Children's handwriting is appalling nowadays. I visited our little village school last year on an open day, and the standard of written work was terrible. They seem to be printing letters in a variety of sizes, with capital letters in the middle of words, scribbles and crossings-out all over the place and virtually no connecting cursive lines at all. If a class of mine twenty years ago had turned in work like that it would have been ripped out and re-written during break! I suppose the explanation is that the older ones use laptops for nearly all their work, and seldom need to write with a pen. I reckon a fingerprint will serve as a signature in the future. Writing may become completely redundant.