Poor Penmanship

I just got my tablet hooked up, so I felt I needed to draw/sketch/write something.

But what?

How about a little blog recognition of my readers?

Thanks for Reading Sonlight's Blog

As I looked at my scribbled message, I realized something: When my penmanship is legible, I like it. The slanted scrawl has personality. That, or it's just mere exposure effect.

But my handwriting hasn't always been very legible. In fact, it got so bad in high school and college that I had to resort to drastic measures.

I started taking notes in my own cipher.^*

A Luke Cipher Sample

Writing this way slowed me down enough that I had to be more precise than my perpetually slurred cursive. Slowing down allowed me to produce very legible results... if only I could remember the cipher and figure out what I was trying to spell later on. Misspelled words didn't look wrong in cipher, so mistakes were harder to catch.

This adaptation was unique to me among my classmates. I'd like to think that my confidence in adopting a new method of note taking had something to do with my homeschool background. I didn't feel the need to conform to the way you were "supposed" to take notes. I found a method that worked for me and ran with it.

May your children do the same!

So... did you figure out my secret message?

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Surrogate Father