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I saw Helen Keller's handwriting today
by /u/d_marvin | 116 comments | 2026-06-17T03:05:30+00:00 Central
Comments
| /u/PM_ME_CHIPOTLE2 My dad used to say I write like Helen Keller but it turns out that's just a gigantic insult to Helen |
| /u/Strong_Craft_6990 your dad owes helen keller an apology, this handwriting is cleaner than most doctors i know |
| /u/MacAttacknChz She writes cleaner than most men I know. |
| /u/tr14l We're still learning... We just die before we get there |
| /u/odis78 Turn on caps lock, it helped my handwriting immensely |
| /u/atxbigfoot every boomer man I know, including my dad and my step- and -inlaws , writes in all caps for some reason lol. HEY BIGFOOT GREAT JOB (MEETING EXPECTATIONS) I'M SO PROUD OF YOU! HERE'S $50 GO GET A BEER OR HAVE FUN! MALE FIGURE THAT YOU ARE RELATED TO tbf my dad's were a little less broad because he'd give me the card in person and a hug during the conversation, but the card was still pretty much just that lol. |
| /u/SpinelessChordate Did they all serve in the military? 4 years in the USAF taught me to print in all caps to ensure clarity in maintenance documentation. Still print this way to this day, except for my signature. |
| /u/The00Taco My 7th grade science teacher wrote in all caps, but he made the supposed to be lower case letters slightly smaller |
| /u/JoltikElectricBug Capital letters are less intricate and confined. if you make a capital letter a bit small on accident, it is less likely to become a garbled mess not to mention the following 5 distinct and 5 rotated letters B D G P Q vs b d g p q |
| /u/Stormfly I ᴛʜɪɴᴋ ɪᴛ'ꜱ ᴄᴀʟʟᴇᴅ Sᴍᴀʟʟᴄᴀꜱᴇ |
| /u/SojournerRL That's how I write. I retrained myself intentionally my senior year of high school because my handwriting was dogshit lol |
| /u/Icy_Fish_2154 Engineering printing is all caps. It is required to prevent any ambiguity between 1lI| (one, el, eye, divider, in that order). |
| /u/LostMyBackupCodes https://giphy.com/gifs/1hAxQTH0HEWS3L0oRF |
| /u/ItAintLongButItsThin I went to summer school for penmanship. I'm still pissed. |
| /u/Rule12-b-6 She writes cleaner than the vast majority of people, period. The script is unfamiliar to most people, but her execution of it is impeccable. The spacing and letter height and width is meticulous and shows substantial skill. |
| /u/snownative86 I admit... Most of you write better than me. My handwriting is abysmal on a good day. |
| /u/A_Random_Canuck I guess I'm an exception to the rule. I'm a guy who gets compliments occasionally on my penmanship, both printed and written. |
| /u/TonyWonderslostnut lol. Sounds like a doctor took that personally |
| /u/FS_Slacker The fact that all the letters are lined up, evenly spaced, and the same height is far better than I can ever do. |
| /u/hbHPBbjvFK9w5D True that- one of my first jobs in the 80's was working at a pharmacy. My job? Calling doctor's offices and asking "What is this script for? We can't read your handwriting." |
| /u/MightyBlunder Doctor's have the worst handwriting of all, you should also apologize |
| /u/Womb_Raider696 Replace 'most' with 'all'. I will never trust a doctor with a clear handwriting. |
| /u/TheTrueMupster She used what is called "squarehand" and was, apparently, very good at it. |
| /u/paranormalgemini I've never heard of squarehand. It's really neat looking. |
| /u/Striiiider im looking up "squarehand" in a few different ways and cant find anything that resembles this, do you know if it would have been called anything else? would love to learn more about its development and history |
| /u/n00blibrarian Try 'square hand,' with a space, or add 'penmanship.' I got this. |
| /u/Striiiider thank you! i dont know why i didnt try those |
| /u/No-Spoilers I need this as a Word font |
| /u/Artevyx Right? I like her handwriting a lot. Cleaner than the handwriting of a lot of people who can actually see what they are doing 🤣 |
| /u/XVUltima Thats fine, she won't hear it anyway. |
| /u/Vivid_Brilliant_6914 Plot twist: your dad was actually complimenting her the whole time. |
| /u/prosa123 Most of Helen Keller's writings and other archives were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. The Helen Keller International organization stored them in its offices a block away from the World Trade Center,* and everything was lost when the offices burned. * = almost certainly the building at 90 West Street |
| /u/jjmawaken That's interesting and very sad |
| /u/samtheninjapirate Damn, I almost forgot |
| /u/Seven-Fingers Shit, I lost the game. |
| /u/-anominal- DID YOU HAVE TO SAY IT!?! |
| /u/Shienvien Kind of funny seeing The Game™ making a resurgence twenty years later... |
| /u/RainaElf oh honey it never left |
| /u/Abrakafuckingdabra Read that as "thanks Obama" and cracked up. |
| /u/ChipRockets You can't expect a Redditor to grasp the subtle nuances of a joke that's literally smashing you in the face. |
| /u/irwtkyrm https://giphy.com/gifs/xT9IgHCTfp8CRshfQk |
| /u/significantstark What is left will be at the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, KY. |
| /u/LarBrd33 This is something 13 year old deaf/blind Helen Keller wrote in a letter: "Late in the afternoon we stepped into a gondola, and made the trip through the lagoons. The sun was setting, and we watched the changing effects of its soft rosy light upon the towers and fair white palaces. When it was quite dark the city was illuminated, and the fire-works began. The thousands of tiny electric lights were reflected in the water-it looked as if a shower of golden fish had been caught in an invisible net. In the darkness around us we heard voices singing "My country 'Tis of thee, sweet Land of Liberty," and from the electrical building came floating over the smooth water the evening chimes. It was all beautiful and dreamlike, and I was reminded of Venice, the beautiful, mysterious Venice which I so long to visit" What a magical talent. |
| /u/lameuniqueusername Her writing is incredibly descriptive and I'm guessing it's bc Annie Sullivan described to her things that we take for granted in our world as sighted folks. |
| /u/RosieTheRedReddit There's an ableist conspiracy theory out there that Hellen Keller was a fraud who couldn't really understand anything, and everything she wrote was really written by Annie. Part of the evidence is letters like this that describe visual things. But actually, I have no sense of smell (from birth) and I can tell you there was probably a smell of gunpowder in the air from fireworks. Because other people have described it to me. Do I know what it feels like to experience that smell? No, but I definitely know it's a thing and could describe it in a letter if I wanted to. |
| /u/lameuniqueusername It's easier to say this than "Annie told me it looked like..." when describing what she experienced. |
| /u/DianeJudith People use the same generally used language regardless their disabilities. Blind people aren't forbidden from saying "I'll see you later" etc, and thinking there's anything weird with that is ableist. |
| /u/Herr__Lipp This fact is also my most unpopular and unfounded conspiracy about 9/11. The Helen Keller files were about to drop and the Saudis clearly wanted to keep the truth buried /s |
| /u/laurasaurus5 They wanted us to stay blind to the truth! |
| /u/n14shorecarcass Seeing is believing! |
| /u/Herr__Lipp What would Helen Keller have to say about this? |
| /u/DrThatOneGuy Helen Keller jokes in 2026? My awful sense of humor smiles tonight. |
| /u/fuck_shit_piss_etc Helen Kellers actual life and beliefs are definitely obscured. you don't learn she was a radical socialist in school |
| /u/Crow_eggs In America maybe. In England we did. |
| /u/OhNoTokyo To be fair, that's not why anyone cares about Helen Keller. Overcoming her profound disabilities is her story. |
| /u/PandaBeaarAmy Why not both? It was not the main point taught when i learned it but it's what everyone around me latched onto when doing their essays and reports 🤔 |
| /u/No-Spoilers Kinda sucks losing so much of it when people are starting to believe she didn't exist as we have learned. |
| /u/rererexed people are starting to believe she didn't exist |
| /u/LowPeakRN I love how you literally didn't finish the rest of the sentence, which is the essential part of the sentence in this case. She was intelligent, an activist, and nothing like she was portrayed as in The Miracle Worker. |
| /u/rererexed Ahh see I misread the sentence, thanks for clearing it up. I read it as "people are starting to believe she didn't exist - as we have learned", like something that was in the news recently. The way you describe makes more sense. |
| /u/LowPeakRN Thanks for recognizing that. Most people are familiar with HK through The Miracle Worker - which makes her look useless and the product of abled people's hard work. In reality, she was an intelligent, hardworking woman who fought for her rights and those of others. Her story has not sufficiently been told in popular media so far. I wish someone would update it. Also, fuck The Miracle Worker for stealing Angela Lansbury's Oscar for the Manchurian Candidate. Sorry. Still bitter. |
| /u/rererexed Never heard of that film so I was doubly confused. I'll make sure to avoid it! I'm across the pond and everything that has reached me about HK is more like you describe it, which added to my confusion. |
| /u/MukdenMan Because your grammar is incorrect. You could say "she didn't exist in the way we have learned" though there are more elegant ways to express this. You can't say "she didn't exist as we have learned" unless you are implying that we learned she didn't exist. |
| /u/vani11apudding That was particularly confusing, because Helen Keller not being real was a Tiktok meme in the last year or so. So he absolutely could have been saying that people don't believe she's real. |
| /u/No-Spoilers Sorry my grammar wasn't on point. But yeah I meant people are starting to believe she wasn't real or was a real person but not blind and deaf. Tiktok is a plague. |
| /u/iamayoutuberiswear I've never once thought about how her handwriting would look, so this is kinda cool to see. I wonder if there's a specific reason for it being so angular? Like is easier to keep track of where a pen is on a page that way, maybe? |
| /u/ohliamylia We have a grooved board which we put between the pages when we wish to write. The parallel grooves correspond to lines and when we have pressed the paper into them by means of the blunt end of the pencil it is very easy to keep the words even. The small letters are all made in the grooves, while the long ones extend above and below them. We guide the pencil with the right hand, and feel carefully with the fore finger of the left hand to see that we shape and space the letters correctly. It is very difficult at first to form them plainly but if we keep on trying it gradually becomes easier, and after a great deal of practice we can write legible letters to our friends. |
| /u/iamayoutuberiswear Oh! That's really neat! ....and also seemingly the same letter as the one in the picture! Now I'm wondering why it's cut off |
| /u/iztrollkanger You can see part of the same paragraph in the page overlapping so I think it's not a complete photo, for whatever reason. |
| /u/Mattbl I am so insanely impressed with Anne Sullivan (now I know nothing of her method or person). It's just that to be that patient, and take that much time. Even once Helen Keller was fluent in communication, I have to imagine it was still difficult and very time consuming to communicate back and forth. I have relatives who teach and one who even works for the county working with developmentally disabled young people, some who can't even fully attend school. I just can't fathom it. I'm so thankful for people like that in our society. |
| /u/AwkwardMindset Helen also deserves a lot of credit. The intelligence and patience required to learn and understand so much with so little in terms of input is insane. Talking and writing only exist and make sense in a universe with vision and sound. Helen Keller took several things from outside her universe and somehow interpreted and mastered it. It would be like someone living in a 3d universe understanding and engaging with something from a 4d universe. Blows my mind. |
| /u/BudgetMattDamon It's so unfathomable to some that there's still a conspiracy theory that she wasn't even real. |
| /u/aliciathehomie I don't know why people have such a hard time accepting that exceptional things happen. |
| /u/gloriiosaa especially when deaf-blind people of course have always existed and still use many of the things she did to function in society, though obviously most of them now do so alongside modern accessibility tools. it's not even necessarily that she was particularly exceptional - she was simply one of the first, the most famous, and one who helped pioneer and develop many of the same methods we use for people with similar disabilities today |
| /u/Lord_Parbr Because it's hard to wrap your mind around |
| /u/aliciathehomie Sure, but we learn crazy shit every day, if we listen. Dead trees didn't break down until a certain fungi showed up. Those little wood freaks piled up for MILLIONS of years, god damn Lincoln Log style, and that is how we have coal. I won't type this story out, but Alison Botha's story is wild. Some worms were found in ice, probably Antarctica or something, I don't remember, but scientists were able to bring them back to life after 20,000 years? Or maybe 40,000 years. I think there were two. There is a shark that is like 300-400 years old. It has scars from WW1. I think. These are all from memory so my details might not be ironclad and I would love to be corrected if so. We don't know shit about the ocean, really. Don't even get me started on Tardigrades. EVERYTHING is hard to mentally grasp, but life be like that. |
| /u/SconeBracket For me, Helen Keller is one of the most impressive of people to ever live. |
| /u/mbc106 I think this is also described in the Little House on the Prairie books as the method used by Mary Ingalls. |
| /u/jaxxxtraw This should be top comment. |
| /u/OncomingStormDW You know, it's kinda interesting that this exact bit is what's in the photograph OP shared. |
| /u/Laylelo I love the use of the word "plain" like this. We rarely use it this way but I enjoy it for some reason. |
| /u/commanderquill ...why does she refer to herself as "we"? |
| /u/gcd_cbs Herself at others at a school for the blind |
| /u/Idea__Reality I think she's talking about how blind people learn to write. |
| /u/frobscottler The end of the paragraph refers to seeing pupils writing at a school for the blind. That's your context clue that she is referring to blind pupils, not herself. |
| /u/green_chapstick Im going out on a limb and say shes referring to herself and others that are blind. Most likely a school. |
| /u/PaisleyLeopard I wonder if she's including Anne Sullivan, who was so deeply integral to her ability to communicate. |
| /u/Kalnb It might be for two reasions, Either she leant how to write using stenciles for each letter which might have been square shaped, or she used a guide to write each letter. I'm leaning more towards she used a stencils to learn as each latter has some variation from eachother. |
| /u/KiloRomeo253 I can't remember all of the details, but part of it was laying a piece of paper over a groved board and writing on that which is how it's kept so even and where the creases in the paper come from. |
| /u/AJBScout It even says on the note "... have a grooved board ... between the pages when ... write" |
| /u/KiloRomeo253 Well played. I didn'tread any of it.. |
| /u/TonsOfFun111 It actually mentions it in writing on the left page |
| /u/elrangarino And amazing wrist control |
| /u/oroborus68 She was young when she wrote that,it seems, so she may have learned cursive later on. |
| /u/Kalnb probably, I'm honestly just doing a 'trust me bro' at this point. I'm not american, my knowledge of helen keller begins with her being blind and death and ends with her writing a book. |
| /u/leeloocal She used a bracket that she held over the paper that had rectangles, so she knew where to put the letters. ETA, it was a board with grooves that she put under the paper so she knew where to start and stop the letters. |
| /u/just_a_person_maybe Y'all clearly aren't reading what she wrote on this paper lol |
| /u/aidaaries46 Another comment mentioned she wrote using a grooved board to keep her lines straight. Bumping the pen against those physical boundaries is probably exactly what gives her letters that rigid, angular shape. |
| /u/pppjurac Yes and for manual technical drawings in industrial school we applied same principle by using metal/plastic lettered guides/stencils to produce visually uniform drawings. There were many, but mostly 5, 7.5 and 10mm height 90 or 75 degree. Easy with 0.5mm pencil, hard to do with black ink rapidograph. |
| /u/sharefind I want that as a font named Keller |
| /u/shaborgan Exactly what I was thinking. It could look great |
| /u/tellitothemoon This actually already looks like a very specific font, but I couldn't tell you the name of the top of my head. You see it on like 50s diners and advertisements and stuff. |
| /u/Legal-Swordfish-1893 You might like the font "DymaxionScript". I think it'll scratch your intellectual itch. |
| /u/notmentallyillanymor My search for DymaxionScript lead me to wonder what Dymaxion means, which then lead me to set my eyes on the Dymaxion Car. Friends, if you like DymaxionScript you might like to see the Dymaxion Car. |
| /u/Echo8638 Thanks! I did want to see the Dymaxion car. |
| /u/thispleasesbabby and now i have been reminded that a dymaxion map projection exists |
| /u/MTkenshi I didn't know that part itched, and now that it's been scratched I am going to have to scratch it again. |
| /u/fudgyvmp That is definitely a very pleasing font. |
| /u/spittlbm https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Helen-Keller -Handwriting-Font-Personal-License-12492502 |
| /u/Most_Chemist8233 The lower case L and upper case i are actually distinguishable. |
| /u/RatlingGuns4Days That was my immediate thought too. This would be a dope font. |
| /u/Ok_Durian9154 Also also - another interesting fact - Mark Twain met Helen Keller and was so impressed by her that he fully paid for her college tuition. Crazy stuff! |
| /u/BudgetMattDamon Yet another fun fact - Mark Twain literally coined the term 'miracle worker' to refer to Anne Sullivan! |
| /u/Thalaas I have mixed feelings. For one, I am impressed with her level of skill with her great disabilities. But, I am mortified a women who is blind and dead has FAR better hand writing than me! |
| /u/Proletariat-Prince She was definitely alive when she wrote this though. |
| /u/jellifercuz I think all dead are blind and deaf, are they not? |