Hello! How's your handwriting?

Hello! Welcome back to school! I hope you had a refreshing summer and are ready to absorb a lot of learning this fall and winter. This semester, we will meet for English 2 Writing: Structure and Style.

In your future academic and professional work, you will be expected to produce typed, printed documents, and for that reason, it is desirable to use a computer to write, and preferably hold class in a computer room. However, there are not enough computer rooms available for every class that desires to use a computer room. Also, there are in fact some disadvantages as well as advantages to using a computer room for the class meetings.

For homework, you should try to produce typewritten documents whenever possible, but for writing assignments in class, and for "Rough Draft" types of writing, you may use your own handwriting. Please be sure that this handwriting is legible and accurate. I will not accept handwritten documents with improperly written letters such as an "o" written clockwise beginning and ending at the bottom; a "t" which is crossed before it is written, causing it to resemble a "p"; or a "d" which is written from the stem down. Being able to write English letters recognizably is a prerequisite of the course. For the purposes of review, you may want to look at this guide.

As you may know, the stroke order is important, as it is connected to how we write in faster, cursive style. Many people may have learned the wrong stroke order or formed bad habits due to the influence of their own writing system in their first language. I have some wrong habits myself regarding hiragana and katakana. Once formed, these habits are difficult to change. Also, the educational system may be at fault for eliminating the teaching of cursive writing in recent years. Most people under age 50 do not write in cursive style, and prefer to print. I also use a combination of mostly printing with a few cursive letters. Yet, you may find that learning to write cursively suits you, and also improves your printing, as it enforces the proper stroke order. Cursive writing has come back into style again recently for teaching children even in the first grade of elementary school. If you are interested in improving your cursive writing, see the lower-case (small letters) animations and stroke orders on this page!

The Jarman font, designed by Christopher Jarman based on 16th century scripts, has become a widely-used model in the British primary education system. You can download the Jarman font from his web page. I don't recommend it for papers, but only as a model for handwriting (actually, it's a cursive style of printing). Also, please read his vividly illustrated "12 Rules for Good Cursive Handwriting."

You may notice some small differences in how to write a G, an I, a J, a K, an M, a Y, and other letters. Sometimes there are two different styles of writing a letter in use. However, this does not mean that you are free to write every letter any way you like! Although some small variations are possible, as in Japanese, certain odd ways of writing letters are not considered acceptable or recognizable.

By the way, if you are not able to use the computers at school adequately enough, or if you do not already have a computer at home, I recommend that you obtain one for your personal use during your university years. If you use Windows or Linux, small ultra-mobile "netbook" computers such as the Asus Eee PC can be as cheap as ¥30,000 or less. Better budget models are available for around ¥50,000. If you prefer Apple Mac OS X, you can get a laptop computer which is less than a year old for around ¥100,000. As a student, a computer is more important --and cheaper-- than a cell phone. If you can manage to use your computer for 4 years, the cost I cited will come down to a negligible ¥20 to ¥70 per day (plus printer, ink cartridges, paper, internet connectivity, and other associated costs) and will save you a lot of time trying to find a public computer to use!