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This handwriting should be on the wall.

Ann Alaia Woods of Clintonville, relying on training in the Palmer Method of penmanship that earned her a medal when she graduated from the eighth grade, produced a flow of words late last month that were practically a work of art.

In the recently concluded World Handwriting Championship, the seemingly effortless efforts of Wood at putting words to paper earned her a dual distinction. She not only won first place in the functional, or cursive, division for contestants age 65 and older, but also achieved the signal honor of the "World Champ-PEN-Ship."

The words Woods wrote -- actually, the way in which she wrote them -- bested those written out by all the other 316 contestants in the World Handwriting Championship, according to director Kate Gladstone of Albany, N.Y.

In addition, Gladstone said, the sample Woods produced was judged to be better than those from the top finishers in a young people's handwriting contest in India and one put on by a British organization whose members are passionate about penmanship.

"Besides winning our top prize as top of the senior cursive division, she also became the world pen champion," said Gladstone, owner of a business called Handwriting Repair.

"Ann Alaia was not only the best of the best among us, but also the best of the best among the others."

The others included winners of this year's annual contests sponsored by the Society for Italic Handwriting in England and the Young Innovators' Club in India, a youth group founded by businesswoman Maya Balani.

This is heady stuff for Clintonville resident Woods.

Her reaction to the news July 5 that she had taken top honors in both her division and in the world?

"Shocked," Woods said with a smile. "A little bit stunned. I think it says a lot about the state of handwriting in the world, but there you are.

"I'm honored."

"It's awesome," said her husband, Alan Woods, director of the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute at Ohio State University. "It's terrific. I've known she was a talented hand-writer for many years now, and I'm glad she's gotten the recognition."

For her part, Ann Woods hadn't even known such a thing as the World Handwriting Contest existed, let alone did she contemplate entering. A friend who came across the contest via the World Wide Web called Woods to suggest she try her hand, so to speak.

"I laughed and said they wouldn't even consider me," she recalled.

Nevertheless, the friend kept urging her to try and Woods finally capitulated. On the very last morning that would still enable her to meet the contest's June 30 entry deadline, Woods sat down and wrote out the text required of all contestants. It is part of the contest's creed and is a quote from master penman Michael Sull, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., who has taught at calligraphy guilds in the United States and Canada.

It concludes: "Necessary to every age, handwriting remains just as vital to the enduring saga of civilization as our next breath."

Woods wrote out the full quote three times, but wasn't really thrilled with the results. Her "lettering was a little stiff," she said. After taking a break and rereading the contest rules, Woods put forth a fourth effort, this time in a much more relaxed and flowing hand. It was probably her best sample, and definitely her final one.

"I said, 'That's it, I don't have time for any more.' "

The reigning "World Champ-PEN" was born in New York but spent some of her youth in Tucson, Ariz. Her family came back East and she graduated from high school in New Rochelle, N.Y.

Ann Alaia's father at one time owned a meat market and used to make his own signs by holding two pencils in his hand and creating the outlines of the words. He did so, his daughter recalled, in a flowing italic script learned in his native Italy. Little Ann then had the job of coloring in the letters.

After high school, Ann Alaia attended Barnard College, an independent liberal arts college for women in New York City that is affiliated with Columbia University. There she met her future husband, Alan Woods, then a student at Columbia. She spent a year studying in Italy through a Tufts University program. She and Alan Woods resumed dating when she returned, but then he went off to Vietnam. After his tour of duty was up, they got married and moved to Southern California to continue careers in academia.

Her academic background is in ancient and Medieval history.

The couple moved to Columbus 32 years ago and now consider it home, Ann Woods said.

It was upon taking up residence in central Ohio that she, at the urging of her husband, took a course in calligraphy.

"I fell right into it," Ann Woods recalled.

Studying this ancient art form dovetailed nicely, she said, with her own academic interests. She was fascinated "by trying to get these two worlds closer together."

Curiously, as she gained skill in calligraphy -- Woods is now a professional calligrapher and teaches it -- her own personal handwriting began to suffer.

"My forms were breaking down," Woods said.

So, after making progress in calligraphy, she turned her attention to improving her handwriting. This, in turn, enhanced her abilities as a calligrapher, Woods said.

Calligraphy is an entirely different form of writing from regular handwriting, according to Woods. The former is an unhurried, decorative and formal approach to words, while the latter is intended to be done quickly but at the same time should be attractive and legible.

It most certainly has to be legible, according to World Handwriting Contest director Gladstone.

"No matter how attractive, if it's not legible, tough," she said.

For Woods, winning in the over-65 division is practically as much of an honor as the world title. After all, she said, those she competed against in her age division represent the last generation for whom penmanship was practically as important a part of their elementary school curriculum as reading and arithmetic.

"All through your life, you're always writing things," Woods said. "I can't imagine typing a thank-you note, although there are people who do."

One of those who maybe should type his thank-you notes is her husband, Alan Woods.

"I can't read my husband's handwriting, by the way," Ann Woods said.

Alan Woods, director of the Lawrence and Lee Theatre Research Institute since 1979, admitted that his penmanship is far from award-winning. But, he said, his wife's abilities enable them to strike a nice balance as a couple.

"She writes so beautiful that I don't need to," Alan Woods said. "She writes beautifully for both of us."

The motto of the World Handwriting Contest states: "Every human has the right to write well."

In the opinion of the contest's "director-in-chief," Kate Gladstone, they not only have a right but also, at least in some instances, practically an obligation.

"Think of how you would feel if you got a love letter that was typewritten from beginning to end," suggested the Albany, N.Y., owner of a business called Handwriting Repair.

What has become the World Handwriting Contest, and was previously the Annual American Handwriting Competition and the World Handwriting Achievement Contest, grew out of the efforts of a Nebraska man, according to the WHC's Web site.

Tom Hutson founded the Nebraska Handwriting Contest in 1991 "in memory of his late mother, Eva Margaret Nielsen Hutson, 1902-84, whose handwriting remained at an award-winning level through her life," the site states.

"The Nebraska contest still continues for Nebraskans, and gives credit to Mrs. Hutson every year at the Nebraska Handwriting Contest page of the University of Nebraska at Kearney," the Web page continues.

Tom Hutson, however, was not one to rest on those particular laurels.

"Not satisfied with a Nebraska-only, or even a USA-only, contest as a tribute to his mother, Tom Hutson set himself a larger goal: to establish a truly international contest by 2002, the 100th anniversary of her birth, and also the 480th anniversary of the first textbook on penmanship published in our alphabet," the site states. "In 2001, we attained this goal a year ahead of schedule, so we plan even greater doings for the future."

"Some people describe me as trying to keep alive a dying art, but I don't think it is dying because interest increases every year," Kate Gladstone said in a telephone interview.

She pointed out that Microsoft's Bill Gates has said the future trend for personal computers will involve models without keyboards.

As a handwriting consultant, Gladstone added, she has had clients who have purchased tablet PCs but then have been unable to use them because their penmanship is so pitiful.

Since the world event began, the director-in-chief said that entries have been received from Nigeria, Switzerland, South Korea and the Netherlands, among other countries.

The judging for the contest is now done by a secret panel. That's because, Gladstone said, there was an attempt one year to "suborn a judge."

Competition does not, she admitted with the equivalent of a verbal shrug, always bring out the best in people.

This year's top winner, the current holder of the "World Champ-PEN-Ship" is Ann Alaia Woods of Clintonville.

"She faced some quite stiff competition," Gladstone said.

One of the winners in the youth category is a 15-year-old boy from Chandler, Ariz.

Another top finisher in one of the adult categories is a research neurologist from the Washington, D.C., area. He's the only doctor ever to enter the event, according to Gladstone.

"It's been years and years and years since any pharmacist asked him to translate his handwriting," the contest director said.