Your Handwriting Quality?

[Shangas]

I generally keep my handwriting at as high a standard as possible. At university, I do a LOT of handwriting, of lecture-notes, and at home, I do just as much handwriting of STORY notes...and it's of great importance to me, that my writing be of a legible-enough standard so that I may be able to read my own hand. If it isn't, something is majorly wrong.

 

Follow THIS LINK:

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...showtopic=30365

 

To see samples of my handwriting. You may judge it for yourselves.

[mchristian]

[[/color]

 

I have always loved handwriting, but here I am trying to choose a font and a color to make this short missive distinctive! Ha!

[MYU]

Weird. Maybe I have some kind of psychological problem. :blink: When I try Etude #1, I begin to get antsy after I get halfway through a line. I have to stop. Same thing when I restart... either I have to stop or just slow down as I get this tense feeling in my hand and forearm. There's something about the incessant repetition of the first letter that gets to me. However when I write a full sentence, I'm perfectly fine. I'll have to try it again when I'm in a calmer mood, I guess. Hmmmmm...

[KateGladstone]

If you write more than one style, and seek to know which to perfect, exercise yourself in both ... and see which style brings the faster progress in the exercises.

If you have to pause at any place, then *do* pause briefly when - or just before - you reach that place.

[arbatrmwc]

Most of my writing is lecture notes, and since I'm the type of person who likes to write down almost everything, I have to write fast. I'd say my writing at that speed is bad but mostly legible to people who borrow my notes. I'll cross out words that are misspelled (or might as well be misspelled considering how badly I formed the letters! ).

 

But when I'm writing my first draft of an essay (cursive) or just writing for fun, I'll take a tad longer with mediocre form. I love practicing writing with my italic dip-only FP (it leaks) and doing my physics and math homework with it. I don't yet have the patience to really work on my writing but someday I'd like to. I always admired my teachers' cursive (the good ones) and I would be so proud to be able to imitate that!

 

[rawin]

I will definately have to work on my handwriting. When at the age of about 8 my primary school teacher send me home during the hollidays with the task of replicating letters on endless sheets of papers. It did't help much, I sometimes look puzzled to my own notes trying to make sense out of it.

 

Using fountain pens didn't help, so the best thing now is to look for practice material on the net. (Maybe in this forum?).

 

(Edit: apart from the tips and hints in this forum, I found 14 methods alone to be customary in Holland. Gets me to wonder how my child is being taught, I'll ask her teacher. Will probably impress her when discussing pro's and con's of the school's chose method .)

Edited July 8, 2007 by rawin

[fenrisfox]

  jimk said:

I learn a new trick, scanning with the new machines!

 

Not beautiful - but quite legible.

 

Of course, that's the most important thing.

[telltime]

I try. I'd love to get the line variations from my flex nibs but don't know if it's because I'm a lefty that I can't seem to, or if it's because I just don't know how.

[arbatrmwc]

  telltime said:

I try. I'd love to get the line variations from my flex nibs but don't know if it's because I'm a lefty that I can't seem to, or if it's because I just don't know how.

 

Are you sure the nib is flexible enough? It might require more pressure than you're using.

[Zomba]

I am a teacher, teaching students with special needs.

 

Long ago, I did have some of the nasty teachers, but the big issue I have now is not with the teachers but the system. At least in my state, there is only one year when students are expected to write in cursive. I find that most of the students, not just my own, cannot read or write legible cursive, but the major reason is that they never see it. Teachers do not write in cursive, notes are not written to students in cursive, and there is no expectation that any assignments will be completed in cursive.

 

In my class, I have students use cursive to complete one assignment each week. They pick an assignment they have done in manuscript and recopy it in cursive. As they are writing, the students can ask me any questions they have about letter formation, and I will demonstrate on the board (so everyone can see the examples and on the margins of their papers. Then, I ask them to read their cursive. I find that most students who say they can't read cursive are simple out of practice in decoding cursive.

 

I wish I could say my cursive was handsome. It isn't handsome, but it is legible. However, by the middle of the year I have never had a student who could not read in cursive. About 95% of the students I work with actually begin to look forward to their cursive writing time, because they are doing something that most of their peers cannot do effectively.

 

At the moment, I am working on building up my skills in writing an efficient cursive - without the loops, italic cursive seems the closest to being both fast and legible. I have not run into teachers who would count off for manuscript capitals in many years. The issue in teaching penmanship in school, it seems to me that we have two duties: Teaching an efficient way to write legibly, and at speed, is needed to allow students to cope with increasing workloads. Teaching how to read (decode) cursive and to write it if it is required is needed because there are many situations when they receive information that was not typed or printed or when keyboarding is not a viable solution.

 

Demonstrating the use of fountain pens is just frosting on the cake.

 

Zomba

[Deca]

  johnr55 said:

I am amazed by the awful handwriting I see coming from intelligent, educated people--and vice versa. I am not speaking of calligraphy, which is as much art work as writing. No, I speak of the everyday writing we do--grocery lists, short memos, notes to ourselves and others. Do you like your handwriting? Do you make an effort to improve it?

 

The issue isn't intelligence or education. Handwriting is a manual craft skill. It is no more surprising that there are intelligent, educated people with poor handwriting than it is that there are intelligent, educated people who are poor tennis players. It is a question of whether there are costs imposed upon poor handwriting are sufficient to motivate people to work on improvement, or - in the much rarer case - whether individuals value their own handwriting enough to make the effort.

 

If you are surprised that intelligent people do not recognize the costs of poor handwriting, I think you have overestimated these costs. Poor handwriting is not a serious problem in most endeavours.

 

If your assumption is that intelligent people ought to recognize the value to themselves of good handwriting and act on it then I am more sympathetic to your line of thought, but it is still not unproblematic.

 

When I was in grade school in the mid 60s, handwriting was beginning to lose its importance. I was a particularly poor writer and my teacher comforted my parents with the thought that once in university I would have to type all my papers anyway. While in retrospect, I wish that the school had been more insisitent on my improving my handwriting, the attitute behind my teacher's remark is not a stupid one. Even in the days before the ubiquitous PC, the overwhelming majority of serious writing had to be typed. Now that we all word process and "cut and paste" involves a keyboard button and not scissors and glue, that attitude appears even more justified.

 

I am a university professor and I both read and write a lot. There are, I think, interesting parallels between the role of the computer in reading and writing. I study political philosophy and sometimes have occasion to use the computer's ability to search through text to look for such detailed things as how ofter a particular author uses a word or phrase in one book versus another (or in different parts of the same book etc.). The ability to do this instantly that the computer provides is wonderful and I wouldn't want to give it up. Similarly. the ease with which a word processing program allows one to move text around in a draft of a paper or to organize one's lecture notes is great.

 

The computer's specialized uses in reading texts, have not however done much toward making books obsolete. Partly this is for good practical reasons: computer text is essentially a type of scroll and the codex book is a much more effective way to present and use text than is a scroll. I think that there are also other reasons: a book is to me more satisfying on a visceral level. Beyond the ideas in them I like books as physical objects and have positive emotional associations with them that make me happy when I am reading.

 

So too with writing. We all print out our work to edit it because it is easier to do this when you can move the pages around physically instead of having to scroll through them, but there is more, at least there is for me. I believe that I think much better when handwriting notes or edits and here too it is the visceral aspect of the experience. Having a pen in hand (and a nice pen makes it better) and being "closer" to the paper has positive associations for me and makes me happy and more productive.

 

This is reason that I have worked on my handwriting so that it is now mediocre rather than awful. But I wonder - if my main occasion for handwriting was grocery lists would I have bothered? And I also wonder how much of this is just a result of my childhood associations with books and pens. Twenty year olds are much more attuned to video than my generation is. Common objects that seem irreplacable do go out of existence. Many young people don't wear watches because the time is on their cell phones and computers. Many (now retired) engineers probably had similar experiences with slide rules and yet what twenty year old even knows what these are. The book and the pen have a longer history and are more powerful tools than the watch and the slide rule, but....

[Titivillus]

  johnr55 said:

I am amazed by the awful handwriting I see coming from intelligent, educated people--and vice versa. I am not speaking of calligraphy, which is as much art work as writing. No, I speak of the everyday writing we do--grocery lists, short memos, notes to ourselves and others. Do you like your handwriting? Do you make an effort to improve it?

 

 

If it is legible to most people why make it better? with all of the typewritten/ computer generated materials I can not imagine why most people would even be concerned.

 

ZT

[johnboz]

I'm always trying to write nice, but I typically write with speed and legibility in mind rather than beauty. Of course, when I write with a nice flexible nib or a great stub, it looks better. I always tell myself that I need to practice my handwriting and make it more beautiful, but I never seem to find the time. Maybe tomorrow!?

[funzoneplanet]

  Slush99 said:

I care more about if it's readable. I really don't work on making it beautiful, I confess.

 

I'm with you on that.

Speaking for me... my handwriting sucks, so I really really couldn't begin trying to turn my handwriting into a work of art.

[RemyF]

My handwriting is a pity and I hate it.

 

I find it horrible, unreadable and the worst : it's irregular. I simply can't write in the same style (well let call that style )

one day from another.

 

I'm looking forward for writing lessons cause I'm ashamed of using such beautiful instruments with such a pity hand :bonk:

 

And that's why I'm know looking at this forum and some sites linked here right now.

[Verdant]

  Tytyvyllus said:

  johnr55 said:

I am amazed by the awful handwriting I see coming from intelligent, educated people--and vice versa. I am not speaking of calligraphy, which is as much art work as writing. No, I speak of the everyday writing we do--grocery lists, short memos, notes to ourselves and others. Do you like your handwriting? Do you make an effort to improve it?

 

 

If it is legible to most people why make it better? with all of the typewritten/ computer generated materials I can not imagine why most people would even be concerned.

 

ZT

 

As a youngster in school, I had a librarian whose notes to students were like prizes. They truly were beautiful.

 

Now, although I certainly haven't the majestic hand she did, my handwriting seems pleasant and unique. When I have seen the reaction people have had to a simple letter rather than an email, I know that the time taken was well invested. An email rarely touches the heart, whereas a letter can be cherished for years. I'm blessed to have received many such letters from people that meant so much to me, and those loved ones are now gone.

 

I do see your point, however. I knit sweaters for friends and family all the time. They certainly seem to appreciate it more than if I'd run down to the local department store and bought them one. But, I would never expect everyone to want to learn to knit. I guess it's the same for handwriting and devoting time to improving it. As with most things, if someone has an ultimate goal, it's worth it.

 

[LorenRad]

  umenohana said:

  Patrick Hand said:

Without starting a new thread......

 

If you are trying to improve youre handwritting.......

 

1. Do you practice with a linned "guide sheet" below the paper....

 

2. Do you worry about the "Propper Slant" or form of the letters.....

 

3. After reading an 1800s penmanship manual... describing how you should use your whole arm to form the letters.... do you try to re-learn how to do that......

 

4. And question "why bother"..... other than you want your writting to look beter......

 

 

I could have lived very happly if I had never found this Forum..... just playing with my writting..... But I did.......It kinda happens that way............ and to find that there are others playing (or workiung hard ) at improving their writting...... SO how or what are others doing to do so........

I assume you're addressing everyone, so my answers to your questions are:

 

1. No, I fear I'd come to rely too heavily upon it.

 

2. Slants should come naturally with the proper positionings of the hand and paper.

 

3. I spent weeks weaning myself off of my modern strangle hold of writing utensils, in order to write in the proper way.

 

4. Why bother? I feel I could achieve it, and so I try. Also, I want to make my letters more pleasurable to their recipients-- letters are part of an old art, so why not go the extra mile to better put them in the mood? (Now if only I could improve the contents of these letters! )

 

-Hana

Hana, in regard to your worry about relying too heavily on lined paper, I found early on that I used lined paper under a blank sheet to help straighten out my writing. After a while I found that I did not need the guides as much any more and today I can write pretty straight without any trouble. It's a matter of training and muscle memory.

[georges zaslavsky]

I have also seen people who held their pens more than wrongly for example the "claw" pen holding is totally wrong and people holding their pens in that way should learn to hold their pen correctly so it will help them eventually to write better and faster too. Teachers of today don't give a rat's ass of how pupils write or hold their pen. I have seen so many things that are wrong about penmanship in schools today that is scary and revolting at the same time. Computers are more and more used, same with instant messaging which explains the loss of the penmanship in general. I have rarely seen teenagers interesting themselves for fountain pens. They like more things that have no value like consoles, gsm phones that get outdated every six months etc and etc.

[retypepassword]

My handwriting quality's somewhat important to me: I want a speedy, yet attractive, italic hand. Unfortunately for me, I had been printing for about two years before I switched to italics a month and a half ago, so I'm finding it difficult to connect the letters properly.

  georges zaslavsky said:

I have seen so many things that are wrong about penmanship in schools today that is scary and revolting at the same time. Computers are more and more used, same with instant messaging which explains the loss of the penmanship in general. I have rarely seen teenagers interesting themselves for fountain pens.

Yay. I guess I'm a rara avis: I stopped writing on my computer after I found that my attention was too easily diverted; now, I write and proofread on paper before I type it up. As for fountain pens, I'm stuck with the inexpensive ones, but they're still more expensive than the sticks most people use, so it's hard to put one to everyday use (and become a pen nut): I broke a Sheaffer my dad gave me, and lost his Parker. Even worse, I've already dropped my new Javelin on the ground with its cap off (luckily, it was carpet, so it didn't experience any visible damage).

Edited December 15, 2007 by retypepassword

[eldorado]

  Slush99 said:

I care more about if it's readable. I really don't work on making it beautiful, I confess.

 

 

very very nice I would love to have that expertise.