We are losing handwriting skills — and we’re now down to trying to save the last vestige of the artform

Dying art: writing by hand just isn’t required much these days

It has reigned supreme for centuries as proof of who we are. It is personal. It is used in letters of love and in legal contracts. I’m talking of course about the signature, which emerged with mass writing skills and is now being ruthlessly hunted into oblivion by the digital world. Men and women of Australia, help me save our signatures!

The other day I had to prove my identity by writing my signature in front of a bank teller, who had on record an electronic version on their screen. Like a criminal about to be caught, I started to panic. Could I now replicate a signature I created years ago?

My signature, rather like me, has evolved, aged, morphed, a bit battered and bruised by the vicissitudes of life but still vaguely recognisable over time. I look at my teenage signature and it was bright and perky, with each letter diligently articulated. But by my forties, time had wearied it; I was clearly looking to shave whole tenths of a second off my day by scrawling something indecipherable – a bit like a wavy line – between the “B” and the “d” in Bernard.

Back to my bank experience. I was concentrating so much on writing “Bernard” that when I got to my surname, I misspelt it. I forgot the letter “l” in Salt. I had a decision to make. Would I nonchalantly hand the form back as if to say, “This is how I spell my name” or would I say, “I’ve made a mistake, could I have another go, please?” I ran with the former. The teller didn’t blink; my flawed signature got through the security checks.

My father had a fancy style of handwriting. When he had to sign something his pen would at first hover above the signing spot, then his signature would be performed in a single glorious calligraphic motion that always delivered precisely the same outcome. The fact is, we are losing handwriting skills and we’re now down to trying to save the last vestige of the artform, the signature.

Frankly, I am surprised my bank still uses the signature as proof of identity. I know my PIN, my mother’s maiden name, my first pet’s name, the name of my best friend in primary school. I am who I say I am. I do not need to be put through the ignominy of writing in public and being forced to remember how to spell my surname.

At university I wrote essays by hand, to the extent that I had a callus on my index finger. Today, apart from shopping lists – where I spell everything correctly, by the way – I have no cause to write much at all. Definitely not entire sentences. Even the humble birthday card is no longer a platform for handwriting. These special days are now more commonly acknowledged via social media. I had to send flowers for a bereavement recently; even that is done online – with a personal note printed in a handwriting font.

You know how the Celts (or a derivative thereof) were driven out of England and France and ended up huddling on the edges of Ireland and Brittany? Well, I think the same thing is happening to handwriting. It is being mercilessly hunted to the edges of the civilised world. Not even the signature is safe from digitisation with the advent of the impersonal and pre-eminently forgettable PIN. Oh, how I loathe PINs and the security police who force you to change and complicate them every so often.

I have had one signature for more than half a century of writing, and though it has aged and eroded and corroded over time, it has remained a loyal and true servant of my intentions, an emissary of who I am. For I am, and I shall forever remain – at least, according to my bank – Mr Bernard Sat.