Devil's Advocate here...

I am curious as to why you associate printing with "pretending to be in
kindegarten"?

The question is posed because as I noted somewhere else in this discussion,
my husband is an engineer not terribly far from retirement who has printed
almost all documents of import for his entire career. As Bluesea described
WRT a co-worker, very compact handwriting can still be completely legible.
Some have even said that they have mistaken my husband's writing for printer
output. Part of engineering education in the "his day" was learning
mechanical drawing. This was of course before the days of Autocad and the
like and one needed to be able to communicate technically such that there
was little, if any, confusion. I do not view my hubby's handwriting as
childish at all. In fact, I envy the precision of it as do most people who
see it.

When I use a pencil (Pelikan D200 - great pencil!) I usually print. My
printing still incorporates some facets of the italic hand though. These
also show up when I use a flexible nib which I prefer to use without using
"cursive" loops and flourishes.

So - I'm not picking on you - I am just curious. My generation (I am 40) in
the US was encouraged - okay, forced - to learn to write both printing and
the so-called Palmer method. I don't think it worked out well. My daughter
was forced to be right-handed but other than that I don't recall them really
pushing the issue of legible handwriting.

I am posting this in keeping with my claims of over-analyzing things. :-)