For all the praise that I receive for impressive handwriting and immaculate paperwork, I thank my father for his upbringing. “Your written work is a visual signature of your personality,” he says, “while your penmanship is an impression of your thinking and your dedication; your precise presentation represents adroitness and care.”
He preaches what he practices. Written work should not only be neat but grammatically correct without spelling mistakes. In fact, he passed on his legacy through his arduous discipline. We spent hours improving my cursive writing: holding the pencil at the desired angle, minimal pressure on paper and hand nerves, smooth connected strokes, consistent lettering, perfect spacing, alphabet shapes and sizing, etc., with minimal use of an eraser. Think, plan and execute on paper is his Guru Mantra.
Pagination is another complementary essential feature of writing. Be it a notebook or register or loose sheets, before commencing, he taught me to mark page numbers: right-hand upper corner, odd numbers, and the last page number to be circled. Perhaps he wanted to curb the instinct to tear pages!
Pencil is another versatile tool I have inherited. I use it extensively. First drafts, brainstorming, mind mapping, etched on paper. Pencil comes in handy for proofreading also. A lesson ingrained: always use only pencil for textbooks. While reading, just underline the difficult sentence or mark the new word and look it up in a dictionary. Never defile a book with ink blots. All my books, be it a course book, a reference book or a novel, if I have read it, it is decorated with the lead.
The lessons drilled in my formative years–these subtle gestures have facilitated me in my vocation. I strive to write neatly, avoid cutting and overwriting. In our school days, we had erasers, but we were instructed to use them sparingly. It erases the error but leaves a dirty scar on the page.
As a teacher, evaluating a messy assignment full of cutting and overwriting or laden with scars of correction ink is definitely disheartening. I reiterate to Gen Z: if not flawless, at least be legible and presentable. Well, they cannot be entirely blamed. Writing has taken a back seat for the copy-paste generation.
As life transitioned from handwritten to digital text, life lessons upgraded to line spacing, justification, page layout and inserting page numbers. Well, autocorrect is a magnificent aid, yet we are all too familiar with the blunders it springs. Upbringing builds strong, binding roots which let you branch out, thrive, flourish and blossom in life.
Thank you, Papa.
Suruchi Kalra Choudhary
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