Your Handwriting Quality?

[johnr55]

Erik, I think you're smart with this, I did it at your age also. It'll pay off for the rest of your life. Outside of anything else, at times your writing will precede your presence with strangers. Indeed, it may be the only tangible piece that strangers will have of you. Sloppy, poor handwriting still indicates the same mental processes to many--provided you're not a Nobel laureate!

[Judybug]

The appearance of my handwriting is somewhere between "very important" and "somewhat important" to me. I do work at trying to make my ordinary handwriting [not calligraphy] look nice and uniform, but I have discovered something that is hard to explain ---- if I'm focused too much on the appearance of my writing while I'm actually writing a letter, my handwriting gets worse. If I focus on what I want to say, my handwriting seems to improve.

 

Does anyone remember those "inner game" books that were so popular a few years ago -- The Inner Game of Tennis and The Inner Game of Music to name a couple? I think some of the concepts in these books apply to handwriting. Maybe somebody should write The Inner Game of Handwriting.

 

Judybug

[maryannemoll]

the palmer script isn't the most artfully beautiful of them all but it's beaautiful in its evenness and it's the most readable. any handwriting that is consistent in its curves and slants and lines, even if they are not so ornate, i consider beautiful. much more so when it's readable. what's the point of having very beautiful handwriting when you can't read it? might as well make it a drawing.

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

"I wish I could use my italic for everyday writing like James Pickering and others, but it is just not fast enough."

 

Though James Pickering (who writes an unjoined Italic) will likely disagree, in my experience and observation those who admire Italic but find it too slow can increase their speed by using certain joins — NOT, mind you, ALL the joins theoretically possible in Italic!

 

If you use only those joins that form either straight horizontals ( - as in "on" or "ti") or straight diagonals ( / as in "an" or "li"), you can pile on quite a bit of speed without loss of legibility or "Italic-ness."

One large-scale (25,000 people) 1950s UK study of Italic versus other handwriting styles established that Italic writers wrote about one-and-a-half times as fast as non-Italic writers of the same age and equal legibility. (The Italic-writers in this study wrote an Italic with joins.)

 

Other things to do for speed in Italic involve re-ordering the strokes of some capitals: what I describe below reflects historical practices (as documented in the handwriting-research volume THE ORIGIN OF THE SERIF by Edward Catich), so actually this amounts to restoring the historical stroke-order for these capitals:

 

"A" and "H" —

Instead of doing these as left side -> right side -> middle,

do them as left side -> middle -> right side

(the sides both go top-down, the middle goes left-to-right)

 

"D" —

Instead of having two top-down strokes (the straight and the curved stroke),

start with an "L" shape and continue the end of the "L" back to (and possibly past) the top of the "L" shape.

 

"E" —

Many people learn to do this as vertical -> top -> middle -> bottom

or as vertical -> top -> bottom -> middle,

but try it as: "L" shape -> top -> middle if you do not already do it that way.

 

"F" —

Instead of the usual modern vertical -> top -> middle,

try it as top -> vertical -> middle:

with the horizontal strokes (top and middle) both done left-to-right

 

"I" —

Instead of the usual vertical -> top -> bottom,

try top -> vertical -> bottom:

again, with the horizontals (top and bottom) done left-to-right

 

"J" —

pretty much the same as "I":

instead of putting the horizontal stroke on as the last thing,

write the horizontal stroke *first* (left to right)

and THEN go into the rest of the "J."

 

"T" —

well, here I differ from Catich: he recommends always writing the horizontal top of capital "T" before the vertical, but for me this works well only in ALL-CAPITALS writing. When I have lower-case writing (with its efficiency of joining the "t"-crossbar into the next letter), I want to make the capital "T" with the cross-bar last, just as I make the lower-case "t" — particularly when I write in English, because so many English sentences and proper names start with "Th" ...

 

"Y" —

just a little tip of my own here: you get a much faster "Y" (and I think a usually much nicer one) if you don't lift the pen within the letter. Do the left arm (top-to-bottom), do the right arm (top-to-bottom) and down into the stem: but don't lift the pen at any point (even during your journey between the bottom of the left arm and the top of the right arm). Try it about 20 times, with a careful eye, and see ...

[Erik]

Very important. I write the alphabet on a piece of paper, at the very least, 10 times a day, and I also practise various handwriting styles and scripts.

You sound sorta obsessed! :roflmho: ...as am I!

 

-Hana

Well yeah, I have school. I get to write a lot when I'm taking notes or get bored in class.

[umenohana]

Well yeah, I have school. I get to write a lot when I'm taking notes or get bored in class.

Same exact thing I do in class! lol

 

-Hana

[PinarelloOnly]

Although my normal hand is my drafting hand, I’ve been practicing my cursive and

italic lettering everyday for the last two months, the biggest improvement for me

came when I got my nib reground!

 

 

http://fototime.com/%7B65817E60-4D7B-40BA-A074-EFD7D78EFFEB%7D/picture.JPG

[Patrick Hand]

Without starting a new thread......

 

If you are trying to improve youre handwritting.......

 

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

 

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

 

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......

 

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

 

 

I could have lived very happly if I had never found this Forum..... just playing with my writting..... But I did.......It kinda happens that way............ and to find that there are others playing (or workiung hard ) at improving their writting...... SO how or what are others doing to do so........

[umenohana]

Without starting a new thread......

 

If you are trying to improve youre handwritting.......

 

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

 

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

 

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......

 

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

 

 

I could have lived very happly if I had never found this Forum..... just playing with my writting..... But I did.......It kinda happens that way............ and to find that there are others playing (or workiung hard ) at improving their writting...... SO how or what are others doing to do so........

I assume you're addressing everyone, so my answers to your questions are:

 

1. No, I fear I'd come to rely too heavily upon it.

 

2. Slants should come naturally with the proper positionings of the hand and paper.

 

3. I spent weeks weaning myself off of my modern strangle hold of writing utensils, in order to write in the proper way.

 

4. Why bother? I feel I could achieve it, and so I try. Also, I want to make my letters more pleasurable to their recipients-- letters are part of an old art, so why not go the extra mile to better put them in the mood? (Now if only I could improve the contents of these letters! )

 

-Hana

[Green Maned Lion]

At the moment I am working very hard to make my handwriting more legible. It is one of the greatest drives in me at the moment. When other people and read what I normally write easily, then I am going to work on good handwriting. Baby-steps.

[Patrick Hand]

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

 

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

 

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.........

[KateGladstone]

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).

[FLZapped]

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

[*david*]

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

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

[Patrick Hand]

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......

[bernardo]

I am amazed by the awful handwriting I see coming from intelligent, educated people--and vice versa. I am not speaking of calligraphy, which is as much art work as writing. No, I speak of the everyday writing we do--grocery lists, short memos, notes to ourselves and others. Do you like your handwriting? Do you make an effort to improve it?

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?

[Kalessin]

I am amazed by the awful handwriting I see coming from intelligent, educated people--and vice versa.  I am not speaking of calligraphy, which is as much art work as writing.  No, I speak of the everyday writing we do--grocery lists, short memos, notes to ourselves and others.  Do you like your handwriting?  Do you make an effort to improve it?

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.

[AndreaDuni]

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.

[georges zaslavsky]

voted somewhat unimportant but it has to be legible.

[johnr55]

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?

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.