Synopses & Reviews
"Florey writes with verve." Slate.com
"Florey . . . rattles off crackling prose in a no-nonsense voice." The San Diego Union-Tribune
Steeped in the Palmer Method of handwriting she learned in Catholic school, Kitty Burns Florey is a self-confessed "penmanship nut" who loves the act of taking pen to paper. So when she discovered that schools today forego handwriting drills in favor of teaching something called keyboarding, it gave her pause: "There is a widespread belief that, in a digital world, forming letters on paper with a pen is pointless and obsolete," she says, "and anyone who thinks otherwise is right up there with folks who still have fallout shelters in their backyards."
Florey tackles the importance of writing by hand and its place in our increasingly electronic society in this fascinating exploration of the history of handwriting. Weaving together the evolution of writing implements and scripts, pen collecting societies, the golden age of American penmanship, the growth in popularity of handwriting analysis, and the pockets of aficionados who still prefer scribbling on paper to tapping on keys, she poses the question: Is writing by hand really no longer necessary in today's busy world?
Kitty Burns Florey is the author of Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of Diagramming Sentences. A veteran copy editor, she has also written nine novels and many short stories and essays. She lives in central Connecticut with her husband, Ron Savage.
Review
"Like many people over the age of 40, I still have a callused knobby excrescence on the third finger of my right hand, the place where pencils and ballpoints and fountain pens have been resting ever since I first began to learn the Palmer method of cursive handwriting. Kids no longer have this 'writer's bump,' since cursive isn't seriously taught any more. For the most part, young people born into the computer age can, by focusing hard, just about sign their names in longhand, but otherwise they rely almost entirely on printing or, more and more often, keyboarding. Today Truman Capote would have to quip: 'That's not writing, that's word processing.'" Michael Dirda, The Washington Post Book World (read the entire Washington Post Book World review)
Synopsis
Steeped in the Palmer Method of Handwriting she learned in Catholic school, Kitty Burns Florey is a self-confessed “penmanship nut” who loves the act of taking pen to paper. So when she discovered that schools today forego handwriting drills in favor of teaching something called
keyboarding, it gave her pause: “There is a widespread belief that, in a digital world, forming letters on paper with a pen is pointless and obsolete,” she says, “and anyone who thinks otherwise is right up there with folks who still have fallout shelters in their backyards.”
Florey tackles the importance of writing by hand and its place in our increasingly electronic society in this fascinating exploration of the history of handwriting. Weaving together the evolution of writing implements and scripts, pen-collecting societies, the golden age of American penmanship, the growth in popularity of handwriting analysis, and the many aficionados who still prefer scribbling on paper to tapping on keys, she asks the question: Is writing by hand really no longer necessary in todays busy world?
About the Author
Kitty Burns Florey is the author of
Sister Bernadettes Barking Dog: The Quirky History and Lost Art of DiagrammingSentences. A veteran copy editor, she has also written nine novels and many short stories and essays. She lives in central Connecticut.