Gil by Norm Feuti for January 08, 2023

Geez, Frog Applause and The Real McCoy and Gil, all in it together.

My printing has always been rather lousy and hard to read. I’ve always had a problem with spaces between words. But I along with everyone up to now has developed our handwriting which is as individual as fingerprints. Plus a handwriting analyst can tell a lot about your personality from your handwriting. As for not using it anymore, they have a point, but I never used algebra in my life so why did I have to learn it?

I can barely even read cursive handwriting anymore

Cursive is much faster to do than printing, especially if you have a lot to write, such as taking notes in class. In fact, speed is the reason it was developed.

I’m torn on the subject of cursive. My boys had barely learned to print before cursive was foisted upon them. As a result, they both have atrocious handwriting. And, sometimes I think their time (and mine) would have been better spent learning more science or history than writing the upper case Q eighty or ninety times. On the other hand, it’s nice to be able to decipher old letters and documents.

✨Gil News (sad face)✨

For those of you who didn’t hear the news last week about Gil

From the creator’s website:

GIL Has Ended

Posted on January 1, 2023

It gives me no pleasure to announce that GIL has ended. The new management at The Providence Journal decided to stop carrying the feature at the end of 2022. While they gave no official explanation, I imagine it was a cost-cutting measure. Unlike their syndicated comics, I had no contract with the ProJo, so it was an easy cut to make. I suppose 10 years was a good run.

Thank you to everyone who read GIL over the years. I appreciate the love you gave the comic immensely. You can continue to read GIL comics in reruns on GoComics.

I used to have beautiful artistic handwriting. But nowadays, my hands cramp up when I try to do more than sign my name and I even make spelling mistakes because my hands won’t follow what my brain is telling them. Maybe it’s arthritis? But I think more likely it’s that I no longer write anything long-hand. And writing in script is an art, if it is to be beautiful. That’s why we all took handwriting in school and practiced over and over again. Interestingly, my Dad (until the day he died at 88) had penmanship that rivaled the Declaration of Independence document. But I think that’s because he continued writing in long-hand well into old age. But I now prefer typing on a laptop.

I know I’m old and stuck in my ways, but I refuse to do online banking, so I still write checks. You need to be able to write in cursive to write out a check.And for the younger generation that doesn’t know how to, and dont want to know how to write cursive, as far as I know you need to write your name in cursive for a credit card.

I’m so sorry Norm, that’s really unfair. I hope you’re able to keep creating for yourself and your fans in GoComics. If not, I hope for the best for you and yours.

In place of cursive, schools could teach calligraphy. It helps to perfect and discipline and give a sense of pride and perfection in hand writing.

I use it for writing letters by fountain pen. All my life I joked about printing like a 3rd grader, in my 30s I decided to take up some useless if beautiful skills, and penmanship was one of them.

I use my cursive all the time. I still remember learning it in 3rd grade. We spent the whole year on it, learning little by little, doing all of the exercises over and over until we mastered the letters. I love cursive.