She would have been less unusual in the next century when diary keeping became a fashionable female avocation. Penmanship books showed alphabets, sayings, and business forms in different hands. Students copied these exactly, for practice and reference. Writing practice for females was not based on commerce but on accepted female skills. Thus girls learned to stitch alphabets and maxims onto samplers while boys practiced on slates and paper.
Many samplers survive today.
Men in commerce were expected to use a hand that inspired confidence and demonstrated self-assurance. By contrast, the earlier arcane, very difficult to read Court Hands of England were not favored in the more democratic early national period of the United States. Materials were unlike today's. Martha Ballard folded and cut individual sheets of paper for her diary. Writers had to make and sharpen their own quills.