08/10/2024
Hello to all! I seek a group effort to ensure correct public information about italic handwriting. Here is why:
The well-known magazine NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, in an article on handwriting and its history, claims that Secretary was immediately followed by Roundhand. (Italic never happened, I must suppose!)
Here’s the exact horrible passage — link and title follow. I am also attaching, to this message, a photograph of the offending passage.
——— [begin quoting erroneous matter] ———
“Secretary hand," the most popular early style of cursive writing common in England between the 15th and 17th centuries, mashed some letters together.
Next came "Round Hand," an elaborate style of calligraphy used primarily in official documents in France and England. As immigration to the British colonies and eventually the United States began in the 18th century, immigrants brought their preferred cursive styles, or "hands," with them. One of these, Copperplate, grew out of Round Hand and became a favorite of private writing masters who tutored many elite students. Technology helped, too:
When the fountain pen began replacing quills in the early 19th century, Copperplate cursive became easier and more accessible to the masses.
——— [end quoting erroneous matter] ———
The NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article in question is “WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO CURSIVE WRITING?”: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/cursive-writing-spencerian-palmer-method.
For those here who do not subscribe to the online NAT GEO, I can send you a PDF of the entire piece (and a photograph of the offending paragraph) if you ask me in Messenger.
Although large parts of the article are excellent, the error copied above must not pass unchallenged. ((What’s next? A history of the world in which thr year 1492 is followed immediately by the year 1776?)
Although the handwriting-related article at the link below is about a year old, I found it only yesterday. The worldwide reputation of the source (NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC) — together with the fact that its articles are often quoted and cited and shared as educational material for years and even decades after their publication date — makes it more important than ever that the strange and serious error enshrined they’re in must be countered. Even if, so late, we cannot persuade an editor to retract the error (photographed below), we can reach the author — a very prolific journalist who writes in particular abundance about topics runhistory — and motivate her to get things straight next time.
This needs response. I ought to respond — I must respond — but the enormity of this paragraph’s anti-historical slice-and-dice job has shocked and stunned me so that I cannot see how to manage the job entirely on my own: even though I have gathered (and share below) contact information both for NAT GEO’s Editor-in-Chief and for the reporter.
The piece contains are a few other (much smaller and less consequential) errors of factor or of implication — e.g., one paragraph mentions the UK’s National Handwriting Association in terms which strongly and falsely imply it to be an American organization — but these are less important to address. (When coverage of history, on many matter, hops blithely across an entire — and pivotal — era, this needs our first attention.)
The Editor-in-Chief of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, Mr. Nathan Lump (yes, that really is his name) can be reached at [email protected]
The reporter, Ms. Erin Blakemore (, can be reached through her domain — ErinBlakemore.com — which provides a contact page at https://erinblakemore.com/contact/ (as you will see from her site, she’s very prolific prolific, having written for several-score well-propelled magazines, many with an international leadership, and being also the author of at least one award-winning book on history.)
Contact-page communication forms are notoriously limited in permissible length of message — so, before writing this appeal. I’d spent some time trying to find an email address for her, too. However, I have been unable to find one. Any letter, therefore, needs to be short enough to fit into a web form, while stimulating enough to invite some thought and reply: as a reply from her will inevitably reveal her e-mail address (and thus permit further correspondence if advisable/needful). Whatever polemic gifts I may preen myself on, I know all too well tenseness is notoriously NOT one of mine: for I have been unable to cultivate successfully that near-essential.
Therefore, I am hoping that someone else here can write more briefly, can reach her thereby, and can then perhaps share her response and her e-mail address with the rest of us.
Ms. Blakemore and Mr. Lump need to hear, I think, from more than one person who knows a salient fact that has escaped their notice: in a field (handwriting) that’s evidently dear to Ms. Blakemore’s heart.
So I hope that you who read this letter can not only reach Ms. Blackmore through https://erinblakemore.com/contact/, but also e-mail Mr. Lump at [email protected] — then (dare I hope?) perhaps share, judiciously, that letter and any response that either or both of the two may care to make.
Sharing such a letter here, as a model. will help those of us who (like me) are less gifted at such things to write our own letters and to edit them well before sending — sharing her response, if any, would also be informative (because helpful because it will help in planning any future sallies of this sort, whenever others make significant and glaring errors of fact in this discipline. )
Since Ms. Blackmore features regularly in over 50 publications (or so I judge from what she has listed on her site in her CV), helping her to know just where she has greatly erred is likely to prevent future misrepresentations, on her part, about the same matter.
So I hope that any who read this letter can write to the person’s concerned, and can perhaps share this appeal with others of a like mind who may wish to do the same.
Do you know someone who can’t read cursive? To learn how to read cursive, you DON’T need to write that way too. ReadCursiveFast.com
