Advice On Cursive Writing And Request For Review On A Cursive Book.

[ugrankar]

Hi,

 

As stated in another post in the forum, I am returning fountain pen user, who had a tryst with cursive during his college days, but have gone back to non cursive after that till date.

 

I am planning to re learn cursive. Apart from some YouTube Videos, I am also planning to get a book "The Art of Cursive Handwriting: A Self-Teaching Workbook" by Jenny Pearson. I did check some other books, most of which focus on the Spencerian method or Palmer method, but this I found quite sufficient for my initial needs. Besides, the Spencerian/ Palmer books are something I perceive more as calligraphic in nature, which given my current stage of handwriting might be too early to get by.

 

Is there anyone here who has used this book? How is it?

 

For learning cursive off other resources, here's what I am planning to do:

1) Do cursive practice at home, but when it comes to actual writing for communications purpose (could be anything from a grocery list to a letter), I will use non cursive. That's because my cursive is pretty elementary and it takes me quite a while to write cursive.

 

2) Use fountain pens exclusively for writing , cursive or non cursive not withstanding.

 

3) I keep reading about "using the whole arm vs just fingers", but then again there is a video on YouTube where a lady with exceptional handwriting states something to the effect that indeed, it should be called finger writing than handwriting. So I am somewhat confused. I tried writing with my whole arm and the fingers were used merely to hold the pen in place, but it feels quite odd and different...to the extent that it feels like I am back to the kindergarten days of "beginning of the beginning of writing" .

 

Any suggestions? Advice?

 

The google search with the keyword "barbara nichol best pen hold" will point to this video.

 

I am not sure if embedding links to external sites is allowed at my initial level (if at all it is allowed), hence I have given the keyword instead of embedding the link directly.

 

Kindly consider this a sincere request and please guide me.

Edited September 3, 2017 by ugrankar

[Carrau]

A book by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay called WRITE NOW is a book that is an entry level program to improve handwriting by teaching a cursive italic style. I found it helpful when I started working on handwriting improvement. I believe it is available on Amazon-it is relatively inexpensive, and is not daunting to beginners. Used copies may be available as well, on eBay, Amazon, or used booksellers.

 

There is a post on this forum entitled What Is Arm Writing, with links to some videos and a website with videos ( look at sub posts #5 and 9 for these, and on the website Carlinigraphy, click on the STUDY button for more info and videos). Writing with arm movement does feel strange at first: I always feel like I'm going to be out of control when I write this way, but amazingly it doesn't happen. Regardless of how you choose to improve your hand, daily practice is important, as in all skills we seek to develop and maintain. Paying attention to exercises that improve spacing, shape, and slope of letters I found especially useful in improving legibility. There are YouTube videos that demonstrate some of these exercises, as do the books. You can post requests here for members' favorite exercises. Good luck.

Mike

Edited September 3, 2017 by Herrjaeger

[ac12]

#1 - Once you get past a certain point, you need to practice as much as you can.

This means write anything and everything in the hand you want to learn.

Although if you have to give it to someone else, you need it to be legible, so switch to print/italic for that.

 

#2 - Gel pen, roller ball or a soft lead pencil will also work just fine. The idea is to use a writing implement with low friction and that you don't have to push into the paper to write.

 

#3 - Everyone has an opinion. What works for one person may not work for another.

The larger arm muscles have more endurance than the smaller finger muscles. And if you need to write larger, arm writing has a larger arc of movement. But the smaller finger muscles have better fine motor control than the larger arm muscles. So I write with both; primarily arm writing, but with a bit of finger writing where it works better.

Any time you change, the new method will feel odd. That is just natural. It will feel odd until you get used to it.

That is what I went through when changing from finger writing to arm writing. And it took me three months of daily practice before arm writing became natural, for me.

[ugrankar]

A book by Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay called WRITE NOW is a book that is an entry level program to improve handwriting by teaching a cursive italic style. I found it helpful when I started working on handwriting improvement. I believe it is available on Amazon-it is relatively inexpensive, and is not daunting to beginners. Used copies may be available as well, on eBay, Amazon, or used booksellers.

There is a post on this forum entitled What Is Arm Writing, with links to some videos and a website with videos ( look at sub posts #5 and 9 for these, and on the website Carlinigraphy, click on the STUDY button for more info and videos). Writing with arm movement does feel strange at first: I always feel like I'm going to be out of control when I write this way, but amazingly it doesn't happen. Regardless of how you choose to improve your hand, daily practice is important, as in all skills we seek to develop and maintain. Paying attention to exercises that improve spacing, shape, and slope of letters I found especially useful in improving legibility. There are YouTube videos that demonstrate some of these exercises, as do the books. You can post requests here for members' favorite exercises. Good luck.

Mike

Hi Mike,

Thanks for taking time to reply.

[ugrankar]

#1 - Once you get past a certain point, you need to practice as much as you can.

This means write anything and everything in the hand you want to learn.

Although if you have to give it to someone else, you need it to be legible, so switch to print/italic for that.

 

#2 - Gel pen, roller ball or a soft lead pencil will also work just fine. The idea is to use a writing implement with low friction and that you don't have to push into the paper to write.

 

#3 - Everyone has an opinion. What works for one person may not work for another.

The larger arm muscles have more endurance than the smaller finger muscles. And if you need to write larger, arm writing has a larger arc of movement. But the smaller finger muscles have better fine motor control than the larger arm muscles. So I write with both; primarily arm writing, but with a bit of finger writing where it works better.

Any time you change, the new method will feel odd. That is just natural. It will feel odd until you get used to it.

That is what I went through when changing from finger writing to arm writing. And it took me three months of daily practice before arm writing became natural, for me.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for the detailed reply.

[Shaggy]

I highly recommend the Getty-Dubay book.

[calvin_0]

I suggest you take a look at Cursive Logic workbook... I'm currently learning from it and it break cursive down to very easily understand bit..

 

instead of teaching you to write cursive the old fashion way, which is learn the stoke for every letters, it teach the commonly used stroke and how to build letter with them.. for example, i'm currently learning the oval shape (it's call orange oval), just one shape and it apply to a, c, d, g, q and o

 

so I feel like i'm learning faster then the old fashion way..

[ac12]

I agree with Calvin.

Learning the letters in groups of similar strokes makes is easier to learn, because they all build on a common base stroke.

Going up the alphabet like I did in grade school, results in you jumping around to different strokes.

[calvin_0]

Update: This is just after a week of lesson with Cursive Logic Workbook with 20 mins practice a day.. since you already learned cursive, I imagine you'll pick it up even faster.

 

I'm going to start learning lesson 2 (Lime Loop, it's a stroke that apply to f, h, k, l, e and b, yes, it seems like each group is colored coded), when I find the time for it....

 

Edited October 24, 2017 by calvin_0

[ac12]

A tip.

Do not write SLOW.

If you write too slow, you are drawing the letter, not writing it.

There is a certain minimum speed that you have to write with, to maintain smoothness.

[FLZapped]

I went back in time to the days of dip pens for my lessons. I used "The Champion Method of Practical Business Writing." You can look it up on archive.org, or perhaps the www.IAMPETH.com website.

 

It can be downloaded in PDF form.

[souzakh]

I went back in time to the days of dip pens for my lessons. I used "The Champion Method of Practical Business Writing." You can look it up on archive.org, or perhaps the www.IAMPETH.com website.

 

It can be downloaded in PDF form.

 

Indeed you can and I just loaded it up on my Kindle and am starting to practice today. An interesting technique that has you practice a lot of "motion" exercises while listing to music on the "Victrola." These exercises really loosen up your hand, arm, and shoulder and focus you on lightness in your strokes.