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Learning Cursive With Non-dominant Hand; Arm Movement


Widdershins Writer

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I'm a lefty who is trying to improve his writing by switching to the right hand. For the past few months, I've been trying to do the shoulder-writing technique following advice from http://www.paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html, but I'm not sure that this is the best way to go about learning cursive. After searching on FPN, I've seen that many people advocate a mixed movement, where the fingers are used in conjunction with the rest of the arm, but I'm having trouble putting this into practice. Can anyone give me a good example of how this works (i.e. which letters are specifically formed with the fingers versus which are written from the shoulder), what some good practice for this would be, or any other advice on how to improve my cursive on my non-dominant hand?

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Hi Widdershins,

Im also goin through the same situation. ..but writing with complete arm movement is way too difficult and requires determination and practice of many months.

Like you're talking about mixes movement..this guide can help you.Actually it's a teaching guide. But if you read it..it will surely help you

Download it from here:

www.peterson-handwriting.com/Publications/PDF_versions/ReviewSections123.pdf

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Not a purist here.

I write with my arm, but also my hand and fingers.

 

On your forearm, just before you elbow is a pad of muscle. I rest that on the desk, and I push forward, pull back and generally move my arm pivoting on that pad of muscle.

 

I use arm movement for the tall letters; upper case, and letters like lower case 'f' which goes from the asscender line down past the base line to the decender line. In fact because I exagerate my decenders, I have to use arm movement to do that. What this comes down to is that for the tallers letters I need more arc of movement than my fingers can give, so I HAVE to use my arm.

 

For small letters like 'e' and 'a', and similar, which are from base line to x-height, I use my fingers to some degree, as my fingers have better fine muscle control than my arm. But there is still a significant arm movement in my lower case letters, so they are not completely finger writing.

 

I also write on WIDE ruled paper (8.7mm line spacing) and I use up ALL the vertical space between lines, so I HAVE to use arm movement for the tall letters, as I do not have enough arc of movement with my fingers.

 

I converted from finger writing to arm writing, it took me 3 months of constant daily practice of at least 2 hours, to train my arm muscles to write. And this was just to get to the point that I did not constantly have to watch that I did not regress back to finger writing. It took me another several months to get my handwriting to a point that I would call reasonably nice. So it was a long haul, but for me the effort was worth it, and I am happy with where I am. The major factor is how long it takes YOU to train YOUR arm muscles to write. For some it will be shorter than me, for others longer. There is no way to predict this.

Edited by ac12

San Francisco Pen Show - August 28-30, 2020 - Redwood City, California

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  • 3 weeks later...

I've found that the way I hold my pen makes a huge difference when arm writing. It's pretty hard to find a stable yet frictionless and non-fatiguing pen holding position. Even after reading about every ancient instruction book there is on the subject. Finding my position really helped me get control over my arm movements.

 

Another thing that really helped me is the way the Spencerian script approaches letter formation. It explains every letter as being a sequence of strokes taken from a set of no more than seven basic ones. At first I always skipped that part, but it's actually one of the most brilliant aspects of the script. It means that when you can arm write seven different strokes, you can arm write anything.

 

Finally I'd like to recommend this book

 

https://archive.org/details/ZanerLessonsInOrnamentalPenmanship

 

for the friendly, personal, and detailed descriptions from a true master on his own writing technique.

 

HTH and good luck!

~ Alexander

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