Cursive Exercise

[ItsMeDave]

It's coming up on the four year anniversary of my first fountain purchase, and my initial foray into relearning cursive.

I discovered Spencerian pretty early on and thought I'd pick it up, but realized that until I could glide the nib across the page, Spencerian was a non-starter. So somewhere (probably here on FPN) I latched on the exercise of writing a continuous series of letters without lifting the nib. Sometimes it's the alphabet, sometimes it's a sentence. I still regularly practice this.

(My Spencerian is still pretty rudimentary.)

 

[BDarchitect]

Looks terrific! It doesn't have to be perfect to be delightfully smooth, flowing, and beautiful. Bravo.

[AAAndrew]

It may not be book-perfect Spencerian, but it is clear, readable and quite a handsome hand. Very few people stayed with the book-perfect hand anyway once they were out of school. Most developed a hand which, if they were lucky, looked like yours.

 

Good job. Have you tried writing from dictation (I used the TV as it's going and just write down sections of what people are saying), or transcribing a book or passage? That's also very good practice, and more like writing in life.

 

Good job! Keep it up!

[ItsMeDave]

It may not be book-perfect Spencerian, but it is clear, readable and quite a handsome hand. Very few people stayed with the book-perfect hand anyway once they were out of school. Most developed a hand which, if they were lucky, looked like yours.

 

Good job. Have you tried writing from dictation (I used the TV as it's going and just write down sections of what people are saying), or transcribing a book or passage? That's also very good practice, and more like writing in life.

 

Good job! Keep it up!

Never thought of taking dictation from T.V. dialog. If I'm not writing out the phonetic alphabet, or doing some other writing exercise (I'm unhappy with my capitals D and O), I often write out a paragraph or two of whatever book I'm reading, for example.....

 

[ItsMeDave]

It may not be book-perfect Spencerian, but it is clear, readable and quite a handsome hand. Very few people stayed with the book-perfect hand anyway once they were out of school. Most developed a hand which, if they were lucky, looked like yours.

 

Good job. Have you tried writing from dictation (I used the TV as it's going and just write down sections of what people are saying), or transcribing a book or passage? That's also very good practice, and more like writing in life.

 

Good job! Keep it up!

 

Thanks.

I didn't mean to imply that the writing sample was Spencerian, this is my normal cursive, though I've lifted a few stylistic aspects from Spencerian. I've got the Spencerian theory + five copybooks, and I've worked thought some of them. I need to finish that off.

[ItsMeDave]

Looks terrific! It doesn't have to be perfect to be delightfully smooth, flowing, and beautiful. Bravo.

Thanks.

[ItsMeDave]

Oops, I just realized that my writing sample from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row might be considered rude by some here. But hey, it is John Steinbeck, an American literary treasure. :-)

[inkstainedruth]

You'll get no objections from me -- I'm a huge Steinbeck fan (at least for the novels -- if I never have to read "Of Mice and Men" again it will be too soon).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ItsMeDave]

You'll get no objections from me -- I'm a huge Steinbeck fan (at least for the novels -- if I never have to read "Of Mice and Men" again it will be too soon).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

I'm a big fan of 'The Grapes of Wrath' and 'Cannery Row'. 'Of Mice and Men' was ok, unlikely I'll ever read it again. I didn't much care for 'East of Eden', I couldn't really buy into the story.

That's the limit of my Steinbeck.

[europen]

I've spent these weeks in pleasant escape by using pangrams to practice cursive handwriting. I use a Clairefontaine notebook I had kept in reserve. I can also compare different pens and their nibs by writing the same pangram using different pens.

 

From Millard Port's Preface to Wise and Funny: 100 Pangrams:

 

pangrams are brief, often witty, sometimes seemingly nonsensical sentences using all 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, meant for pure verbal pleasure. They may also be used to practice handwriting, to test a new pen, to compare the writing style of one pen with another – for instance, how broad or narrow the nib is – to practice grammatical and lexigraphical elements of language for both native and non-native speakers, to improve spelling and vocabulary by introducing new words or expressions, to improve the sense of, or feeling for, language....

 

Here are some of my favorite pangrams from Millard Port's book:

 

Cy squeezed extra juice from five plums while baking.

 

With vodka, hazy self-expression can become risqué joking.

 

Wembly gazed at six jade cuff links perched on his aqua vest.

 

Just by grazing, musk ox provide farmers with wool called qiviut.

 

Brazen Merkel’s quixotic purse vends delightfully wan justice.

 

Jacobowitz skipped through falling rain, unvexed by so much liquid.

Edited April 13, 2020 by europen