The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting

by Anne Trubek

[wyvernfriend]

I was enjoying this until I hit p.50 "The most beautiful of these hands may well be Insular, developed in Ireland by Saint Patrick, who had learned half-uncial in Europe and brought it to Ireland in the latter half of the fifth century." the small postits came out and there's a "citation please" note on it. Because, even though she annotates almost everything else this one came out of nowhere.  Having studied Early Irish Script in college this is unfounded.  Patrick brought Christianity and Latin to Ireland and from that came the Insular script; Irish scribes are also supposed to have introduced spaces and some of the common abbreviations.  Plus, while the Book of Kells is in Insular Script and resides in Ireland, common scholarship attributes it to somewhere in Scotland.
 
So after this I took a lot of what she said with a grain of salt. It misses the modern calligraphy revival, the proliferation of calligraphy on Pinterest, the use of pseudo calligraphy in a lot of places and the new discoveries about things like journalling by hand, like Bullet Journals and the resurgence in fountain pens.  It's an interesting read but lacks a certain amount of true depth.