Handwriting Improvement
Sample Lesson - Sample Analysis
Learn to write rapidly without the loss of style and readability

This egroup can help you improve your handwriting

The goal is readable rapid writing - speed writing with style & legibility

Most of the recommendations are common sense but if you haven't  questioned some of the myths you were told in primary school and are still saddled with bad habits - it is important to have them stated.

Illegible handwriting is costly - Time magazine reports that business loses from poor handwriting add up to more than $200 million a year. [stories]

Quick link to the discussion group    Mail in a question

Review the critiques of three styles to get the idea. [jump to press release]

SAMPLE LESSON
 

Seven Ways to Simplify Your Cursive

1. Cross lowercase t's as you write them. Don't wait to go back after the entire word is written.

2. Emphasize the downstrokes of letters and use only about a 5 to 15 degree slant to the right (too much slant causes poor legibility).

3. Eliminate loops wherever possible. Simply retrace your initial stroke on ascenders, or lift the pen without looping on descenders. (Most adults who write fast but legibly normally eliminate some or many loops and joiners in their handwriting.)

4. Join letters with straight lines, not curves. For examply, join o to n with a straight, short horizontal line.

5. Use "print" forms of capitals in cursive writing, with the same slant as the cursive, especially for twisty letters like S, G, J, and others. Remember, capitals form only 2 percent of ordinary prose text.

6. Strongly consider print-like forms for the lowercase letters b, f, r, s, and z.

7. Position the paper in front of the writing-arm's shoulder.

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Progressive schools throughout the nation are adopting italic - an simple elegant old approach to handwriting.  

The loopy ornate style below [also referred to as copperplate] came from engravers  and was never practical for rapid writing.  

The Trebuchet font used here [if you downloaded the free font] is an example of a basic italic.  A cursive italic is the same with some connected letters and optional flourishes.  Cursive italic is basically "joined printing" so it does not involve learning new letterforms.  A short sample of the Italic Handwriting style from Nan Barchowsky's CD

A Quick Analysis of handwriting styles.
The following styles were good enough to become digital fonts
Should you try to adapt your style and copy them?

The example above is a graphic.  The one on page 1 below is HTML
HTML is dependent on the client to display the page correctly
A graphic will display as it was designed.

Does others' poor handwriting sadden (or madden) you?
Do you think that you can do better?

        You have company. One woman has had enough of "scrawl-itis."
        She's declared a world war by Internet - against chicken scratch.

For five years, handwriting-improvement specialist Kate Gladstone, of Albany, New York State (USA) ran a nation-wide good-handwriting contest, the Annual American Handwriting Competition, to encourage and reward the art of clear, easy penmanship. But this "handwriting repairwoman," as she calls herself, got enough illegible mail from lands beyond the USA - mail presumably asking for her help - that she decided to take the cause planet-wide. Not only USA residents scribble, she realized.

So - with the help of fellow "handwriting hot-heads" within and beyond the borders of the USA - she re-vamped and expanded the old Americans-only competition into the planet-wide 

World Handwriting 
Achievement Contest
READ THE NEWSRELEASE

(WHAC) - to WHACk away at bad handwriting around the globe.     Anyone in the world - any age, any style of writing - can enter (and possibly win) simply by following instructions Gladstone posts at http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair/WHAC - the WHAC competition-site.

Gladstone admits that not everyone has the Internet. "So if you know folks who don't, but who might like to enter, print out what you see on the web-site and put it in the mail to them, so that they can enter, too.  We especially want to recruit senior citizens: the Internet didn't exist in their schooldays, but they certainly have had a lot of training and practice in good penmanship. And we want to celebrate and honor that.""

The contest runs through 14-February-2001.     For more info (including where to send your entries) visit the WHAC web-page. For any unanswered questions, contact WHAC's co-directors as
follows:

/1/  Kate Gladstone:
                           Kate Gladstone - Handwriting Repair
                           kate@global2000.net, kate@WriteMe.com
                           325 South Manning Boulevard
                           Albany, NY 12208-1731 USA 518/482-6763
 

WHAC site: 
http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair/WHAC
Handwriting Repair site:
http://www.global2000.net/handwritingrepair

handryting site
http//www.unifon.org/handryting

/2/ Tom Hutson:
                           Tom Hutson - WHAC
                           World Handwriting Achievement Contest
                           510 East Street, P.O. Box 121
                           Thurman, Iowa 51654 USA

/3/ Jim Williams:   parliScrib@aol.com
 

Handwriting books:  check www.amazon.com and www.bn.com

Better Handwriting.  Rosemary Sassoon and G. SE. Briem. 1994 NTC Publishing Group

Write Now!  Barbara GEtty and Inga Dubay, 1991 Portland, Or: Continuing Education Press
   As the subtitle states, this workbook is self-teaching, and the italic style it prescribes is easy-to-learn, practical, legible, and attractive. A brief amount of practice yields satisfying results, particularly uplifting for the many scribblers ashamed of what their hand produces. Let's hope the method spreads through the schools. In the meantime, old dogs embarrassed by illegible writing can learn new tricks using this clear and
intelligently produced guide

On-line handwriting lesson 
by G. SE. Briem coauthor of Better Handwriting, NTC Pub.
Handwriting Resource - Nan Barchowsky
http://www.bfhhandwriting.com/manualfs.html
Free Handwriting fonts http://www.pagesz.net/~mhare/fonts/

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