惜哉——书法的消逝

Mourning the Death of Hand writing

1我已经不记得手写体的大写字母“Z”是如何写的了。剩下的字母我写得不是歪歪倒倒就是生硬呆板，我的字总是歪七扭八地斜向各处。这并非缺乏尝试。在小学里，有些女孩让人无法容忍，她们用粉红色铅笔画一个小小的圆圈来代替“i”上那一点，我就是那些女孩中的一员。我曾尝试了各种字体，曾经有段时期我甚至花时间去练习写双层的“a”，就是那种在许多字体中出现过的有突出部分的花体字。

1 I can＇t remember how to write a capital Z in cursive. The rest of my letters are shaky and stiff, my words slanted in all directions. It＇s not for lack of trying. In grade school I was one of those insufferable girls who used pink pencils and dotted their i＇s with little circles. I experimented with different scripts, and for a brief period I even took the time to make two-story a＇s, with the fancy overhang used in most fonts. But everything I wrote, I wrote in print.