RON WRITES HIS WAY TO WORLD TITLE GLORY
A NEWTONHILL man has been named World Handwriting Champion.
Ron Gordon (78), beat off the challenge of 95 others to take the title, awarded each year by New York-based 'Hand writing for Humanity' in an online contest.
Mr Gordon has not yet been formally notified of his achievement, and says he was told he would not hear the results until September. But a chance look on the website revealed that he has been chosen as this year's winner.
Mr Gordon, who has had an interest in calligraphy for 30 years, said that he has "no idea" what his prize will be, but added that he "only entered for fun and wasn't expecting to win."
A member of the Society for Italic Handwriting, Mr Gordon taught night classes in calligraphy at Aberdeen's Harlaw Academy and Stonehaven's Mackie Academy for 13 years.
He said: "I've had no certificate or anything sent to me yet. I just looked up the website and there was my name staring me in the face.
"I was quite surprised and really happy, I really wasn't expecting to win and I only entered for the fun of it."
Mr Gordon said that before he developed an interest in handwriting, he "just scrawled like everybody else."
But when he took up a post teaching at Aberdeen College he decided to make it a bit neater, and practised every day to get his handwriting up to world class standards.
Entrants to the contest were asked to write out a passage of around 100 words, and they were then split up into categories of age and writing style. The five age categories are – children (aged seven and under), pre-teens (aged eight to 12), teens (aged 13 to 19), adults (aged 20 to 64) and seniors (65 and over). They were then separated into three writing styles of cursive, manuscript and artistic.
Mr Gordon was named winner of the Senior category and of the Artistic category, before going on to be voted the overall winner of the entire competition.
He joked: "I have told my wife June that I can no longer do household chores as I have to look after my hands now that I'm a world champion!"
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Thursday 24 May 2012
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