Spencerian On French Ruled Paper

[uilleann]

Just starting out on my fountain pen and improve my handwriting odessey. It took a while for me to find a style I liked. I ended up with Spencerian as shown in Spencerian Handwriting by Ulysses. Its not the full blown Spencerian that almost looks like copper plate, and its a bit fancier than what I was taught in school that had no name but cursive. So I have downloaded some pdfs with the 52 degree guide lines and the the three spaces where the center space is smaller than the other two. Its been very helpful with my practice.

 

So now we are going on a little trip and I thought I would keep a journal with my new found skill. But I still need guides for help. I bought some standard french ruled paper. And I viewed a few you tube videos. I understand the rules that Seyes came up with. But they dont really match up with my style.

 

I have looked for examples and found some using the whole 8mm for caps and either 1 or two spaces for the small letters. Where the formal rules are 3 spaces for caps and 1 for small. And the other rules for loops tha allow an extra space.

 

I have seen some people use as much as 16mm for fancy caps, 12 for less fancey and the small letters use 2 spaces or more for loops.

 

I know I can do whatever I want and create my own size for my style. But I was wondering if others use French ruled paper, and if so, how you use the spaces.

[Lelouch]

Im not sure if I can call my writing even remotely Spencerian, but i do love using Seyes ruled notebooks. I use 8-12mm for capitals (depending on where it falls in the page and paragraph), and 4mm for lower case, 6mm for lower case t, 8mm for Lower case loops, and -4 to -6 mm for decending loops.

[wallylynn]

I use 3 spaces for tall, and one space for short. My trick is to use the 3rd space as the baseline. Practicing getting it right, before making my own adjustments. Gotta learn the rules before you break them.