Penmanship pays off neatly for 7-year-old champion

``Oscar is very orderly with his work, especially with his spelling quizzes on Fridays,'' said his teacher Ana Maria Alberto.

``I just try my best to make my work look clean and neat,'' said Oscar, 7. ``I love to use my pencil to write and draw.''

When it comes to handwriting, Oscar is tops. The first-grader from St. Theresa School in Coral Gables was recently named one of six Florida champions in the National Handwriting Contest sponsored by Zaner-Bloser Educational Publishers and Parker Pen.

Four of those six are Dade students: Ashley Russell, who attends St. Thomas the Apostle School in South Miami, is the second-grade champion; Noel Bondoc of St. Joseph School in Miami Beach is the fourth-grade winner; and Susan Gregg, who attends Covenant Teaching Fellowship, 827 NW 145th St., is the sixth-grade champion.

Noel just learned he also is the fourth-grade national handwriting champion and will receive a $500 U.S. Savings Bond, among other prizes.

Ashley, 8, mastered the art of writing in cursive this year with the help of her teacher Sister Beatriz Magdaleno.

``I try to write my best,'' Ashley said. ``I count the lines and put the letters inside the lines to make everything straight and neat. Good handwriting is very important.''

Richard Northup, vice president of marketing for Zaner-Bloser, agrees: ``Bad handwriting causes a lot of problems. Some doctors who have bad handwriting give trouble to pharmacists, causing them to sometimes give wrong prescriptions. And consider U.S. mail: Millions and millions of dollars wasted on bad handwriting every year with letters that never get delivered because postal carriers can't read the addresses.''

Zaner-Bloser, a leading national publisher of handwriting texts for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, and Parker Pen, a writing instrument company, have sponsored the competition annually for the past five years to stress the importance of good handwriting.

Florida's champs competed against 90,000 other first- through-sixth-graders to join the elite corps of 171 finalists from all states.