
The Handwriting of Famous People - samclemens
https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/07/18/the-handwriting-of-famous-people/
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magic_beans
Frankly, I don't find the handwriting of Famous People any more interesting
than the handwriting of the Non-Famous.

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ryanianian
That's somewhat the point. It humanizes these "famous people" by showing that
their actual "work" (literally in the case of Newton and others) wasn't that
different from anyone else's.

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trentmb
Everybody poops.

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dade_
I've been using a tablet with active stylus for a while now and wanted to
improve my handwriting, specifically to make it less tiring. I learned some
great pointers on this site, "Tips for improving your handwriting":
[http://paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html](http://paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html)

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unit91
Wow! Marie Antoinette's writing is a work of art. Beautiful.

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GeorgeRichard
I think the letter was written by someone else - the only part by Marie
Antoinette being the rather less attractive signature.

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unit91
Ah good call, didn't see that. Nevertheless, her scribe did an amazing job!

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mrhappyunhappy
Site takes ages to load on my 4g connection. What size images are they
pushing? Holy cow.

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Aloha
Notably, two examples on here were very clearly not in the famous persons
hand.

Marie Antoinette and Stephen Hawking.

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ryanianian
Why is it "very clearly" not theirs? Antoinette's is written with perfect-
looking calligraphy; I suspect she was capable of that. And ya, the Hawking
one is just his thumb-print but still kinda cool no-less and in a similar
spirit to the others.

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GeorgeRichard
Because the caption says "LETTER SIGNED TO FERDINAND IV, KING OF NAPLES,
VERSAILLES, SEPTEMBER 24, 1788" (I am quoting verbatim, not shouting) rather
than, for instance, the Proust example which is captioned "AUTOGRAPH
MANUSCRIPT DRAFT OF THE OPENING PASSAGE, CA. MARCH–APRIL 1913" where autograph
means written in the author's own handwriting.

