Handwriting today isn't the art form it used to be. Here's how penmanship has evolved — or rather, declined — throughout history.

From the beautiful ornate script we associate with days gone by to the rise of texting—handwriting has come a long way in the past century.

His florid style of hand-writing is called Spencerian Script. Just last August there was a monument dedicated to him in Geneva in front of the Ashtabula County Western Area Courthouse.

One, Spencerian script, was inspired by American landscapes and became a widespread—and uniquely American—school of handwriting.

"Spencerian was very fussy and time consuming. You had to get the shading just write," said Thornton. "So, it was slow." We know Spencerian today as the script used in the Coca-Cola logo. But that ...

Developed in the 1820s by Platt Rogers Spencer (1800-1864), Spencerian script is a beautiful form of penmanship that became the first nationally adopted system of handwriting in America. Long ...

Spencerian capitals from a book “Practical Penmanship” by Platt Rogers Spencer dated 1866. A button that a pupil would receive after becoming accomplished in the Palmer Method of cursive writing.

Learning to write in cursive may no longer be popular in American schools, but education experts stress that the craft can be beneficial to students in more ways than one.

Merritt Russell's American Ornamental Penmanship collection includes different documents in Spencerian Script.