1. Is your penmanship world class?
2. Scribble way to success - Enter the World Handwriting Contest
3. Handwriting horror stories - consequences of bad penmanship
4. Undeciperable Scribbling can be a pain
5. Doctors can now loose license for a bad scribble in two states
6. Writing contest for physicians - the best prescription
7. The handwriting doctor

 

Think you have the best handwriting in the world?

Then prove it, say organizers of an annual handwriting contest that started
in Nebraska, but is now branching out to accept entries from around the
globe. 

The World Handwriting Achievement Contest - formerly known as the Annual American Handwriting Competition - has turned to the Internet to help
promote legible handwriting throughout the world, said Kate Gladstone, a
co-director of the contest who lives in Albany, N.Y.

"Americans aren't the only ones who scribble, so we decided to make it an
international competition," Gladstone said.

Entrants are split into five age groups, ranging from children 8 and under
to seniors 50 and up. There is a $1 fee to enter, which will be used to help
purchase prizes for each age category as well as sponsor handwriting
research, Gladstone said. Some prizes, including a calligraphy-pen set and
several handwriting books, have been donated by corporate sponsors.

For now, entries must be in English. But in the future, the contest may
decide to have contestants copy texts from different languages, she said.
The entry deadline is Feb. 28.

Contest co-director Thomas Hutson, who originally started the contest, is a
Nebraska native and former Foreign Service diplomat who lives in Thurman,
Iowa. 

Hutson, who has traveled internationally for nearly four decades, said the
power of the written word is a worldwide phenomenon. Computers, e-mail and
the Internet have actually strengthened that influence, he said.

"But have you ever received a really good love letter over the computer? Or
typewritten?" Hutson said. "There is something that happens when pen is put
to paper, something emotional that moves from the heart and soul down the
arm, through the pen onto the paper."

But doesn't using the Internet to promote a handwriting contest seem
somewhat ironic? 

It might, Hutson said. "But why not? I would do it any way I can," he said.

The Web site lists rules, contest history and several choices of sample
texts for contestants to copy. Obviously, all entries must be mailed,
Gladstone said. 

Hutson started the Nebraska competition in 1991 as a memorial to his mother,
Eva Nielsen Hutson, of Red Cloud, Neb., and Omaha, who died in a car
accident in 1984. She had won handwriting awards as a schoolgirl and loved
to send letters, her son said.

The first contest had more than 7,000 entries, he said.

Over the years, the competition grew into the Annual American Handwriting
Competition, then separated from the Nebraska contest. Julie Agard at the
University of Nebraska at Kearney continues to run the annual Nebraska
handwriting competition, Hutson said.

The contest has several other connections with the Midlands.

All of the entries are mailed to Hutson's home in Thurman, and the contest
organizers gather there each year to do the judging. In addition, two of the
judges, Daniel North and Dottie Knudsen, own a calligraphy and copper-plate
design business in Harlan, Iowa, where they also live.

A couple of weeks ago, I agreed to help a friend stuff envelopes in their attempts to adopt a child.  They were sending out 2500 letters to doctors in the area.  Last week, this friend asked me if I could bring my calligraphy pens and letter their names ...

... I get there . . . the folder covers were nicely pre-cut.  My friend didn't really take the time to go over what she wanted . . . "whatever you decide will be just fine."  sigh.

I did a few practice runs ... The simple line I was to letter was "Hi! We're the Westbergs!"

That's how I thought they spelled their name.  When I looked at her handwriting, though, it really looked as if it were "WestbUrgs!"  I hadn't done any official ones yet, so I made a big X mark through the "e" of my sample and wrote "u".  I thought I had been mispelling it all these years.

I got 14 done when my friend came in to check up on me and you guessed it ... their name is spelled with an "e"!  I pointed out her handwriting and she admitted that it did indeed look like a "u" and that it looked nothing like the "e" in "We're" that she had also written.

Fortunately, they had plenty of paper left....

Oddly enough, the physicians' lobby which opposed the legislation gave 
this as their major reason: the fact that a number of "problem" areas exist 
in medicine, and that this legislation doesn't address all of those areas.) A Washington-state friend, who got a chance to look at the transcripts of the session, has described them to me as "funny."

 For instance, one cardiologist (also serving, at the time, as a Washington-state senator) opposed the bill  - even though admitting in the same speech that his own and other MDs' poor handwriting has repeatedly caused patients not to improve - because mending MDs' poor handwriting won't mend all the other things that cause patients not to improve.)

Doctors don't like legislation that would require them to write prescriptions legibly
by Rebecca Cook 
The Associated Press - Saturday, February 05, 2000
Page: A9 

OLYMPIA - Can you read your doctor's handwriting? More importantly, can your
pharmacist? 

A bill being considered in the state House would require doctors to write prescriptions legibly. Pharmacists say it could save them time and possibly save patients' lives by reducing medication confusion. 

It's a safety issue," said Amy Kiesel, a third-year pharmacy student from Seattle. "You can kill somebody so easily. It just needs to be legible so a normal person could read it." 

Doctors are fighting the bill, saying there's no proof that poor penmanship is to blame for medication mistakes.

"I think a problem does exist with penmanship," said Dr. John Gollhofer, president of the Washington State Medical Association. 

Gollhofer said prescriptions should be legible, but he said House Bill 2798 "is not going to solve the problem of medical errors." 

Pharmacists say sloppy penmanship can kill. In October, a jury in Odessa, Texas, ordered a cardiologist, a drugstore and a pharmacist to pay $450,000 to relatives of a man who died of a heart attack after the druggist misread the doctor's handwritten prescription. 

But at the very least, pharmacists say, they waste a lot of time tracking down doctors to figure out exactly what some prescriptions say. The problem is widespread: Each issue of the monthly "Pharmacy Times" magazine includes a page called "Can You Read These Rx's?" with prescriptions written in scrawls that defy deciphering. 

In Washington state, complaints about pharmacy dispensing have risen steadily
to a total of 417 last year, according to the state Board of Pharmacy. There's no
count of how many of those complaints involved pharmacists misinterpreting messy
handwriting on a prescription, but Don Williams, pharmacy board executive
director, says he thinks poor penmanship is a "serious problem."

As an example, he points to the drugs Prilosec, an ulcer medication, and Prozac,
an antidepressant. Two very different drugs, but their names can look alike when
scrawled hurriedly on a piece of paper.

In 1999, the board received 25 complaints of patients mistakenly getting Prilosec
when they needed Prozac, or vice versa.With all the look-alike drug names out
there - Cerebyx for seizures and Celebrex for arthritis is another example - one or
two letters can make a huge difference to patient health. 

The bill originally introduced in the House Health Care Committee would have
required doctors to hand-print, type or computer-print their prescriptions. But
yesterday, the committee scrapped that in favor of a bill that simply requires
prescriptions to be "legible to the pharmacist filling the prescription . . .
legible means capable of being read and
understood." 

The concern was we were being overly
prescriptive," said Rep. Tom Campbell,
R-Roy, Pierce County, who offered the
substitute bill. "What we want is
something legible."

The substitute bill passed out of
committee yesterday afternoon, beating a
deadline for bills to move out of
committee. 

Rep. Shay Schual-Berke, D-South King
County, voted against the bill.
Schual-Berke, a cardiologist, said she
plans to offer an amendment that would
call for a comprehensive study of medical
mistakes. The state medical association
argued that there are many contributing
factors in medical mistakes that the
Legislature is not addressing.

That may be true, Campbell said, but "this is something very simple we can do right
now - we don't need to study it."

(By the way, the bill eventually passed ... by a narrow margin ... now,  MDs in the state of Washington can lose their licenses if they don't write legibly.)

This would be a good CEU course.

The signers, as best we could figure out, are:

_First column:_

Penny Fmd
Juz BCnhp
BeBe
Louie Eipl
July Biggest
Jm Sholewsky
Rod Blegojeril
W Cwoop
Baby Lhun
Ji Lmmml 

_Second column:_
Dizer Dwbin
Puuu Mummyello
Jim V. Cortezzz
David D. Phelps
!M!
Henry Hyde
Jilud Meelut
Retn G. Thagild
Bill Barrett

                 Y kant get a lot ov the abuv characters on my (standard US, Y think) windows
                 keyboard.
                 Y doent noe if Doug's option/Alt key is same as my alt key. Y aulso doent
                 noe whot sistem Doug has.
                 Y get the uthr asci chars by holding down alt, and keying in the numerikal
                 koed on the keypad.
                 Y get
                 129 ü thru 145 æ thru 168 ¿
                 but Y kant find: alfa, theta, thorn (þ ), eth(ð ). {theez wer kut and
                 paestd)
                 Am Y duing sumthing rong, or is that komon behaevior?

                 There are of course a lot ov IPA simbols availabl in Word, uezing Lucinda
                 sans unicode, but thats not asci, nor availabl to my emael softwaer

Write On: Internet Expands Penmanship Event's Reach

BY VERONICA ROSMAN
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER 

LINK » Handwriting Contest 
 

Think you have the best handwriting in the world? 

Then prove it, say organizers of an annual handwriting contest that started in Nebraska, but is now branching out to accept entries from around the globe. 

The World Handwriting Achievement Contest - formerly known as the Annual American Handwriting Competition - has turned to the Internet to help promote legible handwriting throughout the world, said Kate Gladstone, a co-director of the contest who lives in Albany, N.Y. 

"Americans aren't the only ones who scribble, so we decided to make it an international competition," Gladstone said. 

The Write Stuff
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Send in your entry: World Handwriting Achievement Contest, P.O. Box 121, Thurman, IA 51654-0121. Not online? Write Jim Williams at 927 Trimble Place, Sagamore Hills, OH 44067. 
Entrants are split into five age groups, ranging from children 8 and under to seniors 50 and up. There is a $1 fee to enter, which will be used to help purchase prizes for each age category as well as sponsor handwriting research, Some prizes, including a calligraphy-pen set and several handwriting books, have been donated by corporate sponsors. 

Contest co-director Thomas Hutson, who originally started the contest, is a Nebraska native and former Foreign Service diplomat who lives in Thurman, Iowa. 

Hutson, who has traveled internationally for nearly four decades, said the power of the written word is a worldwide phenomenon. Computers, e-mail and the Internet have actually strengthened that influence, he said. 

"But have you ever received a really good love letter over the computer? Or typewritten?" Hutson said. "There is something that happens when pen is put to paper, something emotional that moves from the heart and soul down the arm, through the pen onto the paper." 

But doesn't using the Internet to promote a handwriting contest seem somewhat ironic? 

It might, Hutson said. "But why not? I would do it any way I can," he said. 

The Web site lists rules, contest history and several choices of sample texts for contestants to copy. Obviously, all entries must be mailed, Gladstone said. 

Hutson started the Nebraska competition in 1991 as a memorial to his mother, Eva Nielsen Hutson, of Red Cloud, Neb., and Omaha, who died in a car accident in 1984. She had won handwriting awards as a schoolgirl and loved to send letters, her son said. 

The first contest had more than 7,000 entries, he said. 

Over the years, the competition grew into the Annual American Handwriting Competition, then separated from the Nebraska contest. Julie Agard at the University of Nebraska at Kearney continues to run the annual Nebraska handwriting competition, Hutson said. 

The contest has several other connections with the Midlands. 

All of the entries are mailed to Hutson's home in Thurman, and the contest organizers gather there each year to do the judging. In addition, two of the judges, Daniel North and Dottie Knudsen, own a calligraphy and copper-plate design business in Harlan, Iowa, where they also live.