MODERN PENMANSHIP

Northern Advocate, 18 April 1932, Page 10

MODERN PENMANSHIP

PROBLEM POP TTTE BANKS,

SIGNATURES. IN SCRIPT,

Are signatures in script writing legal? This problem is facing bankers and others in Britain who depend on signatures for the authentication of documents. It may be that not many years lienee, says the “Daily Mail,” the fingerprints will be the only legal “signature.”

Script writing, winch is now generally taught in elementary schools, consists of the formation of print-like characters. The ideal is attained when all the children copy the example so exactly that there is no difference between their writing.

Already this system led to difficulties. A. girl wishing to make a withdrawal from a Post Office Savings Bank account wrote her name in script. The post office clerk declined to accept it.' “This,” he said, in effect, “may be your name, but it is not your signature. Anyone could write your name in those characters; there is nothing distinctive about them.” Before she was allowed to draw her money the girl had to remember all she had been taught to forget and reproduce her name in oldstyle writing. An official of the general post office

said: “Script writing is .becoming universal, and it robs ‘signatures’ of all distinctive character. The new fashion if maintained by children af-. or they leave school, is likely to

ipen np a serious problem for bankM's and lawyers.” Education officials of the London Minify Council explained that script

md been introduced so that young hildren should not have the difficuly of reading* one kind of lettering nd writing another.

“As a child progresses,” it was explained, “what is!known as joinscript is taught, that is, the letters are joined together instead of being separate. Still later the writing becomes cursive or flowing. But, of course, a number of people retain the script style. Many head teachers do all their official correspondent in script, and beautiful writing it is.”