On Fletters & handwriting
The Economist has a special issue on hand writing recently. It cost ££ so in summary the point is that many people now take notes on electronic devices rather than write by hand.
I plead guilty. The only things that I write down are shopping lists (when I remember) and notes from virtual meetings which just supplement the electronically available slides.
Before laptops and tablets etc I did hand write fletters the problem being that my handwriting is far from legible. Along with the beard its one of the few things I have in common with Karl Marx
In 1862 Karl Marx, short of money as usual, applied for a job as a railway clerk.
His command of the English language was not an issue but his writing was.
He wrote in very small, and even for the period, hard to decipher script.
He was turned down for the job because of his handwriting- not something likely to be an issue in the electronic age of 2023.
It later caused Engels problems when seeking to go through and publish some of Marx’s manuscripts after his death.
For research historians now, with reading hand written letters and documents increasingly less common in the present day, reading archive material written in pen is I suspect becoming increasingly difficult. In fact it’s surprising the Tories haven’t started a culture war on it
*picture courtesy of socialist historian Marcello Musto
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