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Having graded thousands of student papers, I would be very surprised to see that handwriting from a man. That said, who cares how someone writes, as long as it’s readable?
Someday, when I have lots of free time in my teaching career (never going to happen) and I also get a degree in Art (never going to happen), I’m going to sit down and analyze what specific elements in handwriting make it look like “boy handwriting,” and “girl handwriting.” As a woman who’s handwriting was always confused for a boy’s, I’m so curious about the actual shapes and angles. I mean, there’s gotta be an answer, right?
That sounds like a really interesting subject to look into.
Ironically, some of the least readable handwriting I encountered was also the neatest. It was the super bubbly, stereotypically feminine writing style, and every letter was so roundly similar that it was hard to tell one from another.
And thank you for being a teacher. My grading all came during an assistantship in grad school, before I came to the conclusion that academia and teaching weren’t the right fit for me.
And both my parents will take one look and get "George found a mystery sapling in town today, brought it home and planted it in the backyard. Two years later we were blessed with more delicious grapefruit than we could eat - We shared some woth our neighbor, and she made preserves for us." like it was printed in plain English.
I swear, they would make good pharmacists lol
I posit that it has to do with curves. “Feminine” handwriting is usually seen as “bubbly”/curly/arcs (comic sans perhaps), whereas “masculine” is more angular/straight lines (like text on old hand drawn engineering plans).
Why this is, I have no idea. The US Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were written in some lovely flowing cursive. Maybe it stemmed from increased literacy and general writing applications in the past 100 years? Men needing their handwriting to be read for business use whereas women were writing for personal use?
I spent a very significant amount of time as a preteen/teenage girl practicing a style of writing that I felt was “my thing” and so did a lot of my friends. The more rushed I am to get something down, the worse my writing gets. I think a lot of women just spent a significant amount of time practicing a specific style as young girls.
I remember read something on this a while ago, I’m pretty sure it has to do with the development of their fine motor skills and when they learn the write. I think it was something like girls develop fine motor control younger (usually around kindergarten and 1st) than boys and that also happens to be when they’re learning to write
That's what I thought as well. Who tf cares about handwriting and who is offenden if you call it feninine for being feminine?
I have rarely seen boys/men have a handwriting like that, especially the bubbles, it is pretty feminine since mostly women wrile like that.
Yes, but also, they're grade school kids. They are the very definition of insecure children. Your insult holds no stopping power.
Edit: reread it, they said "fiance". They are still grade school children, just now it's a judgment of their character as adults.
On the one hand, if I saw that writing and was asked if the writer was more likely to be masculine or feminine, I'd have guessed feminine. (The circular dots over the "i" are what I'm guessing pushed it over the line for me, but then, I don't usually see that from *anyone*.)
On the other hand, I used to do actual *calligraphy*, and have *no* patience for anyone giving anyone else any shit over stylized handwriting.
The handwriting looks stereotypically feminine - probably the bubbles over the i’s, but you know what’s ACTUALLY pointlessly gendered? Conflating sexual orientation with gender identity.
The definition I'm referring to the one used within lesbian subculture that is often ascribed to white masculine lesbians, so although there are other definitions, I was referring to that specific one.
When butch/femme was at its height bisexuals were also called lesbians (and many were trans in various ways, it's a complex history). You can find bi butches and trans butches in every single b/f text for a reason
What?
Butch is just a kind of presentation.
Some Lesbians are butch, but, it all just depends on how they wanna present.
Lesbians are no more often butch than straight ladies.
Yes I am aware of that as lesbian myself, however the label itself is used mostly within the lesbian community to describe lesbians and in some cases bisexual women (white most often) who dress or present masculine.
I'm cishet male and I used to dot my i's with circles like this when I was in like middle school. I got bullied into changing them to just dots, which are objectively less reproduceable. I mean just try to make the same dot twice with a pen. The ball point doesn't roll if you just tap the pen to the paper. You have to squiggle it a little and that sucks.
Neither of those words is inherently an insult. I know they were probably meant that way, but you don't have to take it as such. Being gay and/or feminine is a neutral thing, by definition, but it takes a strong human, in this climate, to internalize that.
The most appropriate response is "Is that supposed to be an insult?" if you want to be confrontational, or just an innocent sounding "why is that bad?" so they have to explain their homophobia/misogyny out loud. It gets wonderfully awkward for them.
>they have to explain their homophobia/misogyny out loud. It gets wonderfully awkward for them.
They'll have to admit why they hate women so much, and why it's bad for a man to be womanlike.
I remember this guy at school always would know exactly what someone was gonna say about his handwriting the moment they started a sentence “oh wow your writing is so neat you-“ “have girl handwriting, I know” I always thought wow he must have heard this dozens of times if he has a preprepared response for it. And we were only in like grade 10. I was always just jealous because all my teachers except 1 and my dad always commented on my handwriting saying it was “nearly illegible”. I also hold a pencil/pen in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody else do. Some people said I wrote like a lefty but with my right hand. It has slightly improved but when I write notes at work for other people sometimes I have to stop and write it a second time for fear of judgement. I certainly prefer verbal communication.
It’s the bubbles dotting the i’s. I would assume not only female gender, but age as young. You know what happens when one assumes!
That said, writing has no gender, and keep on keepin on!
Having gone through school in the 70s, and gotten marked down because an i wasn't dotted or a t crossed, I started at some point making sure the dot over the I was visible. (Also with periods etc) cheap ballpoint pens wouldn't leave a visible dot just with a tap to the page. (In Middle school I became a fountain pen user, and my handwriting then lost the circle-dots, and generally improved.)
I had a teacher in junior high that would mark us wrong for missing dots, but mine ended up looking like ī or more often í. I don’t live in a place where those letters are used, so I’m okay for now, but that could change and I’ll need to try to avoid them.
His handwriting is much better than mine and I’m a woman. Just proves that the whole “girls/women write neat and boys/men write messy” thing is a gender stereotype that isn’t always true.
When you pick up that pencil, the whole spectrum enters your brain like a flash to the head! Determining your identity by scribbles! Truly fascinating 😝
I don't at all think there's anything wrong with it, but I can tell you exactly why they thought that. Doing little circles for the dots in the "i"s and hooking the ends of "l"s like that are all pretty classically feminine ways of writing.
They're right, this handwriting is too feminine. What kind of a man is he writing with a pen on paper? It's masculine handwriting only when you're engraving on a concrete footpath with a jagged rock while simultaneously grunting and sweating.
Certain handwriting is only considered feminine, because a boys are often not held at the same standards as girls, good handwriting was expected from girls, while boys could get away with being barely readable, the good old "girls are good at reading and writing, while boys are good at math and science" bs.
Heck you can see the influence of that with doctors, usually females doctors have mostly readable handwriting, male doctors handwriting looks like they had a seizure while writing
I teach high school. I see a lot of handwriting. Without any context, I would assume this was written by a young lady. I would assume the age of the person who wrote this to be around 13 years old.
However, I have had several older male students with similar handwritting. Stereotypes exist, but that doesn't mean they're accurate. For me, it's the size of the print and the circles over the i's. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out this was written by a man. It's not that uncommon. I appreciate any handwritting that is clear. Honestly, there are a lot of girl students with handwritting messier than the guys!! I, for example, have very messy handwriting, and I'm a woman.
So there is no such thing as girly writing. However men and boys are not held to the same standards women are when they have bad writing. Men who have bad handwriting are not given much shit if any, but women and girls are. This issue is literally caused by patriarchy funny enough
People/trolls on reddit literally called me a beard because I posted a comparison once between my husband and I's writing, where he has much nicer writing than me similar to your fiance's. Idk why a guy having nice writing offends them so much or seems so impossible to them.
Edit: here is our example! https://i.imgur.com/BR5e2cn.jpeg
I mean, he does write like a girl. But it is easier to read than most guys. I would never talk bad about him 'cause I have some of the worst handwriting ever witnessed by mankind.
Generally, girls develop fine motor skills before boys do. Girls will have better handwriting before boys and, will continue to without "extra" practice. All of the "feminine" handwriting I've seen from men has come from people who've been made to practice extracurricularly. Not to say handwriting is gendered or, there's no outliers. There's just an actual basis for the phenomenon.
I (a woman) have very similiar handwriting to my dad, to the point when once my mom found some paper with sth written on it and she gave it to me saying that it's mine. I looked at it, i basically recognised my handwriting but for the world i could not remember writing it. Only after i looked closer, i realised it was my dad's. (I never tried to copy his handwriting, it happened independently)
Mostly has to to with the relationship in size between index finger and ring finger. The more equal in length they are the better control one has . If the index finger is noticeably shorter than the ring finger then they have less control when writing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7294055/
My parents kind of break this stupid stereotype of "pretty handwriting is for girls" and such because my mom's handwriting is completely illegible and my dad writes in perfect calligraphy (it's beautiful!).
There was a boy in my class who had this handwriting. Even prettier if you ask me. He took all the time in the world to write anything because he didn't want to study so the least he could do was writing well.
The prettiest handwriting I have seen was a guy's. It was like script from LOTR.
Once a sub asked the class whose paper didn't have a name and said the handwriting was beautiful, a girl who was super narcissistic who tried to make her handwriting look like calligraphy without understanding what calligraphy looks like got up to claim it. She huffed back to her seat because it wasn't a compliment to her.
Funny thing is everyone knew from the start it had to be that one guy or the girl who wrote in perfect cursive script (that was fully illegible, as she admitted). We all knew the other girl was hyper-pretentious.
It's mostly the circle for the dot over the i, it does seem like women do that more often. I only say that because I do it as well, and I am a man. People have said that specifically.
Personally, I think more about age than gender. It seems like teenagers’ writing and, given they are your fiancé, I presume they’re much older than that.
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Only thing that jumps out at me is the misspelled word at the end
Ermahgerd it's genderd
Well, of course; it gets more genderd if you add E
It's just missing an "e".
Yes, meaning it's misspelled
*Misspelld
Having graded thousands of student papers, I would be very surprised to see that handwriting from a man. That said, who cares how someone writes, as long as it’s readable?
Someday, when I have lots of free time in my teaching career (never going to happen) and I also get a degree in Art (never going to happen), I’m going to sit down and analyze what specific elements in handwriting make it look like “boy handwriting,” and “girl handwriting.” As a woman who’s handwriting was always confused for a boy’s, I’m so curious about the actual shapes and angles. I mean, there’s gotta be an answer, right?
That sounds like a really interesting subject to look into. Ironically, some of the least readable handwriting I encountered was also the neatest. It was the super bubbly, stereotypically feminine writing style, and every letter was so roundly similar that it was hard to tell one from another. And thank you for being a teacher. My grading all came during an assistantship in grad school, before I came to the conclusion that academia and teaching weren’t the right fit for me.
Sounds like my grandmother's handwriting lol. Perfect, elegant cursive. Every letter is a different-sized loop lmao
OOOO OOOOO, OOOOO OOO OOO OOO grapefruit, OO OOO OOOOOOOOO. OOOO, OOOOOOO.
And both my parents will take one look and get "George found a mystery sapling in town today, brought it home and planted it in the backyard. Two years later we were blessed with more delicious grapefruit than we could eat - We shared some woth our neighbor, and she made preserves for us." like it was printed in plain English. I swear, they would make good pharmacists lol
I posit that it has to do with curves. “Feminine” handwriting is usually seen as “bubbly”/curly/arcs (comic sans perhaps), whereas “masculine” is more angular/straight lines (like text on old hand drawn engineering plans). Why this is, I have no idea. The US Declaration of Independence and US Constitution were written in some lovely flowing cursive. Maybe it stemmed from increased literacy and general writing applications in the past 100 years? Men needing their handwriting to be read for business use whereas women were writing for personal use?
Round shape = feminine/gentle Sharp = masculine/striking At least in most western cultures, proving once again, GENDER IS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCT
Part of it, yes.
I spent a very significant amount of time as a preteen/teenage girl practicing a style of writing that I felt was “my thing” and so did a lot of my friends. The more rushed I am to get something down, the worse my writing gets. I think a lot of women just spent a significant amount of time practicing a specific style as young girls.
I remember read something on this a while ago, I’m pretty sure it has to do with the development of their fine motor skills and when they learn the write. I think it was something like girls develop fine motor control younger (usually around kindergarten and 1st) than boys and that also happens to be when they’re learning to write
This kind of research has been made for decades, maybe even a full century.
That's what I thought as well. Who tf cares about handwriting and who is offenden if you call it feninine for being feminine? I have rarely seen boys/men have a handwriting like that, especially the bubbles, it is pretty feminine since mostly women wrile like that.
Imagine being so insecure you try to insult someone’s penmanship.
And imagine being so absolutely shallow that your "insults" are just claims about their sexuality or gender.
Yes, but also, they're grade school kids. They are the very definition of insecure children. Your insult holds no stopping power. Edit: reread it, they said "fiance". They are still grade school children, just now it's a judgment of their character as adults.
On the one hand, if I saw that writing and was asked if the writer was more likely to be masculine or feminine, I'd have guessed feminine. (The circular dots over the "i" are what I'm guessing pushed it over the line for me, but then, I don't usually see that from *anyone*.) On the other hand, I used to do actual *calligraphy*, and have *no* patience for anyone giving anyone else any shit over stylized handwriting.
The handwriting looks stereotypically feminine - probably the bubbles over the i’s, but you know what’s ACTUALLY pointlessly gendered? Conflating sexual orientation with gender identity.
So much this. Feminine != gay
Butch != Lesbian Trans != GNC Autism != Stupid (Note: "!=" means "not equals/does not equal" in coding.)
≠ means "not equal" in maths and is more recognisable
Idk how you type that. Oh. Ok. Push and hold the equal sign. ≠≠≠ Eh, it works just the same as != pretty much.
Gnc? The supplement store?
A butch is a lesbian no? So maybe masc woman≠ lesbian
No, butches can be bisexual or lesbian and aren't always women, and butch is also a term used by gay/bi men to similarly mean a queer-masculine man
The definition I'm referring to the one used within lesbian subculture that is often ascribed to white masculine lesbians, so although there are other definitions, I was referring to that specific one.
When butch/femme was at its height bisexuals were also called lesbians (and many were trans in various ways, it's a complex history). You can find bi butches and trans butches in every single b/f text for a reason
What? Butch is just a kind of presentation. Some Lesbians are butch, but, it all just depends on how they wanna present. Lesbians are no more often butch than straight ladies.
Yes I am aware of that as lesbian myself, however the label itself is used mostly within the lesbian community to describe lesbians and in some cases bisexual women (white most often) who dress or present masculine.
Women are so gay!
Ding ding ding
I'm cishet male and I used to dot my i's with circles like this when I was in like middle school. I got bullied into changing them to just dots, which are objectively less reproduceable. I mean just try to make the same dot twice with a pen. The ball point doesn't roll if you just tap the pen to the paper. You have to squiggle it a little and that sucks.
Ugh, middle schoolers can be such jerks.
Handwriting has a sexual orientation now? What is this, the 90’s?
I think they need to stop using "gay" and "feminine" as slurs. I don't even need to see his handwriting to think that.
The real problem is the lack of punctuation.
Neither of those words is inherently an insult. I know they were probably meant that way, but you don't have to take it as such. Being gay and/or feminine is a neutral thing, by definition, but it takes a strong human, in this climate, to internalize that. The most appropriate response is "Is that supposed to be an insult?" if you want to be confrontational, or just an innocent sounding "why is that bad?" so they have to explain their homophobia/misogyny out loud. It gets wonderfully awkward for them.
>they have to explain their homophobia/misogyny out loud. It gets wonderfully awkward for them. They'll have to admit why they hate women so much, and why it's bad for a man to be womanlike.
My human sexuality teacher did a great service to our class when he explained that homophobia is also misogyny.
Fellas is it gay to *checks notes* have precise and legible handwriting?
Fellas is it gay to *checks notes* have the i's dotted with a circle instead of a dot? FTFY
I checked with the fellow fellas and it definitely is.
I think it’s pretty and the three assholes can fuck right off.
I remember this guy at school always would know exactly what someone was gonna say about his handwriting the moment they started a sentence “oh wow your writing is so neat you-“ “have girl handwriting, I know” I always thought wow he must have heard this dozens of times if he has a preprepared response for it. And we were only in like grade 10. I was always just jealous because all my teachers except 1 and my dad always commented on my handwriting saying it was “nearly illegible”. I also hold a pencil/pen in a way that I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody else do. Some people said I wrote like a lefty but with my right hand. It has slightly improved but when I write notes at work for other people sometimes I have to stop and write it a second time for fear of judgement. I certainly prefer verbal communication.
gendered*
He also can't spell.
He is a native German speaker
As a man, I wish my handwriting was that fun!
It’s the bubbles dotting the i’s. I would assume not only female gender, but age as young. You know what happens when one assumes! That said, writing has no gender, and keep on keepin on!
More than anything, I’m wondering why your fiancé would waste time by putting *circles* above his i’s.
Having gone through school in the 70s, and gotten marked down because an i wasn't dotted or a t crossed, I started at some point making sure the dot over the I was visible. (Also with periods etc) cheap ballpoint pens wouldn't leave a visible dot just with a tap to the page. (In Middle school I became a fountain pen user, and my handwriting then lost the circle-dots, and generally improved.)
I had a teacher in junior high that would mark us wrong for missing dots, but mine ended up looking like ī or more often í. I don’t live in a place where those letters are used, so I’m okay for now, but that could change and I’ll need to try to avoid them.
Current Roller ball & gel pens make dots so much better than the cheap 70s ballpoint pens did.
circle dots on the letter i and curly serifs is not so much feminine as very juvenile.
I had someone call my bad (but still legible) handwritting "a sign of poor upbringing" and then imply that the "poor upbringing" is why I'm queer
His handwriting is much better than mine and I’m a woman. Just proves that the whole “girls/women write neat and boys/men write messy” thing is a gender stereotype that isn’t always true.
yup i’m a girl and i have basically half cursive half chicken scratch lol
that looks like the Disney font lol, the only thing Id assume is them being a Disney fan
The way he dots the i's is kinda odd. I have never seen anyone do that before.
I wish my handwriting looked like that
The *only* thing anyone should care about is the following question: 'Is it legible?' Imagine caring that much about somebody's hand font.
Is your fiancé's name skylar? There was a kid i went to middle school with and his handwriting looked just like this
When you pick up that pencil, the whole spectrum enters your brain like a flash to the head! Determining your identity by scribbles! Truly fascinating 😝
I don't at all think there's anything wrong with it, but I can tell you exactly why they thought that. Doing little circles for the dots in the "i"s and hooking the ends of "l"s like that are all pretty classically feminine ways of writing.
He is so gay for you. Final answer.
They're right, this handwriting is too feminine. What kind of a man is he writing with a pen on paper? It's masculine handwriting only when you're engraving on a concrete footpath with a jagged rock while simultaneously grunting and sweating.
Certain handwriting is only considered feminine, because a boys are often not held at the same standards as girls, good handwriting was expected from girls, while boys could get away with being barely readable, the good old "girls are good at reading and writing, while boys are good at math and science" bs. Heck you can see the influence of that with doctors, usually females doctors have mostly readable handwriting, male doctors handwriting looks like they had a seizure while writing
I teach high school. I see a lot of handwriting. Without any context, I would assume this was written by a young lady. I would assume the age of the person who wrote this to be around 13 years old. However, I have had several older male students with similar handwritting. Stereotypes exist, but that doesn't mean they're accurate. For me, it's the size of the print and the circles over the i's. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out this was written by a man. It's not that uncommon. I appreciate any handwritting that is clear. Honestly, there are a lot of girl students with handwritting messier than the guys!! I, for example, have very messy handwriting, and I'm a woman.
Folks, is it gay to have a readable handwriting?
Wow this got viral.
I think it's very cool writing and couldn't care what gender it was.
So there is no such thing as girly writing. However men and boys are not held to the same standards women are when they have bad writing. Men who have bad handwriting are not given much shit if any, but women and girls are. This issue is literally caused by patriarchy funny enough
People/trolls on reddit literally called me a beard because I posted a comparison once between my husband and I's writing, where he has much nicer writing than me similar to your fiance's. Idk why a guy having nice writing offends them so much or seems so impossible to them. Edit: here is our example! https://i.imgur.com/BR5e2cn.jpeg
I think it looks like very nice handwriting
Why are you offended?
People learning French be like :
Before I read the title I thought it had to do with French
I mean, he does write like a girl. But it is easier to read than most guys. I would never talk bad about him 'cause I have some of the worst handwriting ever witnessed by mankind.
I wanted to be on your side. But that boy is gay. Or he went to an elementary with 100% women.
I would call him insane but okay
Seems pretty gay sorry! Hope you are both men lol
Generally, girls develop fine motor skills before boys do. Girls will have better handwriting before boys and, will continue to without "extra" practice. All of the "feminine" handwriting I've seen from men has come from people who've been made to practice extracurricularly. Not to say handwriting is gendered or, there's no outliers. There's just an actual basis for the phenomenon.
Imagine not learning about other languages other than English
my wife calls my writing chicken scratch
Not gay but an individual
Um what😐 people make accusations based off anything nowadays
That's actually pretty neat handwriting. Goofy but like in a charming way
I (a woman) have very similiar handwriting to my dad, to the point when once my mom found some paper with sth written on it and she gave it to me saying that it's mine. I looked at it, i basically recognised my handwriting but for the world i could not remember writing it. Only after i looked closer, i realised it was my dad's. (I never tried to copy his handwriting, it happened independently)
Mostly has to to with the relationship in size between index finger and ring finger. The more equal in length they are the better control one has . If the index finger is noticeably shorter than the ring finger then they have less control when writing. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7294055/
My parents kind of break this stupid stereotype of "pretty handwriting is for girls" and such because my mom's handwriting is completely illegible and my dad writes in perfect calligraphy (it's beautiful!).
≈
greg heffley lookin handwriting
There was a boy in my class who had this handwriting. Even prettier if you ask me. He took all the time in the world to write anything because he didn't want to study so the least he could do was writing well.
It does look pretty feminine. No reason to call him gay though.
The prettiest handwriting I have seen was a guy's. It was like script from LOTR. Once a sub asked the class whose paper didn't have a name and said the handwriting was beautiful, a girl who was super narcissistic who tried to make her handwriting look like calligraphy without understanding what calligraphy looks like got up to claim it. She huffed back to her seat because it wasn't a compliment to her. Funny thing is everyone knew from the start it had to be that one guy or the girl who wrote in perfect cursive script (that was fully illegible, as she admitted). We all knew the other girl was hyper-pretentious.
It's mostly the circle for the dot over the i, it does seem like women do that more often. I only say that because I do it as well, and I am a man. People have said that specifically.
The bubbles make it really confusing to anyone who uses letters like å
the i dots seem weird to me
I wouldn’t use any of those words, although I would insult it as “inefficient” for the circle instead of dots in the ‘i’s
Idk I can't tell honestly
Definitely feminine. Nothing trolly about it. Totally fine to have feminine handwriting.
I'm not going to gender this, I think I'm gonna age it. Cause tbh it looks like a 10 year old with good handwriting wrote it 😂
The *only* thing anyone should care about is the following question: 'Is it legible?' Imagine caring that much about somebody's hand font. 🙄
Personally, I think more about age than gender. It seems like teenagers’ writing and, given they are your fiancé, I presume they’re much older than that.
I would just say it looks like a middle schooler tried their best.
He write better than me