Starting from square zero

[lynxcat]

hello, everybody. my friends call me lynx, and i... have terrible handwriting.

 

usually it doesn't matter, me being a computer programmer, i type a lot more than i use pens. but it's occasionally an inconvenience, and often a slight embarrassment. i'd like to fix it.

 

my end goal is to develop a hand that's easily legible by just about everybody, that makes a clear distinction between lowercase and uppercase (right now i block print in all uppercase --- which is tricky when you're writing down a password for somebody, or some other case sensitive text, which is common enough in programming), and which is reasonably quick to produce. i know i'll never be as fast longhand as i am at hunt-and-peck typing --- never learned to touch type, either, but i've got pretty quick in my own decidedly non-regulation style anyway --- but i don't want to end up any slower than i am right now, and every bit of speed would help. i'm willing to slow down during the transition and practice, but i want to eventually be able to speed back up again --- so long as i can become, and then remain, legible.

 

i don't care what my handwriting eventually ends up looking like, aesthetically. i don't care if it's joined up or free-standing, don't care if it's slanted or straight. heck, if medieval uncial will meet my first three criteria, i'll write like an old monk and not mind.

 

any hints as to what i should try to do? any drills, lessons or lesson plans you can recommend? will i have to spend money on an instruction book, or can i find all i need online? i've found the IAMPETH website and downloaded some of their PDFs; i have... opinions on some of what i've found there, but that is for another post, i think.

 

oh yes, and since i work with my hands nearly as much as with my brain, anything that even risks repetitive stress injury is something i'd like to avoid. i'll do drills, but having several relatively different ones to alternate between is much better than doing the same one all day long.

[KateGladstone]

Just to get you started, Lynx -- if you have an iPhone, you might consider my handwriting instruction app "Better Letters" (search the iPhone App Store).

If not, I can post here a brief list of help-your-handwriting web-sites that I recommend: let me know (Lynx or anyone) if you'd like this posted.

 

Also: As a quickly helpful first step for people who write in ALL CAPITALS and who have had no success in breaking that habit even if they wanted to: I recommend that the "all-caps brigade" should begin their handwriting improvement by simply making most of those capitals (those intended for lower-case letters) rather *smaller* than the others. (In other words: don't enlarge those capitals that you truly intend as capitals -- rather, shrink those capitals that you intend as lower case. You will find that 1 - 3 weeks of always writing in this way makes it physically/psychologically easier -- almost inevitable in fact -- to make the next move: to writing actual lower-case letters where these should in fact occur.)

 

Do it -- and let the rest of us see (by scans of your writing) what happens!

[HDoug]

The most expedient way would be to find a defined style that resembles your current handwriting in terms of the strokes needed to form the letters. In other words, going from a sloppy loopy roundhand to an uncial (extreme, I know, but just as an example) would be more difficult than going to a nicer form of roundhand. If your handwriting is a form of print now, an italic may be most accommodating. In many cases just slowing down and practicing helps. There may be a few letters that are habitually malformed. You just have to teach your hand to form those properly and practice. It's like learning to play the hard passages on a piano (or any other musical instrument). Do it slow and well, then gradually add speed. When you reach the sloppy limit, dial back the speed a bit. And there you go.

 

Good luck on your worthy quest!

 

Doug

[lynxcat]

thanks for the replies! as it happens, i don't have an iphone; i'm still a bit downmarket from that price point. i've been interested in some of the italic styles, and that might be the easiest to adapt my current block printing towards. are there any good whole-alphabet samples of such available, like the cursive handwriting ones i remember from grade school? (i grew up in Europe. they tried to teach us cursive with cheap Pelikan fountain pens back then, i remember; i guess it didn't stick with me. wonder whatever became of that old Pelikan... though i remember it being pretty scratchy; i don't think my childish hand was very kind to it.)

 

a few letters habitually malformed... yes, i'd say 26 counts as "a few", still. :embarrassed_smile: i'll have to try the approach of making the lowercase ones smaller and seeing what happens, thanks.

[KateGladstone]

Some Italic handwriting resources (teach-yourself items including full alphabet and more) inhabit these sites:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/09/04/opinion/20090908_opart.html

http://www.briem.net/

http://italic-handwriting.org

http://quilljar.users.btopenworld.com/

http://www.BFHhandwriting.com

and also please click the "Better Letters" link in my sign-off.

[Paddler]

As someone who has spent a whole career in the sciences where cursive or "joined-up" writing is nearly impossible to use, I advise you to learn the lower case block printing alphabet. Use capitals where you need them and then use lower case letters that you can write with a single stroke per letter (mostly). This form is faster than cursive or any other kind that I know of. This is the form that is taught to people who must copy Morse code at hellacious speeds. It meets all your criteria.

 

Paddler

[Bronze]

As someone who has spent a whole career in the sciences where cursive or "joined-up" writing is nearly impossible to use, I advise you to learn the lower case block printing alphabet. Use capitals where you need them and then use lower case letters that you can write with a single stroke per letter (mostly). This form is faster than cursive or any other kind that I know of. This is the form that is taught to people who must copy Morse code at hellacious speeds. It meets all your criteria.

 

Paddler

 

 

- Sounds interesting. I find myself needing to do a lot of fast writing, but I am struggling with legibility at that pace.

 

Do you have any examples or online resources you could share?

[Paddler]

As someone who has spent a whole career in the sciences where cursive or "joined-up" writing is nearly impossible to use, I advise you to learn the lower case block printing alphabet. Use capitals where you need them and then use lower case letters that you can write with a single stroke per letter (mostly). This form is faster than cursive or any other kind that I know of. This is the form that is taught to people who must copy Morse code at hellacious speeds. It meets all your criteria.

 

Paddler

 

 

- Sounds interesting. I find myself needing to do a lot of fast writing, but I am struggling with legibility at that pace.

 

Do you have any examples or online resources you could share?

 

I have seen it online, but can't remember where. It may have been at the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) site where they teach to the amateur radio license tests. It is actually just the block printing we were taught in grade school, with a couple of letters modified for speed. A lower case "t" looks almost like a "v" with the right leg curved out to the right. The f is two strokes, as are the k and x. The i is not dotted, the j has a crook and no dot. The numeral 1 has the hat on it; the 7 has a crossbar, like they use in Europe. The zero has a slash through it. The modifications are slight and the writing is legible for anyone.

 

Paddler