Handwriting From Hell... A Quest For Personal Improvement.

[Coop]

As I already explained in my introduction post here: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/index.php/topic/262104-hello-from-the-netherlands/ I've come to this forum hoping that it will help me to improve my handwriting.

 

 

My handwriting has always... well... I guess there is no nice way to put it... my handwriting has always sucked (bad). As a personal improvement goal for 2014, I want to try and clean up my handwriting a bit. I only decided to do this late January, so it doesn't count as a New Years resolution.

 

I started off by taking a good look at my handwriting, to see what is actually wrong with it:

- I write too small, not to say tiny. On regular lined paper, each character is about a quarter of the line height, with capitols being somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of the line heigth.

- My writing is a blur. Many of the characters I write end up looking exactly the same.

- I write very irregular, spacing is a mess and I can't seem to write characters in a consistent way. Especially my lower case "f" is a problem.

 

Then I took a good look at what was causing these problems. I found that when I write, my hand is very cramped, limiting my motion. I put so much pressure on my pen, it's like I'm trying to murder the paper. Also, I'm a victim of the digital age, I simply don't write enough by hand, nearly everything I do is on a keyboard.

 

After that I started thinking about how to solve this. Of course there's the obvious: write more. So I've started taking all my notes at work by hand. Also I've started to keep a journal. Another thing I did is replace my company issued ballpoint pen with a fountain pen. Back in school, I used to write with a fountain pen a lot. I remembered how putting too much pressure on the nib made the pen stop working (or even break). By using a fountain pen again, I want to force myself to use less pressure. And of course I will need some discipline to make my writing a little more consistent.

 

I purchased a nice journal (Rhodia Webnotebook A5) and a number of cheap (mostly Chinese) fountain pens. I already had a Waterman Graduate, which is nothing special, but it does have some emotional value, so I don't want to mess it up if I have a relapse into trying to stab my paper to death. I bought a cheap fountain pen at the dutch department store "Hema", I use this pen with "Hema" store brand cartridges. This pen loos and feels cheap, probably because it is. I also purchased a Hero 529, as I was amazed by a pen being available for $2.76 shipped. My next purchase was a Hero 382, I only received this pen last friday and it does seem to have some flow issues, but shape and weight wise, this is my favourite so far. One pen is still on it's way to me, a Jinhao X750, I bid on this pen on ebay and completely forgot about it. I didn't expect to win the auction as it was a complete lowball bid, but I ended up winning the auction anyway. As both Hero pens came with a converter, I purchased a bottle of ink as well. After doing some research online, I was completely overwhelmed with what was available. I remember going out to the office supply store as a kid to buy ink for my mom, and all I could choose from was Waterman blue ink, and parker blue or black ink. Of course, it was an office store, so choice was limited, but seeing 36 different colours from a single brand and 20+ brands to choose from at the first website I looked at, was something I was not prepared for. I opted for the cheapest bottle of ink I could find, which happened to be Hero brand as well. The ink I ended up with was the No. 232 blue-black, which happens to be a colour I quite like.

 

To have a reference point, I wrote a couple of pages in my journal on the 1st of February. Using my company issued cheap-ass ballpoint pen. It was terrible. As I wanted to see if my attempts to improve my handwriting had any effect, I put away my journal for a month. During that month, I took notes exclusively by hand and wrote with fountain pen only. And my logic seems to be correct. I'm much less cramped and no longer trying to inflict bodily harm on my paper. on the 1st of March, I wrote another page in my journal, it wasn't a day and night difference, but even though the difference is small, an improvement could clearly be seen.

 

And as a picture can say more than a 1000 words, this is a sample of my handwriting from when I started on this quest of self improvement:

 

http://gruffalo.mooo.com/web/forum_pics/20140301_140219_small.jpg

 

As you can see, improvement is desperately needed. And to make matters worse, in this sample I was really trying to make it look not as bad as usual. The sample was written with a company-issued ballpoint pen (as that was my go-to pen at the time). Pretty bad huh?

 

As described above, after that, I started writing with fountain pen, for a month I took all my notes at work by hand instead of digital. But haven't actively tried to change the way I write. Just by changing the pen I use and simply writing more, in a month time I went from the above to this:

 

http://gruffalo.mooo.com/web/forum_pics/20140301_140233_small.jpg

 

Still pretty terrible, but a slight improvement can be seen. At least enough to motivate me to keep up trying to improve myself.

 

 

 

Any advice will be appreciated

[GClef]

Fist thing you HAVE to do is make your letters bigger, so that you're not doing all that "finger writing".

[Coop]

Fist thing you HAVE to do is make your letters bigger, so that you're not doing all that "finger writing".

Thank you for confirming that, always feels reassuring to have others back up your own conclusions...

 

Unfortunately, it doesn't make it less difficult to change something like that, after doing it wrong for so many years

[Nick T]

It will take some time but the effort will reward you. Use the big arm muscles, make the letters bigger and write slowly.

[Krisbecause]

Just an idea for you to consider. Maybe try writing in cursive just when you are practicing, or journaling so that it's a completely different style of writing.

[Krisbecause]

I found this too

http://www.loopsandtails.com

Think i will print some worksheets!

[Coop]

I found this too

http://www.loopsandtails.com

Think i will print some worksheets!

Thanks! I was looking for something like that

 

Right now I'm pretty bored in the office, so did some more practice-writing. I grabbed a different notepad, my other one is one of those metal spiral side bound type of pads. I never noticed much before I started paying attention to my handwriting, but that spiral really bothers me. I'm now using a simple glued flip over pad. Same crappy cheap paper quality, butno annoiyng spiral. It is smaller though, so resting my hand is a little awkward due to it being on the edge of th pad more of the time, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much as the spiral on the other pad.

 

I've written some random stuff in my usual handwriting (which looked surprisingly good for my standards), bigger (and slower), which makes a huge difference but isn't really suitable for real-world use (yet). And I wrote something in cursive. Well, I tried to at least. It felt very unnatural to me, probably because the last time I wrote in cursive was about 20-25 years ago. I wrote with my Hero 382 and 529 using Hero 232 blue-black ink. The annotation was done with my "Hema" store brand pen using "Hema" store brand black cartridges. That combo writes a little more wet than the Hero combinations, as you can see from the smears on the smiley face (I guess that's karma for using those in handwriting).

 

http://gruffalo.mooo.com/web/forum_pics/20140303_151830_rotated_cropped_small.jpg

 

I need to fix the ink-flow of my Hero 382, it is the pen I feel most comfortable with at the moment, but it is really annoying that it craps out on me after a number of lines.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions so far everyone, keep 'em coming

[PAKMAN]

I used cursive writing up until college and had a horrible hand that no one but me could read. In college (studied Engineering) I switched to printing after learning to print very precisely in drafting class. My hand writing was much more legible but a bit slower. When I started using fountain pens many years back I decided to pick back up on cursive writing. I had to slow down quite a bit and write bigger to make it legible, but with practice over the years, my cursive is much nicer that my printing was and I can write fairly fast now with a good result.

 

The real way to improve is practice, practice, practice! However I would recommend you get an Italic practice book like "Write Now" so that your practice is in correct form to start with.

[Krisbecause]

Cool! Glad you liked the idea. It looks much better to me on what you just posted. I find that i am much more concerned with my penmanship when i am writing letters, so that might be another way to slow down and write more. There is a thread here somewhere for that too.

[GClef]

 

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/2014-03-03_12-47-01_356-1_zps63dfd94a.jpg

[Randal6393]

+1 on pakmanpony's comments. The Hero 232 Blue-black you are using is an iron-gall ink, if I recall correctly, often hard in many pens to keep up a decent ink flow. Might want to give your Hero 382 a good flush and rinse and fill it with a different ink, one that is a bit wetter. Say, that Parker Black or Blue-Black that you bought as a kid. Or something else easily available and not all that costly.

 

My cursive also suffers from bad habits picked up when young. Have learned to think "light, light, light". Just barely touch the paper, no pressure at all. The type of cursive that most benefits me is American Round-Hand, Copperplate, etc. The drills I use I cadged from the IAMPETH website (www.iampeth.com). There are many old manuals in PDF format on the site and lots of example work. Gives a good bit of study and structure to the process.

 

The "Write Now" book is but one of many manuals on italic handwriting. Do not need a broad-edged pen, especially at first. But, the characteristic thick-thins of the italic hand are a great deal of its beauty. Might want to check out FPN for the Cataneo Manuscript as taught by James Pickering for an example of great handwriting.

 

Also, there are great resources available at the top of this thread. The Penmanship pinned topics will lead one to a wealth of information.

 

Best of luck to you,

[GClef]

http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/gclef1114/Tutuguans/2014-03-03_13-31-24_688-1_zps08445c74.jpg

 

http://writing-program.uchicago.edu/toys/randomsentence/index.htm

[Coop]

The Hero 232 Blue-black you are using is an iron-gall ink, if I recall correctly, often hard in many pens to keep up a decent ink flow. Might want to give your Hero 382 a good flush and rinse and fill it with a different ink, one that is a bit wetter. Say, that Parker Black or Blue-Black that you bought as a kid. Or something else easily available and not all that costly.

 

Thanks for the heads up on that! The ink wasn't my first suspect as it does just fine in my Hero 529. But I did what you said and gave the 382 a good cleaning (rinsed it out with soapy water until no ink came out. Then flushed it about a million times with clean water). I only have one bottle of ink at the moment, but I do have some cartridges from another pen that fit, so I'm using one of those now. The flow seems to be much better now. But comparing to my other pen, I noticed that the quality of the ink in the cartridges isn't very consistent. So I'm going to look for another bottle of ink that suits my needs better.

 

 

 

I'd like to try out different inks, so any recommendations for that are welcome too. I prefer to stick with something that can be seen as blue or black (or something in between) as here in the Netherlands, official papers etc. usually have to be filled out in black or blue. I don't mind spending a little more on a bottle of good ink, even if I'll just waste it on writing practice nonsense. Unless it becomes too expensive, then I'll just buy a bottle of Parker ink. Like I said, I'd like to try different inks, so ink that comes in a small bottle is preferred.

 

There is a store near me that has all kinds of drool-worthy writing stuff, so if your ink recommendation is available from here: http://www.lacouronneducomte.nl/webstore/main/bottle-c-223_224_228.html that would be awesome

Edited March 3, 2014 by Coop

[mrcharlie]

If you are going to be practicing handwriting, it is the time to use something really boring but known to work well in almost all pens, and something cheap is not a bad idea since you will be hopefully writing multiple pages per day while practicing.

 

I recommend Waterman Intense Black, Serenity Blue (previously Florida Blue), and possibly Mysterious Blue (Blue Black) as all being known to work well on most pens and most paper that will take FP ink, and inexpensive, and look good (many here will call them boring; this use is the right place for boring). Sheaffer Blue or Jet Black is similar in price and performance. Also the Pelikan 4001 "Brilliant Black" and their Blue, I think they call it "Royal Blue", although some people here believe the Pelikan 4001 inks to be on the dry side. I haven't had any real issues. Regular Pilot/Namiki Black and Blue and both good and usually inexpensive.

Edited March 3, 2014 by mrcharlie

[Randal6393]

Looked over the offerings in your link, can't go too far wrong in any of those. All are well-known inks (to some of us) and all should do well. Would probably go (personally) for one of the Rohrer & Klinger inks. Seem to be one of the less costly ones.

 

Enjoy,

[Coop]

I was thinking about getting some of the J. Herbin inks, as they currently have a 4 for the price of 3 deal.

 

That way I can try a couple of different colours to see what I like best. They're not the cheapest, but I like that they come in rather small bottles, so I wont be writing with a colour of ink I don't really like for a very long time (I don't mind paying a bit more for ink, but I don't like "wasting" it by letting it sit unused). Also, I'm planning on buying my wife a fountain pen as a gift, nothing fancy as she tends to misplace stuff, but she loves bright pinks and the J. Herbin Rose Cyclamen seems to be just her thing

 

For myself I was thinking about getting the Eclat de Saphir (as I would like to try a bright blue), Lie de The (I think it'd look nice on the off-white pages of my Rhodia Journal) and Poussiere de Lune (depending on how it looks in real life, if it is "too purple" for my liking, I'll probably go with Bleu Nuit instead).

 

But, as usual, I'm not entirely sure yet.... So any other suggestions to confuse me even more are most welcome

 

 

Oh, and please don't say I should get some cheap ink instead, I know that's the smart thing to do for practice, but I'm really quite stubborn about stuff like this. And trying different things keeps me interested and motivated in my self-improvement project I promise that before I have to take out a second mortgage on my house or have to put my kid on ebay to finance my ink consumption, I will switch to cheap ink

[mrcharlie]

Its not about cheap; its about when your pen skips you know it was you as opposed to some exotic color of ink that doesn't always work right in all pens. Maybe I didn't state that the clearest way before.

[Coop]

I bought a new ink today. They didn't have the J. Herbin ink in the colours I wanted, so I bought a bottle of R&K ink as suggested by Randal6393.

Went with the Blu Mare, but as the closest sea for me is the North Sea, which is more a greenish grey instead of blue, I think "Neon Smurf" would be a name better suited to this colour.

 

The ink flows very nicely in my pen so I'm a happy writer

[mrcharlie]

Have you decided on a cursive or italic system to work on?

One of the things I did when trying to fix my writing was to figure out just which cursive I had learned in school, for there are many forms of cursive in the English speaking world, and of course more when you add in the non-English but still largely the same alphabet western Europe. Then I had to decide if I wanted to fix my writing to match that or learn some different cursive.

Not too surprisingly, my tastes in cursive were to like what I used to know (which is called Zaner-Blosser). I found the company that sells this system to teachers and schools has some demo pages from their workbooks on their website, and so I was able to get some workbook pages for free and use them, and I found them helpful. I was able to make practice drills for other letters on my own based on these pages. If I were going to learn something new (not just re-learn what I used to know) I would have probably wanted to find a place to buy the full workbook.

If you like G-Clef's cursive, his basic shapes and how to combine them to make letters is a good and free system to practice with. Once you have a basic letter down, practice writing that letter connecting to other likely letters, and other likely letters connecting to it. For instance if you are working on 's', you can then write st sp si se sa su so as es type combinations several times each. Then some words that feature 's'.

 

Practicing the two or three letter sequences helps it to not feel unnatural when you are writing. You won't have to think about how you are ending the current letter to connect to the next one; you just think about the word you are writing. That was a huge thing when I first started writing again; I was having to stop mid word to think about how I was going to connect to the next letter. It only took a week or two of working on it before that went away.

[wallylynn]

Welcome to the nuthouse!

 

 

The website I like to recommend is http://www.paperpenalia.com/handwriting.html

 

pakmanpony is half right when he said practice, practice, practice. The other half is mindful practice. It doesn't work when you just repeat the same bad habits. Be conscious of your efforts. Constantly critique (not criticize) your work. Drills are good, but even when you can't, keep the effort in mind. "Hmmm, a little larger. A little taller, shorter, not as slanted, rounder, etc..." And especially, as you did in your photo, congratulate yourself when you achieve something you like.

 

As for notes, that's another skill altogether. It's not copying dictation. Most meetings I've been in are blather. Notes are few. Learn to write down what's important (for example, action items) and ignore the rest. Worst case is to continue what you're doing but learn the cornell method and distill the notes after the meeting has ended.