, exaggerations and calling attention to life’s quirks, sentence structure may be the ultimate weapon for writing humor. Just as a lyricist times his verses to a beat, writers need an internal rhythm to make their work conversational and surprising. There is quite a difference between writing a factual news piece and composing a humorous essay, but the biggest difference is sentence structure. Cut-and-dry news pieces need to follow a formula so that the content doesn’t get lost. When writing a narrative or essay, however, you can play with pauses (dashes, colons, etc.), italics and words to create a feeling and rhythm.

Follow these hints and your writing will be surprising and funny….AND have great timing.

About The Author

You may reprint the above column on your website so long as the following is included the URL address is actively hyperlinked back

THIS MUST BE INCLUDED: Copyright 2004 Sarah Smiley SarahSmiley.com” target=”_new SarahSmiley.com - Sarah Smiley’s syndicated column Shore Duty appears weekly in newspapers across the country.

mailto:sarah@sarahsmiley.com sarah@sarahsmiley.com

Content is king. There’s no question that good content delivers qualified traffic. Traffic is the first step to getting new customers. New customers are the first step to more income.

It’s true, article marketing is very difficult to get wrong or to screw up - but there are some folks who really need failure in their lives. So, for those poor souls who simply can’t abide success, I have put together this list of five simple rules to ruin your article marketing campaigns.

1) Write an ad and call it an article
This is the biggest one, so it’s first in the list. Write a 500 word benefit statement about your product, service, or website. Don’t put any of that pesky “interesting content” that readers want to read - and editors want to publish. Just talk about the wonderful things that happen when a reader becomes your customer.

Make sure you include several self-serving links within the body of your article, because how else will someone be able to find your site? Don’t limit yourself to simply putting your links in the resource box (where they belong) instead, make sure to litter your article with self-serving links. Oh, and be sure to do it in the most distracting manner possible.

By submitting advertising and calling it an “article”, you can be certain that editors and publishers will reject your submissions. That will keep readers from getting to your article, and it will prevent you from getting links back to your sites. It’s a terrific way to destroy your campaign.

2) Use your keyword *AS* the title
This one is related to the above, so it comes next. Don’t bother writing an eye-catching headline that will engage a reader - instead use your preferred keyword as your headline. For instance, use “Fish Tanks″ as the headline, instead of “How to Keep your Fish Tanks Clean Without Harsh Chemicals″

You see, that second title might actually get someone to publish your article, resulting in links to your site. Who needs that? The second title might also get a reader to click into your article, resulting in a qualified visitor to your site. Oh the HORROR!

To ensure that your campaign is as ineffective as possible, use a single keyword term as your title.

3) Write for a spiderbot and not for a person
Moving right along, as long as we’re talking about keywords, make sure that your article repeats your keyword phrase at least once in each paragraph. Better yet - to really make your campaign fail, put it in every sentence.

Keyword stuffing is one of several “Black Hat SEO” techniques that have been known to get sites banned from Google and the other search engines.

No publisher of a content site wants their site to get banned by the search engines, so by stuffing your keyword into the article in as many ways as possible, you can rest assured that the publisher will skip your article. That way, you’ll get neither links nor visitors to your website. It’s the very picture of failure. Nice work!

Also, since the article is written for spiderbots and not for humans, even the article sites that publish everything without review won’t be able to save the campaign. This is great news for those who need failure.

An article that isn’t interesting won’t convert readers (who have very short attention spans) into visitors to your site. Click click, they’re away from the article and onto a more interesting page.

So that your campaign will fail as impressively as possible, write a boring, monotonous article and incorporate as many black hat SEO techniques into your articles as possible. You won’t get any traffic at all. And customers? Of course not! Exactly the ticket for those who need to fail.

4) Use pre-written, canned, re-brandable content
That’s right, we mustn’t forget the lazy marketer’s method. Imagine this - pay someone to give you a bunch of bland articles that they’ve already sold to hundreds, if not thousands of other Internet marketers. Then, put your name on it, and try to submit it to article sites as an original article.

Do you remember when you’d open your email and all of your friends had sent you the same Internet joke? Each of your friends thought they had discovered it and that it was new. You knew better.

That’s how content publishers feel when they get the latest canned article pretending to be original content. By the time they’ve seen that article for the zillionth time, they won’t even look at it again.

If you want to go broke online, use public domain or rebrandable articles that have already made the rounds of the article sites and submit it as your own. That way you keep from getting the free links and visitors to your website that might cause you to become successful in spite of yourself.

5) Tease instead of teach
Now this one is only for the truly savvy failures out there. Teasing readers instead of providing good content is one of the most advanced article marketing techniques for those who want to destroy their businesses.

With this one, you can completely avoid all four of the other techniques and still manage to ruin your article marketing campaigns.

A tease is one of those articles that says “I can tell you how to…” but then never gets around to telling the reader how. The only way to find out how is to visit the author’s website, buy the author’s product, download the author’s ebook, join the author’s affiliate program, etc. There isn’t any actionable information in the article itself.

Since articles are meant to inform readers, skipping the teaching part and simply teasing them is a great way to decrease your readership, quash your publishing ratio, and fail on a grand scale.

Conclusion
So there you have it, five simple ways to ruin an otherwise foolproof article marketing campaign. If you absolutely need your business to fail, make sure you write ads, use a keyword instead of an interesting title, repeat your keywords monotonously in your article, don’t bother creating interesting original content, and tease your readers instead of teaching them.

That will guarantee that your articles aren’t picked up by the directories, can’t be found by Google, don’t provide links to their sites and don’t convert readers to visitors.

Chris Ellington founded articlemarketer.com Article Marketer to make marketers successful. Have your article reviewed by professional editors (at no charge) before submitting it to thousands of publishers all around the web. articlemarketer.com articlemarketer.com Try it for free!

The Hero’s Journey is the template upon which the vast majority of successful stories and Hollywood blockbusters are based upon. In fact, ALL of the Hollywood movies we have deconstructed are based on this template.

Understanding this template is a priority for story or screenwriters.

The Hero’s Journey:

a) Attempts to tap into unconscious expectations the audience has regarding what a story is and how it should be told.

b) Gives the writer more structural elements than simply three or four acts, plot points, mid point and so on.

c) Gives you a tangible process for building and releasing dissonance (establishing and achieving catharsis).

d) Gives you a universal structural template upon which you can superimpose your situational story.

and more…

Physical and Psychological Journey

The Hero′s Journey structure IS the process of Transformation. There is a psychological journey that is mirrored by a physical journey. That is why you often see darkness, rain, thunder and lightning during the stage of the Near Death Experience. By pulling the Hero through a physical experience, you are stimulating a psychological transformation. In the beginning the Hero will be dressed one way, after being pushed through some stages of the journey, the psychological change will reflect in clothing, behaviour, attitudes and beliefs.

Learn more…

WRITE THAT SCREENPLAY!

The Complete 188 stage Hero’s Journey and other story structure templates can be found at clickok.co.uk/ clickok.co.uk/

Managing Creativity and Innovation and related techniques and tools can be found at managing-creativity.com/ managing-creativity.com/

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

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You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made, the author’s name is retained and the link to our site URL remains active.

For 188 stages of the Hero’s Journey, successful story deconstructions and the Advanced Screenwriting Worksheets goto

Get Your Creative Article Writing Hat On!

“Local Search” IS huge and growing exponentially as millions of consumers throw out their yellow pages and begin using their broadband-enabled cell phones, notebook PC’s and other gadgets to surf the web to find solutions to local problems.

Your Article Writing Objective:

Be the first person to write an article for every major geographical area relating to your niche topic.

Example:

If your niche topic was yoga, you could write 50 articles (one for each of the United States) that includes how yoga relates to the local areas, physical locations, local customs & traditions.

Once you’ve written one for each state, then you could write 2-20 articles PER state until you are the king or queen of content for your niche as it relates to localized areas.

Your article title might be:

Yoga Retreat In Atlanta – Discover The Best Georgia Has To Offer Yoga Students

(Notice how I worked “Atlanta” and “Georgia” into the title? That’s a major key insight!)

Not in the USA?

Just apply the same principles to every state in your union/country/continent, and then every major metropolitan / city area within each of those states or countries/islands, etc.

Localized Article Writing Research

Be sure to use keyword research to identify the local trends in each of the geographical areas relating to your niche topic(s). Use your main keyword and the city or state or country name that you are targeting your next set of articles to identify what local people are already searching for relating to your topic.

Take a few steps back and allow the adrenaline rush to set in as you quickly discover the enormous traffic and credibility-building potential that sits right in front of you.

Seriously, no one has leveraged localized article writing and it’s about time you filled the content void on the Internet relating to your core area of expertise and the local geographical areas (city, state, country) that enjoys or searches for your expertise.

Typical Localized Article Writing Campaign Plan:

Here are some ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

* Write (1-10) articles relating it to every country that your niche is found in.

* Write (1) niche article relating it to every single state/province within your country.

* Write (5-20) articles relating your niche to every major city within your state or country.

Give yourself a 10-day to 6-week time span to produce localized sets of articles relating to your core expertise.

Make a plan to attract the traffic attention of the millions of people who use search engines every single day to find local solutions to business or personal problems or entertainment/sports desires.

You can do it! Get started today.

About The Author:

Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best quality original articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic EzineArticles.com/ EzineArticles.com/ expert author community. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links intact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: EzineArticles.com/submit/ EzineArticles.com/submit/

(c) Copyright - Christopher M. Knight. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Most affiliate marketers have experience it at least once. You go to check your site stats and notice that your site has gotten more than 5 times the amount of traffic you usually see in a month and all that brand new traffic has arrived TODAY. Your heart slams in your chest a little as you check the source and notice that it is StumbleUpon and all those crazed stumblers that have made your traffic go through the roof.

The problem is, and you’ll discover this the moment you start checking other stats, those Stumblers aren’t sticking around. The bounce rate nearly matches the incoming traffic and your Adsense account isn’t exactly feeling the StumbleUpon love either. No one seems to be clicking on those juicy Adsense boxes at all. So you check your affiliate accounts. Affiliate earnings are better than Adsense money any day, right? Darn it! Those Stumblers aren’t buying anything either! What is wrong with these people?

Nothing’s wrong with them actually. It’s just a different mindset and its common to all the social networks. Social networkers aren’t generally in a shopping mood when they are surfing Digg or Stumbleupon or Reddit. They’re in the mood to be entertained and they want to be entertained quickly. So they move on from one site to the next, barely stopping to read what you have to say as they kill time looking for a fix to their boredom.

This is a whole lot different than what you’ll see when your article links are clicked. Your articles are usually found during a search at one of the big search engines. The reader is looking for something specific and they’ve just found your article. If your article has managed to capture their interest and they actually click a link in your resource box, they are that much more likely to be interested in anything you might suggest for them to buy. They’ll also spend more time reading about the benefits and advantages of what you are selling so the bounce rate for article traffic is significantly lower than that social network traffic.

Sure, it often takes longer to see significant traffic from article marketing, but since that traffic also converts to paying customers at much higher rates than social network traffic, you need much less of it to fatten your wallet.

So stick to article marketing and leave the social network link baiting to the Flickrites and Youtubers. If you want to make money, slow and steady article writing wins the race.

Emma Martin loves to Stumble, but prefers writing articles to bring home the bacon. Article marketing is a brilliant traffic producer and method of pre-selling your buyers. For more tips on how to generate traffic and sales, visit her hubpages.com/hub/Use_Article_Marketing_to_Bring_Traffic_to_Your_Hubpages Article Marketing page to download a free copy of 77 Ways to Get Traffic. No email required.

Cursive writing flows across the paper like a magical song reverberating through the strings of a harp. Cursive lettering is more difficult than block lettering (or casual style writing). Lines, loops, spirals and swirls work rhythmatically in slants and rollercoaster hoops.

The formality of cursive writing was used in professional correspondence before the development of the typewriter in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Cursive connected words in a single stroke are quite distinctive from “printing” or block lettering. “Joined up writing” is a common phrase for cursive writing in British English. “Running Writing” is the term sometimes used in Australia.

There are different types of handwriting styles in two categories:

• Manuscript (print)

• Cursive

I remember during first and second grades, using the white tablet paper sectioned by solid blue and red lines, with dashes of a blue line running through the middle of the two. The area between the line of dashes down to the solid red line at the bottom of the section was the perimeter for small letters. The range between the solid blue top line and solid red bottom line was the designated area to write capital letters. The continuous development in personal penmanship brought a sense of pride in your written work.

Let’s step back into history for a moment and examine the signatures on the Declaration of Independence, signed by members of Congress on July 4, 1776. Notice how the printing of this document flows with influences from a combination of Cursive, Script, Old English and Manuscript lettering. Frequently, I always heard a phrase when someone made a request for my signature, they’d ask for my “John Hancock.” No one could ever give me an explanation on the origins of this saying, so I came up with my own summation. After looking at the image of the Declaration of Independence, the one signature that pops out at me located in the middle of the bottom portion of the document was that of John Hancock. Perhaps his creative and bold style brought forth some bantering from his colleagues. But if you look closely at each individual signature, it is clearly evident that these Congressional members were extremely meticulous about their stately penmanship.

With the advent of computers, cursive writing became unstandardized across different school systems in a variety of English speaking countries. It seems like handwriting skills are declining primarily due to the convenience and assortment of fonts stored on computers. Anyone can combat that claim by fine tuning your handwriting when you practice slanting your letters consistently and make the letters continuous. The partnership between pen and paper are used as an avenue to promote personal writing expressions, just like a paintbrush is to canvas – allowing the hand to sway and glide with creativity.

Many people look to re-popularize great and monumental things from the past that have been instrumental in the progression of modern technology and human development. We often hear this saying: “Everything old is new again.” This is clearly evident as we see car manufacturers going retro in their body styles, fashion trends rotating full circle, today’s commercials are using many popular songs from artists of yesteryear and anything vintage is a collector’s haven!

Now-a-days, “rarity” is an asset. Some creative traditions like cursive writing should not be deemed as becoming completely blasé. Despite the fact that cursive writing lost its popularity due to the lack of demand and modern technology, why not sit down and take time to rediscover the elegance and personal satisfaction of what this invaluable talent has to offer. Who knows if cursive writing will become retroactive? You certainly wouldn’t want to be left in the dark if it does.

Kym Gordon Moore has over twenty six years of writing experience throughout her corporate career, in various industries from fashion and special event coordination to marketing, public relations and sales. She is intrigued by creative handwriting and many of her articles, essays, short stories and poems appeared in a variety of magazines, newspapers, ezines and anthologies. kymgmoore.com kymgmoore.com Kym’s email is mailto:kymwrites@kymgmoore.com kymwrites@kymgmoore.com.