Hummmmm.... I thought there would be more responces to this......

I have discovered that if I practice a bit with a lined and slant guide sheet, before I start writting, my writting on a blank sheet of paper turns out better........

I played around in Photoshop to come up with a "guide sheet with slant guides" untill I came up with a size that I liked.....

Somehow It "feels" like I'm "cheating" to use it when I write..... but I find that for practice , it helps.........

Re:

> 1. Do you practice with a linned "guide sheet" below the paper....

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.


> 2. Do you worry about the "Propper Slant" or form of the letters.....

Yes — but I worry more when I write something that others will see than when I write something that only I will see.

> 3. After reading an 1800s penmanship manual... describing how you should use
> your whole arm to form the letters.... do you try to re-learn how to do that......

I cannot do that except when writing letters 1 foot (30 cm) high or larger on a vertical/sloped surface (e.g., when painting a sign on a wall) — on a horizontal surface, or with normal-sized letters, arm-movement plays havoc with any writing I try to do.


> 4. And question "why bother"..... other than you want your writting to look
> beter......

I bother because the proper techniques increase speed and decrease fatigue (as well as improving appearance).

1. Do you practice with a linned "guide sheet" below the paper....

Sometimes

2. Do you worry about the "Propper Slant" or form of the letters.....

Not as much as getting them all the same.

3. After reading an 1800s penmanship manual... describing how you should use your whole arm to form the letters.... do you try to re-learn how to do that......

no, I have noticed that different manuals advocate differing methods.

4. And question "why bother"..... other than you want your writting to look beter......

Well, that is the reason, after all.

-Bruce

Good-looking writing is like good-looking clothes. Everybody says it isn't important, but everybody notices.

My "why bother" question kinda ansewered itself.... but it was also (slightly) "trolling"....

I don't get "graded" on my handwritting.... but I want it to look good. That's why I play with it (it's not realy "work" because it is fun...)

It's great when someone tells me that I have nice handwritting... Hey... I'm kind of a "show-off".... but I think I do it mostly because it makes me feel happy......

I really don't understand your question. The words handwriting and caligraphy are synonimes. If by handwriting you don't mean caligraphy, what dou you mean then?

In common usage, the word "handwriting" means everyday writing as many of us learned in grade school, and the word "calligraphy" is used for decorative writing, often with a very broad, sharp nib, often using medieval-style alphabets.

"Engrossing" is also used for fancy writing, often referring to the very fine and flourished artistic writing of the late 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

When I write slow my handwriting is legible, not the same when I write fast. So I want to improve it. I bought some books to improve my handwriting, and to do calligraphic exercises. I hope I will be better. My worst problem is that my handwriting is irregular.

voted somewhat unimportant but it has to be legible.

Bernardo--I thought I'd made clear the difference in the type of writing of which I was speaking, but I realize you are south of the Border. By handwriting, I was referring to the printing/cursive handwriting that we practice in our daily lives. By calligraphy, I was referring to the italic style that is usually described over here as 'calligraphy'. IOW, decorative writing.

And then there's illumination, which is like calligraphy (decorative lettering) to the nth power, with colors.

--Rob

I just retired from a career in electronics where I was bench-tech / tech support / technical writer. Most of my writing has been done on one computer or another. The rest has been block printing because that is the way you label pictures and schematics with circles and arrows and call-outs. I was also into ham radio for years, and when you are copying Morse code, lower case block printing is the only writing that is fast enough.

Last year, when the pen bug bit me, I decided to resurrect the old school cursive hand I learned in the '50s. Egad! It was awful. I could hardly read what I had just written. It has been a struggle, but I think I have managed to pull it back to the brink of legibility. Making it pretty may take the rest of my life.

I own a house that was built by our town's doctor in 1886. With the house came some of the doctor's day books. In these books he listed the date, whom he treated, and how much he charged for the service. His hand is pretty. It would probably be called Spencerian. It is difficult to read at first because of the flourishes on the capitals and the shading of the vertical lines. The writing does not look studied and carefully drawn. I think he could write in the style quickly and it pleased him to do so.

This doctor had a partner, probably the guy who made house-calls. He made entries in the day books too. His hand is Spencerian, but very cramped and has a "drawn" look. It is very legible, though, and after reading it for a while, I would say that it too is pretty.

The doctor's daughter inherited the place and, starting around 1900, used the day books to keep her household accounts (about once a year she would pay about 13 cents for "writing fluid"). Her hand was the "business cursive" that I learned in school. Her entries were probably hastily made and written only for her own eyes, but they are very regular and legible and pretty, I think.

Maybe beauty is in the eye of the pen holder.

Paddler

Judybug,

You have struck the idea that took me half a lifetime to learn as a shade-tree musician: once you have become proficient with an instrument, you quit playing that instrument and concentrate on playing the music. The concept works with trap shooting, archery, fly fishing, driving a car, . . . and handwriting.


Paddler

Well done, I'm proud of you. the nurses say I'm one of the very few whose handwritting is legible. My father, who was a Physician, always told me to write legible so people [nurses] can understand what I want to say/order.

Do you remember those "Inner Game . . ." books? I think it started with "The Inner Game of Tennis." I have "The Inner Game of Music." These books have some very useful concepts that helped me as a pianist and piano teacher. It's just recently that I noticed these concepts apply to handwriting as well.

Judybug

And pharmacists and their technicians

No, I have never heard of the "Inner Game . . ." Books. Are they about "visualizing" an activity when one is not actually practicing it?

I read of a study that had non-basketball people shooting foul shots. One group practiced in the gym one day a week and then visualized practicing for the same amount of time on the other days. The other group went to the gym every day. The people who visualized ended up at least as proficient as those who actually shot hoops the whole time.

Maybe this would work for penmanship. You could visualize making perfect letters during a lunch break. It would certainly be something that would keep your mind occupied while you watch football.

Paddler

I'm a printer, usualy because I have to work fast, and I can be extremely neat with lettering (former draftsman). However, my cursive hand is usually flat and a bit messy.

This is partly why I appreciate fp's, which allow me to go more vertical on my letters. You can actually read what I write, and it looks half-decent.

A word about handwriting styles and speed — according to 1998 research in the JOURNAL OF EDUCATION RESEARCH (citation below), the fastest and most legible handwriters do not adhere to cursive style. Highest-speed, highest-legibility handwriters join some, not all, of their letters (making only the easiest joins, and skipping the rest), and tend to combine print-like and cursive-like formations (particularly tending to use print-like forms for those letters whose printed and cursive formations seriously "disagree.")

CITATION:
Graham, S., Berninger, V., & Weintraub, N. (1998). The relationship
between handwriting style and speed and quality. Journal of
Educational Research, volume 91, issue number 5, (May/June 1998),
pages 290-297.

That's how I write, a combo of cursive and "separate"! I f I do pure cursive when I'm speed writing, not only it'll be slow as molasses but slopy.

I've been trying to work on my penmanship more when I have the time to write more slowly, but I always feel guilty doing it at work. Well, not always, but when I'm working on a case that's billed hourly I do. <_< Perhaps I should confine my self-improvement during working hours to contingency cases...

Re:

> I've been trying to work on my penmanship more when I have the time to write >more slowly, but I always feel guilty doing it at work. Well, not always, but when >I'm working on a case that's billed hourly I do. Perhaps I should confine my self->improvement during working hours to contingency cases...

Better yet — during work-hours, pick just one thing at a time to work on: nominate a "Handwriting Target of the Day/Week/Fortnight."

For example — suppose that your most visible handwriting woes include:

/a/ forming "u" like an open-topped "o" (instead of properly, which requires going down-up-down and not merely down-up)

/b/ open (rather than closed) tops on "a/d/g/o/q"

/c/ inconsistent slant.

Today and for the next few days, during work-hours, you can commit to forming every "u" correctly (and not worry during work-hours about any other scribal lapses.

Once you have the "u" under control, add proper formation of "a/d/g/o/q" to work workplace scribal responsibilities.

When you have both "u" and the "a/d/g/o/q" group under control, start focusing on slant too — so now you have three things to deal with, but you've never had more than one new thing at a time to deal with.

Even if you progressed very slowly (e.g., even if you decided to re-model all the lower-case letters at a rate of just one letter focused on per fortnight), within a year you would have made vast progress (e.g., if re-modeling no more than one letter every two weeks, at the end of a year you would have re-modeled the entire lower-case, "a" through "z.")

Kate,

YAY !!!!!!!!!

Paddler

Well, Paddler, if my information helps you, I hope you'll eventually post some handwriting samples (before working on handwriting - then after some work - then after more work - etc., etc.)

;-)

I'd be happy to do that, Kate, but I don't have a scanner; don't know anybody who does. The crux of the matter is, I can make my writing (the "Business Cursive" that I learned in the '50s) look like an exemplar if I really take my time with it. The problem is, I can't get anything done that way. When I try to speed it up to a reasonable pace, the whole thing gets ugly. It is like playing a musical instrument: practice a lot, and speed will come eventually. Know any etudes for penmanship? (Hey, I just stumped the spell-checker on this thing.)

Paddler

"_Études_ for Penmanship"

PERFORMANCE NOTE: Practice each of the following _études_ four times in a practice-session:

1st time — as slowly as you need in order to get it exactly right at a comfortable rate

2nd time — slightly faster than the 1st time; aim to produce 5 more LLPMs (Legible Letters Per Minute) than the first time

3rd time — as fast as you can go WITHOUT losing legibility or control: when you sense a loss of control, slow down VERY slightly from this top speed in order to regain control

4th time — return to a slow and comfortable pace permitting maximum accuracy; if you time your performances, you will frequently find that you have written accurately at a faster rate during this 4th performance than during the session's 1st performance at the "same" slow-and-comfortable-feeling speed.


ÉTUDE 1
(perform no more than 5 - 6 lines of this in a given practice-session)

aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah ai aj ak al am an ao ap aq ar as at au av aw ax ay az
ba bb bc ... -> ... bx by bz
ca cb cc ... -> ... cx cy cz
... [over several days or a week, work through all possible combinations, up through]
za zb zc ... -> ... zx zy zz


ÉTUDE 2
(perform any ONE of these sentences in a given practice session)

The 12,345 quick brown foxes jump over the 67,890 lazy dogs.
The 9,876,543,210 jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
We waltz and rumba with five nymphs, but quick jigs do vex them.
I'll pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.


ÉTUDE 3
(perform this very short paragraph in a given practice-session.)

Adjusting his quiver and bow, Robin Hood cunningly zipped many arrows into some black foxes. The grumpy, objectionable sheriff will have this zany Saxon quickly arrested for violating the law.


ÉTUDE 4
(to perform Étude 4, simply repeat IN ALL CAPITALS any of the sentences from Étude 2 or from Étude 3 — for example:)

THE 12,345 QUICK BROWN FOXES JUMP OVER THE 67,890 LAZY DOGS.

(choose different sentences on different performance dates)

Thanks, Kate,

I have the etudes copied and will begin practice forthwith. Perhaps my copperplate will begin to look a bit less like boilerplate *grin*.

Paddler

Very funny! I look forward to seeing your results!

I love pangrams!

Why prize quick judgement above a lasting fix?

Thanks for the advice, it's a great idea. I guess now I'll have to write something, figure out what my worst legibility problems are, and get started.

Re:

> ... I guess now I'll have to write something, figure out what my worst legibility
> problems are, and get started.

In this connection, consider my "Marketplace" posting[s].

Kate,

I have been using your Études for Penmanship for several days now and have been applying the precepts of the Roman gods of industry: Assiduus and Sedulus. Together, we have made great progress.

I perform the whole battery of Études in the morning. By the time I am finished, my writing quality begins to dive, probably due to fatigue or failing concentration. In the afternoon, I do Étude #1, line one, through the second iteration only (like a ball player using a weight-bat), and then launch into my current project. I can usually write two pages (8 1/2" X 11", ruled) before things begin to fall apart again. At the first mangled word, it is "down tools and all stop". If good quality does not return an hour later, I quit for the day.

Last evening, my wife was walking past Aunt Polly (our bandy-legged writing desk) where my project was visible and said, "Hey! You've been working on your handwriting, haven't you?" Then she began to read and laugh herself crooked. I thought my writing was beginning to flirt with legibility; now I have corroboration.

Thanks for the help!

Paddler

Great work, Paddler! I hope you'll post some samples!

Re your morning practice — you may find it helpful to take a 20-second-to-1-minute break halfway through (or 2/3 of the way through) your morning practice, and/or to take 5 or 10 seconds of break in between each _Étude_ and the next.

LOL, most of what I write is almost unreadable. Plus it's cold here in canada. Last week when it was about -25oC, when you try to write... well ITS unreadable however you,like at it.

When I can write at my speed, I just think of the content... don't have extra memory space to think of the form... maybe that will develop later.

While I maintained a relatively decent standard of writing over my residency (including getting compliments from nurses and other residents about the legibility and neatness of my writing), my hand has deteriorated markedly in fellowship. This was partly down to me moving away (for some still-unclear-to-me reason) from FPs and using drug rep pens. The other, main reason is the sheer volume of notes I have to write in a brief period of time in-between seeing patients.

More recently, with my recently acquired FPs, I've begun to try to redress my slipping handwriting. It's still quite legible, and one of the better hands around; but in a hospital, that's not saying much!

When I was younger, my writing's was constantly changing. However, since my entry into postsecondary education, I stopped writing altogether! Well, words at least. I only really write numbers and greek letters nowadays (physics major).

Anyway, I've only recently dove into this FP hobby... so I do intend to perfect my handwriting when I can..

Kate, would you mind using a writen exemplar to illustrate your post above?

If I can figure out how to post a written exemplar, I'll post one later this week or (at the latest) early next week. (Right now, I have a larger-than-usual number of paying clients to handle first.)

Well, you asked for it ... so I took a few minutes today to show how I write my capitals (attached). Feel free to laugh.

Thanks Kate,


It's very nice of you to put a picture on the theory of handwriting.

It's much more clear.

Thank You

If anyone else wants pictures relating to handwriting as I see it and do it, let me know ... sooner or later, I'll do my best to provide them!

I just tried the études for the first time... and I discovered that I wrote the first three in running-hand, which is what I usually use to write, but when I came to the all-caps exercise, my natural tendency was to use a drafting-style print caps, and not the caps I usually use with my running hand. Since the latter is what I am trying to work on, should I strive to do the all caps exercises using running-hand caps?

I suppose I should keep these as a handwriting baseline. Perhaps I'll post some pix of my efforts... never been bold enough to do that here before.

John

For the all-caps exercise — even more than for handwriting in general — I recommend the very simplest capitals consistent with your taste. For most people, this does tend to mean shapes much more like print-writing than like cursive. (Italic capitals — e.g., James Pickering's if not something simpler — work here to good effect: in fact, I've seen some very beautiful handwritings that used Italic capitals along with a conventional-cursive lower-case.)

Most people, in fact, find (as you have found) that they unconsciously tend towards very simple (even print-like) capitals when writing two or more capital letters in a row: simply because conventional capitals tend to look rather "overdone" (and often become hard-to-read) when used all together — even if the writer has rendered each and every one of them absolutely perfectly.

More about this matter of capital-letter style:
some schoolteachers (and more than a few parents) have told me that, when the kids learn cursive, it often suddenly looks to the adults as if the kids have started spelling badly whenever writing anything that requires all capitals —
e.g., acronyms such as UNESCO,
titles of books mentioned in schoolwork if the school requires writing out book-titles in all capitals as some do,
or — very often — material copied/transcribed/quoted from a source that used all capitals:

e.g., if a child using cursive writes a story including some sentence like "The traffic-sign said 'STOP,' " the word "STOP" in this quote uses all capitals because the quoted sign used all capitals ... and it uses all cursive because the teacher requires all writing to use cursive now.

For some adults, at least, the odd appearance of a string of cursive capitals gives the illusion (a temporary illusion — usually!) that the child has written the word wrong: e.g., some of the teachers who contact me say that, when they have seen things like "STOP" or "UNESCO" or "I love reading HARRY POTTER" on a child's paper, they have immediately marked these wrong for spelling "because it just looked so wrong"... realizing only later that the child had spelled correctly *and* had written the cursive capitals correctly too.

One now-retired teacher actually admitted that, in her days of teaching elementary school, when she didn't like a particular student (or a particular student's parents) and wished to find a reason to give that student a much poorer grade than s/he had earned, she would require this student to copy some capital-filled material during a cursive lesson when other students received material not packed with capitals ... then, whether or not the student had written the cursive capitals correctly, she would make fun of "how stupid your writing looks here" in (e.g.) "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" which she had required him to copy in cursive from a dollar bill, and penalize him for the "stupid look" of his writing ...
so if, next time, the student tried to avoid the odd look of five words all in cursive capitals (and just write "The United States of America") she could and did then penalize him for not copying correctly (not using all capitals like the material set before him),
and if in desperation he then copied it in all-capitals but used printed ones, then she could and did penalize him for using print-writing during a cursive lesson ...

As I recall, Mrs. "Just Plain Nasty" taught fifth grade in New Jersey. Yes, she retired ... but her spiritual kin abound.

I'll never forget the classroom I observed, some years back, in which a fourth-grade teacher straight-facedly informed the students that "it is very important to always join all the letters when we write, because ALL adults join ALL the letters in their handwriting, ALL the time" ... when a girl questioned this (and backed up her query by pointing to the teacher's own semi-joined-and-not-all-that-"cursive" script), the teacher smirked and said: "Something is really very wrong with you, young lady, if you think I don't even join all my letters." When a few other children boldly supported the questioner ("She's right, Mrs. X — you DON'T join all your letters, you DO print most of your capitals — we can see that too!"), she sassed them too and shamed them into pretending that they couldn't have seen it because it couldn't have happened. I tried to talk to her after class (as we had previously arranged), but ... as soon as I got a few words out, she suddenly found an urgent errand elsewhere: calling back, grimly, over her shoulder: "Ms. Gladstone, I HOPE you do not believe that you were asked here in order to interfere with the process of education!"

One thing that bugs me more than almost anything is a hypocrite for an instructor, whether at the elementary or the university level. It is worse at the lower levels, because the kids are too trusting and easily bullied.

Thank you Kate for truly completing the picture of "just plain nasty". Your story reminded me of a master class at a certain very famous music school. The instructor was a very famous instructor who was noted for creating masterful players out of teen-age violin wizards.

After analyzing one player's performance, he said put your left hand this way, and move the fourth finger this way, and stand a little differently and turn you head this other way.

Then the master played for the master class, just to make sure we all saw how he did what he was urging the student to do. Except for one thing. He didn't do any of what he had been recommending. None of it. All the student should have done is lean his hand a little back and then sort of ... Well that's getting a little too violin-techie.

However, not one person was willing to stand up, address the master teacher, and point this disconnect out. Except me.

I was told, to my face, that I was insolent and ill mannered, but not ejected from the class (thankfully).

At another master class, there was a woman teaching who had a quick and somewhat acid wit. If we were threatening to her in terms of doing something or spotting something she missed, we learned quickly where we were not to tread, ego wise. She had a saying that could apply to Just Plain Nasty.

Being a bitch takes wit, ingenuity and planning. Being nasty is merely common as dirt.

I learn a new trick, scanning with the new machines!

i voted 'somewhat unimportant'.

as long as my writing isnt meant for someone elses reading, i dont much care how it looks as long as i can read it. i do however go back and fix little silly meaningless errors to make things look 'right', such as an 'a' that is open, an 'o' that isnt round enough, an 'e' that isnt slightly wider than an 'i', an 'r' that doesnt have the normal shape i write them in, etc. ill also end up crossing out words that are properly spelled but doesnt suit my liking due to some 'error' as mentioned above.

if im writing something that another person will read, i write larger and tend to use more of a standard cursive using some of my adapted letterforms [with the exception of a printed 'z'-i hate the cursive z], or actually i print the writing instead, since i have very neat printing after using it almost exclusively for my entire school career and then some [my teachers told us to print our homework, especially me since my cursive is tiny, because they said it was hard to read everyones cursives, but printing was more legible due to the uniformity of it].

i do want to get a flex nibbed pen though, and ive been adapting some new letterforms to my writing to make it look nicer to me and more unique.

Well some of your stories give me hope.

I was raised in the 1950s and my teachers broke their hearts and mine trying to teach me proper penmanship. I spent many recesses and a few lunch hours inside laboring over an unacceptable assignment while listening to the other kids outside having fun. I finally realized, very recently, that my failure to improve even slightly probably was a subconscious rebellion.

Now, I am trying to relearn. My writing is horrible, but after a few months of work, I can pass my notes over to someone else and they can piece out what I was saying. I'll keep working on it.