What does "trace" mean?

[Jerome Tarshis]

One possible meaning of "to trace" involves tracing paper or the equivalent: the student is instructed to place translucent paper over the example in the book and write on that paper. It might be tracing paper, or it might be ordinary paper sufficiently translucent so that the example may be seen clearly through it.

 

Another meaning doesn't involve a second sheet of paper. "Trace" can also mean moving a pencil point or pen nib over the example itself. Might be an empty pen, just to get the student familiar with making the appropriate hand movements. Might be a pen with ink in it. I have a book on italic writing, by Fred Eager, in which the instruction to trace means that the student is to write, with ink, directly on top of the printed example.

 

The word "trace" is used, often enough without making it clear which meaning applies, in quite a few books meant to improve one's handwriting. I've just bought Fix It ... Write, by Nan Jay Barchowsky, and I have no idea what she means by "trace." You may say that I am doing this for fun and I ought to do whatever pleases me, which is a good answer of its kind.

 

But is there any understood convention about this?

[KateGladstone]

Unless an author or teacher tells me otherwise, I assume (and expect others to assume when I use "trace") that "tracing" refers to following the letters directly (using a non-marking or lightly marking implement: a dry pen, a pencil, a pointed stick, or even a finger). As John de Beauchesne and John Baildon put it in 1570 in their rhymed book of handwriting instruction (the first copybook published in England) A BOOKE CONTAINING DIVERSE SORTES OF HANDS: "To follow strange hand with dry pen first prove ... "

[Anne-Sophie]

Tracing comes from tracer in French. And tracer means making a trace or a mark.

 

One uses tracing or any kind of translucent paper such as onion or airmail paper to write over the line of the character placed under the paper.

 

I do that both with letters and drawings.

 

 

Cheap and light copy paper works just as well for tracing and can become a hand traced custom coloring book for ones with youngsters.

 

Dover has many books on handwriting or ethnic specific patterns, still others with pictures of butterflies, birds, mammals perfect for making one's own stickers or stainglass patterns or coloring book.

 

Using them, I trace a lot, being not very good at drawing nevertheless having the desire to do so .

 

One Dover handwriting book to avoid is Gordon Turner's, "The Technique of Copperplate Calligraphy", the only examples consists of 4 half pages of capitals. The rest is yapping in copperplate.

 

 

I hope that the original poster, Jerome Tarshis, is going to give us a full reviews of the books he is learning from.

 

[Jerome Tarshis]

So far I am pleased, and I'd go so far as to say I am tickled, by Kate Gladstone's reply. Its special pleasure lies in the bit of quotation, using "prove" not as in today's mathematics textbooks, to demonstrate as being true, but rather as in the German verb probieren (which I may have misspelled here, or entirely misunderstood), to test.

 

That usage goes with the idea that writers write not because they have something to say, but because they have something to find out. I have in the course of my life done a fair amount of writing because I had something to say, indeed because I was being paid to say what was required, and although probieren is a luxury it is (for this writer, at least) a richer way to live. At least, as with eating marzipan, a nice thing to do once in a while.

 

Alas, I don't know enough about writing manuals to review any of the very few that have (so far) fallen into my hands. Comparison within a broad context seems vital to reviewing.

[KateGladstone]

"Prove" in Early Modern English very often indeed meant "probe, try, test, examine, investigate" -- e.g., when a teacher told a student to "prove" a mathematical theorem or other statement, the teacher meant "test whether or not this statement holds true" rather than what a present-day teacher means ("demonstrate that this statement holds true").

 

And we still have, even in present-day English, the proverb "The exception proves the rule" (which makes a lot more sense when you understand it as "the exception PROBES the rule" = you can test a rule by finding exceptions to it ... just the opposite of the modern [mis]understanding that interprets the proverb as if it meant "The fact that a rule sometimes fails is a good demonstration that the rule always works."

 

So the de Beauchesne quotation about tracing writing-examples to learn them would translate into present-day English as: "To follow an unfamiliar writing style, first try it with a dry pen."

[Jerome Tarshis]

A little post script: In my initial query I wondered what "trace" means in general, but my specific example was going to be Nan Jay Barchowsky's book Fix It ... Write, which I had just bought. I very much enjoyed Kate Gladstone's answer.

 

Since then the book has arrived in the mail, and I've found out that for this book and its author, "trace" refers to using tracing paper. Granted, I needn't do that if I don't want to, and I may try ordinary not-too-thick copy paper, but I have learned that different writers on handwriting have different opinions on this subject. (Possibly even on other subjects. In the language of typesetting, let a thousand fleurons bloom.)