Letters

This stems from a discussion I had with my brother on Friday, apparently I print all my letters wrong.

According to him, all letters are supposed to start at the upper left, no exceptions. No matter how cumbersome that makes it, that's how it must be done. The way I see it, if a letter can be made faster or more efficiently by starting at the bottom, then it's okay.

For example, I make an M by starting at the bottom left and making an uninterrupted stroke. Same for an N, one stroke, you're done the letter in no time. No doubled lines, no backtracking, just 1 line, 1 letter. Is this wrong?

We argued about other letters too. He makes an E by starting with the vertical line and filling in the horizontals from the top. I start at the top right and make a square C, then fill in the middle. He yelled at me for that, but I find making two strokes much more efficient than making 4. Kevin thinks I'm a freak for this too, seeing how he makes an L then fills in the horizontals going upwards.

Moving on to other letters, I make my As by starting at the bottom left, making the angle, then filling in the horizontal. For my Hs, I start at the top and make both verticals, then connect them. He makes both by making the left line, the horizontal, and then the right. Kevin makes his Hs like that, but does the As like mine, except he doubles the left line by starting at the top to make it.

I was talking to Kev about this, and my point of connecting the verticals was this: "The way I see it, if I have both of them there, it's a simple matter of making a line just long enough. If I was to make that horizontal first, my Hs would all be different shapes". I would seriously have no idea how long to make that horizontal line if I didn't have something to connect it to.

You wouldn't put up a support beam without something to attach it to, would you? Same deal here. Maybe I'm thinking about this a bit too practically, but I like some efficiency in my printing. If I can do it quickly and it looks right, who cares if I didn't follow your artificial method of doing it.

This from the guy who gets annoyed with web browsers that don't comply to standards. I'm invoking Kirkey's rule of being allowed to be hypocritical when it suits me. So there.

I noticed one funny thing I do. When I make a P, I start from the top and double the veritcal. When I make an R I start from the bottom and make a P, then trail a leg off it. I have no idea why I make essentially the same letter two different ways, none at all.

I have one final thought before I start rambling more than I usually do. Why does this matter? Why do we find each other's ways of making letters weird? I said it about my brother's, he said it about mine, Kevin said it about mine, I said it about Kevin's, but why does it bother us? Is it just because we can't stand something so familiar being made in a different way, or is it something deeper?

I'd like to know.