As I grew up, my parents always told me to not write too small. I continued to write small, perhaps because I had the typical low adolescent self-esteem, or because I just liked to write small. It looks neater anyway. Then, as I became older, I noticed that I had to fill out forms for everything from raffles to loans. I realized that I was right all along. Writing with small letters is advantageous. It's the only way to fit what you want to say into those ridiculously small lines or divided boxes. What's interesting is that sometimes the writing area is too small for my miniscule writing. This is especially disturbing when this happens on a form for a job or something important. I always wonder, "How do people with normal sized writing fit in their whole university name in this space" which is often half an inch wide? How am I supposed to abbreviate or am I supposed to use a microscope as I write?
With the computer age, some forms have gotten better, such as on Adobe .pdf files. But then there are those nasty forms on Microsoft Word where typing where the lines are inserts text and moves the lines over, thereby messing up the whole formatting of the form. (And we all know how easy it is to selectively change formatting where you want to on MS Word.) At least internet forms are usually easy to fill in especially with the auto fill in feature of web browsers. But then they sometimes ask for the secret code that bots can't read. Sometimes those are illegible and you have to repeat.
I wonder if anybody has ever figured out how many forms an average person fills out in a year. I'm guessing it's about a hundred times the number of passwords a typical person has to keep track of.
+ Atul
I write small, too. You know who has problems with small writing? Jackasses, that's who. Vive la tiny words!
Posted by: Joe | November 13, 2006 at 07:06 PM
Yes, viva la tiny words. It's good to know I'm not alone. And we save paper too!
Posted by: Atul | November 14, 2006 at 06:00 PM