Re: “Ballot question on legal pot hinges on signatures like these” (Page A1, April 3):

It’s beyond me how in the world signatures appearing on nomination papers – or any other important papers requiring one’s personal signature as receipt, acknowledgment, proof, etc. – can be read as true by handwriting experts, or anyone.

I’ve recently been looking over nomination paper signatures, which also require a printed name of that signature. Horrible! Have we forgotten how to do cursive? Have we forgotten how to print? The terrible signatures I’ve witnessed, and the coinciding printed name, are both unreadable!

It is definitely very easy to type or text, but how does a computerized signature prove it is mine? And now we sign our names with our fingertips. That doesn’t look like my signature!

Many school systems are now opting out of teaching students the art of writing in cursive. I remember practicing hours on end to get my cursive letters angled correctly, and that lower-case letters were half the size of upper-case ones. We took pride in our penmanship in the public schools I attended.

Our grammar is at a real low, and we’ve stopped using punctuation. These are just a few niceties of being a civil society. Please teach kids how to write in cursive. They’ll then have pride in displaying nicely handwritten signatures on important documents.

Barbara Britten

Shapleigh

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