Thai Writing Styles

[TheChiefJustice]

As mentioned on another thread, it would be very interesting to see the various Thai writing styles employed by the members of this forum. This exercise would be fun and would serve to show how each of us has very different styles of writing the Thai language.

In order to make accurate comparisons, I suggest that we each write the same thing. I have chosen an excerpt from one of MR Kukrit Pramoj's speaches about politics. I hope it is not too long, but I believe that we need to write more than a single sentence before we can obtain a true sense of a person's writing style. Here is the sentence I propose we write:

หน้าที่ของรัฐบาลและข้าราชการ ตลอดจนคนทั่วประเทศ ในขณะนี้ ถ้าหากเราทุกฝ่ายต้องการจะเห็นบ้านเมืองเรา ปกครองกันด้วยระบอบ ประชาธิปไตย ก็คือ จะต้องร่วมมือกันทุกวิถีทาง ที่จะทำให้ประชาชนส่วนใหญ่ ของประเทศ ที่ยังอยู่ห่างไกลความเจริญ และยังขาดการศึกษานั้น ได้มีความเจริญทางการศึกษา

I have also attached my (rather feeble) attempt. As I say, this is how I usually write. It is not handwriting, more like printing. I really would like to be able to write more cursively like my Thai colleagues. Practice, practice, practice. Nothing more to be done than practice.

scan.pdf

[gampaan]

When we got married, we had 2 books on a table for people to write notes, etc. I can read Thai, and alot were pretty sloppy I thought. There were some though that were just artistically beautiful. Compared to my wife, you are way more legible . I think that you are above average from what I have seen....Nice Job.

I won't embarass myself by submitting mine, I don't write much at all, not enough to have a "style" other than copying the letter in the basic font.

[Rikker]

I have a writing sample from about a year ago.

Back then I ran across an old page from 1996 on crcl.th.net that mentioned the idea of collecting a corpus of handwriting samples all using the same text, proposing a selection from the Ramkhamhaeng inscription, since most every Thai learns it in school. The idea was to use it to train Thai handwriting OCR.

Intrigued, I made my own handwriting sample for fun. I've attached it as a PDF, mistakes included. This is my "quick" style--when I'm not trying to win any penmanship awards. Looks pretty much the same today.

TheChiefJustice, you have great handwriting!

handwriting_rikker.pdf

[meadish_sweetball]

I don't have anything resembling handwriting, like gampaan above I just copy the letters from the standard font. I very rarely write nowadays.

Good on you both for writing neatly and clearly though.

[withnail]

Here's my feeble attempt. I wrote in blue ink so it didn't scan very well.