Friday, November 14, 2008

A case of bad handwriting


The Bombay High Court on Thursday pulled up a doctor for bad handwriting. A handwriting expert, explaining to the court why doctor's write in a bad hand, said: "Their mind works faster than their hand, that's why they have bad handwriting." The court sought an affidavit from the doctor, a radiologist, that she would henceforth write reports in good handwriting.
That doctors generally write prescriptions in a hand that is legible only to themselves and the chemists is quite known. And the risk that poses is not taken seriously neither by the doctors nor the general public is a very alarming issue. It would cost someones life.
Journalists too have the problem of bad hand. Well I should not generalise. I have a bad hand. It poses a problem every time I have to sign a cheque. Four months ago when the newspaper I am working with wanted to open a salary account for every employee with HDFC we found to our horror that each time we sign our sign was slightly different from the one done just a few signs earlier. The agent was at his wits end. The problem I think is our adapting to the computer world and hardly putting anything in black and white.
My daughter can write better than I. I have also faced this problem and my signature tends to look like that of a child's. All those years spend in cursive writing in cpoy books never helped. But now I manage to get away in the banks for I hardly sign a cheque what with ATM making life so easy. I am yet to get used to Internet transactions fearing identity theft, but every day I promise myself I will soon do that too.

No comments: