improve my handwriting

My writing is so bad I can’t even read notes that I wrote to myself from a few months back. Time for some practice!

IAMPETH, an association of calligraphers, has an archive of classic books on penmanship. I’m using the book on Palmer’s penmanship and it’s proven pretty useful.

I am going to sample a few handwriting styles that appeal to me, and practice them before and after classes while I wait at my desk. First, I want to emulate my mother’s cursive handwriting. I’ve always found it effortlessly lovely and simple, and my own messy scrawl sometimes mirrors it a little, so this shouldn’t be too a difficult a first step.

Then, I’d like to attempt this (above), although perhaps it merges with my subsequent goal of learning calligraphy.

rahul

and this I guess it’s time to readopt this goal.

I love this article on Slate magazine
http://www.slate.com/id/2227680/

But the workbook she recommends is, of course, out of print. The other textbook is at least $65 in Canada. Suggestions?

I’ve been meaning to do this since June, but my undesirable skill of procrastination has caused me to drag this till now.

http://www.paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html

A pretty interesting site I found in June, I’m finally going to heed that guy’s advice.

Getting a handwriting notebook and practicing daily, going to start today.

Hope my handwriting will show some improvement in 1 month’s time!!

Here’s a sample of my “neat” writing, on a school assignment from a few years ago. That is how I write when I intend it to be legible to someone. If I’m the only one who needs to be able to read it, I relax and the letters begin to fall apart entirely. Vague squiggles suggest the outlines of letters, rather than actually forming them.

I found that even when I slow it down and concentrate, I still had a very hard time writing neatly. Time for some research!

In the library I found a copy of Teach Yourself Better Handwriting by Rosemary Sassoon. When looking for handwriting websites, I found a wonderful free eBook by Gunnlaugur Briem and didn’t realize until much later that Briem was Sassoon’s co-author. They teach italic handwriting. I learned standard Copperplate-derived looped cursive as a kid, but never use it because it degenerates almost immediately into an undifferentiated loopy squiggle. Even at my neatest I can barely read it.

The italic handwriting that Sassoon and Breim teach really appealed to me. The angularity of it seemed easier to write neatly, and I like the look of it. Not so fussy as the looped cursive, but not as childish looking as block printing. I love that they don’t make a firm distinction in italic between print and cursive. You can join some letters and not others, breaking occasionally in long words and omitting the joins that are too awkward for you. Nice!

I picked up a kids workbook for italic handwriting for a dollar on Amazon, Book D in Barbara Getty’s series. I believe it is for third graders. I’ve been working through it, and I am definitely making progress. I think part of why I hadn’t made any progress in the past is that I was trying to work at a normal “adult” handwriting size. If I write large on double-ruled paper, I can make quite nice letters. The series of workbooks has progressively smaller lines, so perhaps if I work through this one and the remaining three in the series I’ll be able to make nicely formed letters at a normal adult size.

So, I’ll keep working on it.

I type so often that I don’t write longhand very much at all anymore. There are probably whole days when I do little more that sign my name! My handwriting has become sloppy and uneven and I would like to make it prettier and more legible.

I’m thinking it may be time to throw in the towel on this one. I’ve been working really hard on my signature, and have been real pleased with it. S much so that (and I know, this is kind of retarded) I’ve been looking forward to signing stuff throughout the day so I can whip out the new badass John Hancock. Until the other day, when I went to the gas station.The guy working there is an old acquaintence from high school. So I used my card and thn signed the reciept with my new flashy signature, and he looks at it, laughs, and in a very sarcastic tone say “Man that signature is awesome”, which is pretty much how people always react when they see my signature, except this was my shiny new impressive signature. Or so I thought. Guess it’s back to the ol drawing board with this one, and for the time being I think it’s time to shelve this goal until I recover from this experience, lol.

http://www.paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html