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In this cold, impersonal work of email and word processing, anything that may help put back a personal touch in how we communicate through our keyboards should be viewed as a positive thing. The use of "emoticons" in email messages for example, help recipients to get a better feel of the sender's mood through pseudo facial expressions. Embellishments via graphics we paste in, colored text, embedded sound files and other similar devices all help to make up for the lack of vocal tonal inflection that is missed in today's electronic communications. But before we had our computers, even before we had typewriters, we set our thoughts down on paper using the once mighty pen. And when you think about it, a handwritten message still remains, even more so in today's electronic age, the best way to covey our most personal thoughts and feelings when we find the need to put them to paper.

Imagine the reaction of a loved one receiving flowers with an attached typewritten card or a greeting card with "I love you" displayed passionately in a sterile Ariel Bold typeface. You get my point. What you need is your handwriting for special moments like these and that's exactly the name of the program that's going to bring back that lost personal touch to your computer. "Your Handwriting" from Data Becker lets you transform your handwriting onto a TrueType computer font that can be used within any application that displays text.

Until this program, the process of converting handwriting samples into a computer font was time consuming and expensive. You had to fill out a form with handwriting samples and then had to mail them for conversion. After a week or longer, you would get a disk back with the handwriting font. And if you didn't like the looks of one or more of the letters because it was too thick or malformed, you were out of luck and had to repeat the entire process. With Your Handwriting, all of that is eliminated.

After installing the CD, Your Handwriting lets you print out a form that consists of a grid and printed instructions. You proceed to write samples of every upper and lower case letter, number and punctuation mark. You can use block letters or script samples. Since you can print out as many forms and create as many fonts as you like, you can create a font for each style of handwriting. You can even make foreign language handwriting characters if you are so inclined.

After the form is completed, you use your scanner to deliver the form into the Your Handwriting program. The next step lets you edit and fine tune the scanned handwriting, You might want to make part of a character thicker or thinner. You can clean up any part of a character's image until you are satisfied with the results. After the final editing session, Your Handwriting creates a TrueType font. Once installed, you can begin to create letters, memos, greeting cards and anything else that prints but all in your very own handwriting. And since it's a computer, you can edit your handwritten documents as you would any electronic document.

Obviously you should only use this program for paper documents. Sending an email in your handwriting defeats the whole purpose. The point is to make the recipient think that you took the time to pen something personal. Besides, they would need a copy of your TrueType font to see it on their screen and sending someone a font that perfectly imitates your handwriting wouldn't be a very clever move on your part. You should be careful how you use this program. If you use it at work, don't leave the font installed on the office computer for obvious reasons. Data Becker maintains that this program is for entertainment and personal use only. It is not intended to be used in a business or legal environment.

Your Handwriting is available for Windows only and sells for $19.95. However the TrueType font it creates can be used on a Macintosh. Now you can send out all those form letters in your handwriting. Who said that computing was impersonal?

Data Becker www.databecker.com (781) 453-2340