#[ visions of the three diamond siblings sitting around their newest houses' dining room table doing workbooks together sob ]

[espritdediamant]

𝓕 : My muse’s handwriting.

𓆩⟡𓆪 - memies symbol headcanon prompts [1/5] SUBJECT: HANDWRITING.

CATER'S HANDWRITING IS A PRODUCT of practice. As he moved around often as a child, his schooling was periodically interrupted. Due to this inconsistency, there were some measures taken by his parents to make sure that Cater didn't fall behind his age cohort when it came to educational milestones. One of these concerns was to ensure competency in writing. Cater made use of handwriting workbooks as a result, which his mother oversaw the completion of.

For the most part, there was very little effort or attention given to the cultivation of any particular handwriting style or signature features. The handwriting books taught a basic style of both print and cursive handwriting that Cater adhered to, but it wasn't militantly enforced to perfection by his mother. As long as his writing was competent for his grade level, his parents were happy with that. Thus, these workbooks served as a basic guideline, rather than a must-do. This resulted in the development of generally tidy and even style of handwriting.

HOWEVER, Cater's older sisters weren't as content and often needled him about the details of his writing to prevent it from being ugly or otherwise unappealing to look at. It was "collectively agreed" by the Diamond siblings (see: a 2-to-1 overruling) that cursive was the superior choice and, therefore, that's how they should all write because print-writing was sooo gauche. While the workbooks went to the wayside as Cater got older, his sisters continued to prod him here and there about his handwriting independently.

Even without his sisters' influence, though, Cater similarly preferred cursive lettering to printing, but rather than for an aesthetic reason, just because it was faster. Ultimately, he ends up blending both cursive and printing styles together—particularly notable with his uppercase letters, which follow a print style rather than cursive, because (again) it's faster. Cater writes without much of a lean or tilt to his handwriting, and letters following the first of a word have a tendency to jump up above the ruled the line. The size of his handwriting is negligible and depends on the paper rather than anything intentionally done for aesthetics or accessibility of writing/reading his handwriting.

While most other features of his writing are long since ingrained and therefore thoughtless now, Cater does make the stylistic and conscious choice to dot his I's with hearts consistently; his sisters insisted that it's the cuter way to write and while it's not really worth the time sink, it does add a little character he can't deny is almost charming. Even if still too cutesy for his personal aesthetic preferences... it photographs really well.

(All of that said, Cater prefers to type whenever he can—much faster.)