Remember the days of yore when people used to write? We’re talking about writing in two senses: writing a letter, for instance, and also using our pencils and pens to help us create messages someone else could read.

Being a left-hander sort of excused me from winning or even competing in any penmanship sweepstakes at Immaculate Conception School, as our homeroom teacher in third grade, Sister Mary Plena Escritura would usually say, “What can we expect from Arthur? After all, he’s a left-hander.”

So naturally, vowing never to attempt a job that required writing things by hand, I ended up in journalism. One day, when working in Gallup, N.M., I came across an issue of Editor and Publisher, the trade publication for people in journalism and scanned a column titled “Who writes the most?” I wasn’t surprised that in those days, the early ’60s, the honor went to desk sergeants in police stations, who needed to field countless phone messages every day.

Runnerup honors went to those of us in the press. And it’s true. Even though public bodies like city councils and school boards generally provided a desk or table for reporters, amenities like typewriters weren’t available. Who can conduct a public meeting amid the ceaseless clacking of a noisy typewriter?

Practice, in spite of what well-wishers at I.C. School assured us, did not make perfect. In my case, I simply compounded and essentially solidified my errors. Though I consider myself a good speller, one can’t prove it by examining my penmanship. Often people simply can’t decipher it.

Well, I didn’t exactly go into a period of mourning as I saw my handwriting on the wall, as it deteriorated even more as I got older, but fortunately, the typewriter — there are or were actually “silent” typewriters — came along to camouflage some of my hen-scratching.

Now, it’s with a bit of satisfaction that I assert few people in school today know the finer points of penmanship. And it’s not going to get any better. A recent Associated Press article mentions that California and “a handful of states are not giving up on handwriting entirely.” The pen is still mightier than the keyboard in a few states that are bucking a growing trend of simply eliminating cursive writing. Some offer a slight compromise: They make handwriting optional.

As I visited my older grand-daughter, Ellen Vestergaard, in Denmark last year, I was amazed and a bit frightened as her dad handed her a iPad to learn word and photo associations. She wasn’t old enough to read, but somehow she had mastered all the pokes, tweaks, pinches and slides on a tool that not too long ago would have been called science fiction.

My son had absolutely no hesitation in letting Ellen handle that expensive tool, but there were some rules: No drinks near the iPad; work only at a desk; and don’t run it through the dishwasher when it gets smudged.

Ellen isn’t unique. I’m sure millions and millions of school kids reach first for their iPad to help with their homework. I have no doubt that large parts of school curricula will find their way into these electronic devices. Have you seen the price of books lately? The last time I was in the classroom, co-teaching a journalism course with my former boss Tom McDonald, I felt guilty requiring the students to purchase the new edition of The AP Stylebook, for $19.85.

The first year I assigned it, back in the ’70s, the stylebook set students back $4.95. Inflation has quadrupled the price of the book, although updates have improved its quality.

A friend and I browsed some of the required texts at the Highlands Bookstore a few months ago and discovered that some single texts cost more than $200. That’s for one class. And that really tears into that $1,000 scholarship Junior earned upon high school graduation.

If the iPad ever replaced standard textbooks, there’d be no hope for that skill that some of us mastered in grade school.

According to the Associated Press article, some see cursive writing as a waste of time, “an anachronism in a digitized society where even signatures are electronic.” So what’s the solution? Loading our electronic devices with textbooks and perhaps saving money on printing and shipping costs.

In letting our fingers tap whatever we wish to communicate, as if we were inputting material into a lined notebook that runs on pen and pencil, are to helping bury handwriting?

A father in Charleston, W.Va., recently signed a routine school registration form for his daughter and left a space for her to sign. “I just assumed she knew how to do it, but I have a piece of paper with her signature on it and it looks like a little kid’s signature,” the father said.

The daughter, an eighth-grader, said she hadn’t been required to write in cursive since third grade.

And that seems to be the trend, at least in 45 states. Ask any cell phone owner who texts regularly about the importance of handwriting. As long as they have a thumb or pinky, they’ll get by just fine.

So you see? My supposed inability and/or refusal to make those graceful loops and connected letters were merely a prediction, my prediction that some day that kind of writing would be unnecessary.