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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.