National Handwriting Day–please take part!

Saturday, January 23rd is (so I just learned) National Handwriting Day. I’d like to expand that definition by calling it World Minority Script Handwriting Day, and I’d like to invite everyone to take part.

By Saturday morning, please post here (or email me at tim@endangeredalphabets.com) a photo of yourself or someone else writing in a minority, non-Latin, non-mainstream script, with a brief explanation of the who, the what, and the where.

Serious point: indigenous/minority/endangered scripts are more likely to be handwritten. They may have been though not commercially viable when printing was introduced; they may not yet be digitized for the same reason. But handwriting is a vital element in the history and development of scripts. It shows how the letters have grown to fit the movement of the human wrist; it shows cultural and even individual variants of expression and practice; it shows the dynamism and the drama of the act of putting thoughts down on paper/birch bank/horn/bamboo/sand/palm leaf/everything. Handwriting used to be called, simply “hand,” as in “She wrote in a fair hand.” Saturday celebrates that connection between the body and the letter.

If you personally don’t use a minority script, please pass this invitation along to someone who does. I’ll pull together a gallery of photos once the 23rd is over.

Thanks–and have fun with this!

Tim