So Anna and I were not paying attention in IPLE today and instead were practicing our signatures. Anna was enjoying my fountain pen, and I was struggling to make my signature more consistent (Anna had the opposite problem, hers was "too neat"). I thought it was funny though, that I was trying to make my signature more neat while she was trying to make her signature more messy, even though both of our signatures really fit our personalities. Signatures are very obvious badges of who we are, they represent us on legal documents and are just another level of personality on our names, which are already a big part of our identities (as I discussed here). Reasonably, I want my signature to be consistent and cool, with some nice swoopy-ness and the right amount of messy. I want it to reflect my personality, so it should be kind of big and maybe loopy. Importantly though, I want to get it good enough that I sign it the same way every time.
For me though, consistency isn't that easy, because even my handwriting has a decent amount of inconsistency. My handwriting depends on the pen I'm using, the paper it's on, my mood, lots of things. But my handwriting is definitely reflective of my personality. I like using a thick inky pen, and I have fairly slanted writing with strong vertical lines. When I'm done writing on a page it looks really imposing and illegible, with a lot of slanted lines that stand out prominently. It's a kind of quasi-cursive that's kind of loopy, very fluid, and pretty fast as well. But I can't seem to manage to reproduce that effect on my signature. My signature always somehow seems to be contrived, or too controlled, or too messy, or too something. It's never the same, and it's never really right.
While I'm still jealous that Anna's handwriting is so neat and pristine, I still like my handwriting. It's loose, it's fun, it's just a little bit aggressive, and I like to think it's very me. Thank goodness though that I don't have the practice that I did last year though, handwriting 3+ pages of notes a little faster than weekly for APUSH. That is an experience I'd rather not repeat.
LOL "really imposing and illegible"! I concur!
ReplyDeleteMy problem is that my signature is neater than my actual handwriting ergo it still isn't a good representation of me :0
My signature solidified when I bought my first house. There are a LOT of places to sign on a LOT of different documents. Some spots require full signatures and others just initials. I think it was the combination of the repetition of the full signature and seeing just the components of the signature (the initials) that gave me the best understanding of what my signature was and what I wanted it to be.
ReplyDeleteIt also helped that the person I was buying from commented that I had obviously never signed so many legal documents as I was very precise in my signatures early on. This quickly brought the issue to my mind and it's something I haven't had to think of much since then.