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I've never truly focused on my penmanship till 20' Christmas when I entered the hobby. My handwriting was and still is pretty poor but I'm keeping at it. I'd love to see all else who are improving their hand! Post your progress in here alongside me! In a months time, we can review where I started, you started and where we are then, reflect and admire the improvements. Feel free to post as much as you want in this thread, your methods of practice or what you've gotten to, where you started, aslong as it relates to your progress, or method of progressing. - My photo here is really low quality, I apologize* So, context to this practice. Practice : Writing Music Lyrics. ( Song : That ain't heaven - Joe Nester) Pen : Hong Dian Forest Series - Black Forest w/ a Fude (bent) nib. Ink : Parker Quink* Blue-Black So, I started w/ the normal writing but I got tired of the broad line, so I flipped it and reverse writ with it turning out to be F or EF? I'm still really really rough with my handwriting consistency, and font but i'm getting there. This was writ at a swift pace so I can try to get comfortable writing at speed instead of doing one letter at a time practice sheet speeds. I messed up on a line and welp, ohwell.

I'm continuing to work on my Copperplate script, and used holiday greetings and vocabulary here. Feedback and suggestions for improvement are appreciated. I had to switch to a Blue Pumpkin nib midway here because my Brause EF was catching on my paper. Happy holidays to all!

Is there such a thing as elegant printing vs cursive/script? Such as for snail mail letter writing? Can anyone post samples of printing in letter writing? Are there actual styles for this? Thanks Aloha jim

I had an older post on here but things have changed some and I'm getting discouraged. I'm 30 years old and in college to get my Associates Degree in Network Administration in the IT field. So I work on computers all day. I rarely get to write by hand and when I do Its been so long since I wrote in cursive that I just fall back to print for note taking or anything because it takes me too long to write legibly in cursive. The only time I get to write in cursive is when I'm at home studying or writing my new found Pen Pals from these forums. I'm trying to practice Palmer method of cursive using the books online but I am having a really really hard time finding time to devote to them when I am constantly studying, and doing homework, and working, etc. Also the grip that the Palmer method shows really hurts my wrist and is really uncomfortable. Its really hard for me to get my wrist to lay flat like that and off the table, it feels more natural for my wrist to be rotated some. And With my wrist laying so flat I can't see what the heck I'm writing the way I would have to hold the pen.. Is your wrist really supposed to be so flat like in the Palmer book's pictures? Also it seems like you really need to have a specific posture and desk area to write like this.. Which makes me wonder if this is even something that I will ever even be able to use in school with awkward desk areas, etc its just not set up to allow for the space I need to write using the Palmer method.. Am I wasting my time here.... I mean my cursive is legible but I don't just want it to be able to be read, I want it to be enjoyed. Is anyone else having these issues that have or are currently trying to practice using the Palmer books? THIS IS NOT MY VIDEO but I found it and it is asking some of the same questions I am about the Palmer grip.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HUZLLwvOpQ The writing posture really concerns me also because I don't know if its going to be feasible to always get a proper posture out in the real world.. I don't want to only be able to write well when I have the perfect desk setup at home and then when I go to school or somewhere that doesn't have a good desk setup I can't write properly. I really appreciate any advice, Thanks Jeff

Hi! I just joined this network, and I'm new to calligraphy world. I'm looking for a workbook to practice copperplate font. Suggestions?

What is some good paper for both printing and writing? I have found worksheets online which will help me practice my handwriting but I want it to be good to write on. I've heard Tomoe River paper is kind of good for printing and amazing for writing so... Is that what I should go with? What should I do? Thank you!

'She who must be obeyed' has a 45 minute commute to and from work. During this time, she has done various things, but her present diversion is learning to write Hindi. (Devanagari) It give her an excuse to use her fountain pens (and an excuse to buy new ones). One of the features of the written language is conjuncts, clusters of letters joined together according to a system a bit more complicated than most if not all Western cursive scripts. (Salman, I imagine, could explain this much better.) In any event, it got me thinking. So what does that have to do with Spencerian? Simply put, I noticed in my own practice that certain pairs or groups of letters present difficulties when written together that they don't seem to present singly, or at least not so glaringly. Try to get the 2 Ls in 'llama' to match. That's hard enough and pretty obvious, but try writing the word 'khan' or worse still 'lakh' (sorry for the Hindi binge). Trying to get the ascenders to harmonize is difficult, or at least it is to me. I wrote an entire page this morning trying to produce a few decent examples of each. (I admit to being hypercritical, especially of my own practice.) So, here's the challenge. Share your bêtes noires with the rest of us. Give us some grist for our practice sessions, a short word or two which present the sort of difficulty I mention above. Here's mine for today: 'the', written with the wedge t. Producing a graceful wedge is difficult enough, but getting the slant consistent may be more difficult. It's surprisingly difficult to get all three letters to visually agree. Being the most commonly used word in English, perfecting your 'the' could pay large dividends.

No matter how well conceived the architecture of a hand, there will always be pairs or groups of letters which do not go together easily. Some of these groups or words force us to make adjustments to normal spacing or letter shape if they are to look correct, while others require such perfection of execution that even the tiniest deviations from perfection howl off the page at us: "Sloppy penman, Sloppy penman." I imagine many of us have personal betes noires. I know I do and will often fill an entire practice pages with them trying to better myself. (Whether I succeed or not is open to interpretation.) Anyway, the point of this essay is to solicit from my fellow ink-slingers their black beasts, so that all of us might try our hands at them and thereby improve our penmanship, not to mention our humility. So, please offer up your three favorite (or least favorite words) and a brief explanation of the problems they present. If you are able to limit yourself to only three words, you will be rewarded and allowed to add a fourth word, one which you enjoy writing and that shows you off to best advantage. It would also be sensible if we mentioned the hand we are practicing. Here is my Spencerian list. 1) error [The problems here should be pretty obvious, making the 3 r's look the same and maintaining good spacing] 2) elegant [This is mostly a spacing problem in Spencerian, the first three letters want to spread out and the final four want to bunch.] 3) lily [The problems are making the three loops harmonize, and connecting and spacing the l and y attractively.] Favorite word: Asparagus.