Your Handwriting Quality?

[KateGladstone]

Re:

 

> ... I guess now I'll have to write something, figure out what my worst legibility

> problems are, and get started.

 

In this connection, consider my "Marketplace" posting.

[Paddler]

Kate,

 

I have been using your Études for Penmanship for several days now and have been applying the precepts of the Roman gods of industry: Assiduus and Sedulus. Together, we have made great progress.

 

I perform the whole battery of Études in the morning. By the time I am finished, my writing quality begins to dive, probably due to fatigue or failing concentration. In the afternoon, I do Étude #1, line one, through the second iteration only (like a ball player using a weight-bat), and then launch into my current project. I can usually write two pages (8 1/2" X 11", ruled) before things begin to fall apart again. At the first mangled word, it is "down tools and all stop". If good quality does not return an hour later, I quit for the day.

 

Last evening, my wife was walking past Aunt Polly (our bandy-legged writing desk) where my project was visible and said, "Hey! You've been working on your handwriting, haven't you?" Then she began to read and laugh herself crooked. I thought my writing was beginning to flirt with legibility; now I have corroboration.

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Paddler

[KateGladstone]

Great work, Paddler! I hope you'll post some samples!

 

Re your morning practice — you may find it helpful to take a 20-second-to-1-minute break halfway through (or 2/3 of the way through) your morning practice, and/or to take 5 or 10 seconds of break in between each _Étude_ and the next.

[Cloud]

LOL, most of what I write is almost unreadable. Plus it's cold here in canada. Last week when it was about -25oC, when you try to write... well ITS unreadable however you,like at it.

 

When I can write at my speed, I just think of the content... don't have extra memory space to think of the form... maybe that will develop later.

[Srehman]

  alvarez57 said:

  Quicksilver said:

I have bad doctor handwriting.  My print varies between "illegible," and "possibly a foreign language, but at least they look like words."  That being said, I have decided to switch to cursive handwriting in an effort to force myself to concetrate on my handwriting.

Well done, I'm proud of you. the nurses say I'm one of the very few whose handwritting is legible. My father, who was a Physician, always told me to write legible so people [nurses] can understand what I want to say/order.

While I maintained a relatively decent standard of writing over my residency (including getting compliments from nurses and other residents about the legibility and neatness of my writing), my hand has deteriorated markedly in fellowship. This was partly down to me moving away (for some still-unclear-to-me reason) from FPs and using drug rep pens. The other, main reason is the sheer volume of notes I have to write in a brief period of time in-between seeing patients.

 

More recently, with my recently acquired FPs, I've begun to try to redress my slipping handwriting. It's still quite legible, and one of the better hands around; but in a hospital, that's not saying much!

[kai-wun]

When I was younger, my writing's was constantly changing. However, since my entry into postsecondary education, I stopped writing altogether! Well, words at least. I only really write numbers and greek letters nowadays (physics major).

 

Anyway, I've only recently dove into this FP hobby... so I do intend to perfect my handwriting when I can..

[Anne-Sophie]

  KateGladstone said:

Re:

 

"I wish I could use my italic for everyday writing like James Pickering and others, but it is just not fast enough."

 

Though James Pickering (who writes an unjoined Italic) will likely disagree, in my experience and observation those who admire Italic but find it too slow can increase their speed by using certain joins — NOT, mind you, ALL the joins theoretically possible in Italic!

 

If you use only those joins that form either straight horizontals ( - as in "on" or "ti") or straight diagonals ( / as in "an" or "li"), you can pile on quite a bit of speed without loss of legibility or "Italic-ness."

One large-scale (25,000 people) 1950s UK study of Italic versus other handwriting styles established that Italic writers wrote about one-and-a-half times as fast as non-Italic writers of the same age and equal legibility. (The Italic-writers in this study wrote an Italic with joins.)

 

Other things to do for speed in Italic involve re-ordering the strokes of some capitals: what I describe below reflects historical practices (as documented in the handwriting-research volume THE ORIGIN OF THE SERIF by Edward Catich), so actually this amounts to restoring the historical stroke-order for these capitals:

 

"A" and "H" —

Instead of doing these as left side -> right side -> middle,

do them as left side -> middle -> right side

(the sides both go top-down, the middle goes left-to-right)

 

"D" —

Instead of having two top-down strokes (the straight and the curved stroke),

start with an "L" shape and continue the end of the "L" back to (and possibly past) the top of the "L" shape.

 

"E" —

Many people learn to do this as vertical -> top -> middle -> bottom

or as vertical -> top -> bottom -> middle,

but try it as: "L" shape -> top -> middle if you do not already do it that way.

 

"F" —

Instead of the usual modern vertical -> top -> middle,

try it as top -> vertical -> middle:

with the horizontal strokes (top and middle) both done left-to-right

 

"I" —

Instead of the usual vertical -> top -> bottom,

try top -> vertical -> bottom:

again, with the horizontals (top and bottom) done left-to-right

 

"J" —

pretty much the same as "I":

instead of putting the horizontal stroke on as the last thing,

write the horizontal stroke *first* (left to right)

and THEN go into the rest of the "J."

 

"T" —

well, here I differ from Catich: he recommends always writing the horizontal top of capital "T" before the vertical, but for me this works well only in ALL-CAPITALS writing. When I have lower-case writing (with its efficiency of joining the "t"-crossbar into the next letter), I want to make the capital "T" with the cross-bar last, just as I make the lower-case "t" — particularly when I write in English, because so many English sentences and proper names start with "Th" ...

 

"Y" —

just a little tip of my own here: you get a much faster "Y" (and I think a usually much nicer one) if you don't lift the pen within the letter. Do the left arm (top-to-bottom), do the right arm (top-to-bottom) and down into the stem: but don't lift the pen at any point (even during your journey between the bottom of the left arm and the top of the right arm). Try it about 20 times, with a careful eye, and see ...

Kate, would you mind using a writen exemplar to illustrate your post above?

[KateGladstone]

If I can figure out how to post a written exemplar, I'll post one later this week or (at the latest) early next week. (Right now, I have a larger-than-usual number of paying clients to handle first.)

[KateGladstone]

Well, you asked for it ... so I took a few minutes today to show how I write my capitals (attached). Feel free to laugh.

[Anne-Sophie]

Thanks Kate,

 

 

It's very nice of you to put a picture on the theory of handwriting.

 

It's much more clear.

 

Thank You

 

 

[KateGladstone]

If anyone else wants pictures relating to handwriting as I see it and do it, let me know ... sooner or later, I'll do my best to provide them!

[peapicker]

I just tried the études for the first time... and I discovered that I wrote the first three in running-hand, which is what I usually use to write, but when I came to the all-caps exercise, my natural tendency was to use a drafting-style print caps, and not the caps I usually use with my running hand. Since the latter is what I am trying to work on, should I strive to do the all caps exercises using running-hand caps?

 

I suppose I should keep these as a handwriting baseline. Perhaps I'll post some pix of my efforts... never been bold enough to do that here before.

 

John

Edited February 15, 2007 by peapicker

[KateGladstone]

For the all-caps exercise — even more than for handwriting in general — I recommend the very simplest capitals consistent with your taste. For most people, this does tend to mean shapes much more like print-writing than like cursive. (Italic capitals — e.g., James Pickering's if not something simpler — work here to good effect: in fact, I've seen some very beautiful handwritings that used Italic capitals along with a conventional-cursive lower-case.)

 

Most people, in fact, find (as you have found) that they unconsciously tend towards very simple (even print-like) capitals when writing two or more capital letters in a row: simply because conventional capitals tend to look rather "overdone" (and often become hard-to-read) when used all together — even if the writer has rendered each and every one of them absolutely perfectly.

 

More about this matter of capital-letter style:

some schoolteachers (and more than a few parents) have told me that, when the kids learn cursive, it often suddenly looks to the adults as if the kids have started spelling badly whenever writing anything that requires all capitals —

e.g., acronyms such as UNESCO,

titles of books mentioned in schoolwork if the school requires writing out book-titles in all capitals as some do,

or — very often — material copied/transcribed/quoted from a source that used all capitals:

 

e.g., if a child using cursive writes a story including some sentence like "The traffic-sign said 'STOP,' " the word "STOP" in this quote uses all capitals because the quoted sign used all capitals ... and it uses all cursive because the teacher requires all writing to use cursive now.

 

For some adults, at least, the odd appearance of a string of cursive capitals gives the illusion (a temporary illusion — usually!) that the child has written the word wrong: e.g., some of the teachers who contact me say that, when they have seen things like "STOP" or "UNESCO" or "I love reading HARRY POTTER" on a child's paper, they have immediately marked these wrong for spelling "because it just looked so wrong"... realizing only later that the child had spelled correctly *and* had written the cursive capitals correctly too.

 

One now-retired teacher actually admitted that, in her days of teaching elementary school, when she didn't like a particular student (or a particular student's parents) and wished to find a reason to give that student a much poorer grade than s/he had earned, she would require this student to copy some capital-filled material during a cursive lesson when other students received material not packed with capitals ... then, whether or not the student had written the cursive capitals correctly, she would make fun of "how stupid your writing looks here" in (e.g.) "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" which she had required him to copy in cursive from a dollar bill, and penalize him for the "stupid look" of his writing ...

so if, next time, the student tried to avoid the odd look of five words all in cursive capitals (and just write "The United States of America") she could and did then penalize him for not copying correctly (not using all capitals like the material set before him),

and if in desperation he then copied it in all-capitals but used printed ones, then she could and did penalize him for using print-writing during a cursive lesson ...

 

[ViolinWriter]

QUOTE (KateGladstone @ Feb 18 2007, 03:18 AM)

<snip> One now-retired teacher actually admitted that, in her days of teaching elementary school, when she didn't like a particular student (or a particular student's parents) and wished to find a reason to give that student a much poorer grade than s/he had earned, she would require this student to copy some capital-filled material during a cursive lesson when other students received material not packed with capitals ... then, whether or not the student had written the cursive capitals correctly, she would make fun of "how stupid your writing looks here" in (e.g.) "THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" which she had required him to copy in cursive from a dollar bill, and penalize him for the "stupid look" of his writing ... so if, next time, the student tried to avoid the odd look of five words all in cursive capitals (and just write "The United States of America") she could and did then penalize him for not copying correctly (not using all capitals like the material set before him), and if in desperation he then copied it in all-capitals but used printed ones, then she could and did penalize him for using print-writing during a cursive lesson ...

Now that's just plain old nasty.

 

Was this teacher in St. Paul Minnesota teaching fourth grade at...?

 

 

[KateGladstone]

As I recall, Mrs. "Just Plain Nasty" taught fifth grade in New Jersey. Yes, she retired ... but her spiritual kin abound.

 

I'll never forget the classroom I observed, some years back, in which a fourth-grade teacher straight-facedly informed the students that "it is very important to always join all the letters when we write, because ALL adults join ALL the letters in their handwriting, ALL the time" ... when a girl questioned this (and backed up her query by pointing to the teacher's own semi-joined-and-not-all-that-"cursive" script), the teacher smirked and said: "Something is really very wrong with you, young lady, if you think I don't even join all my letters." When a few other children boldly supported the questioner ("She's right, Mrs. X — you DON'T join all your letters, you DO print most of your capitals — we can see that too!"), she sassed them too and shamed them into pretending that they couldn't have seen it because it couldn't have happened. I tried to talk to her after class (as we had previously arranged), but ... as soon as I got a few words out, she suddenly found an urgent errand elsewhere: calling back, grimly, over her shoulder: "Ms. Gladstone, I HOPE you do not believe that you were asked here in order to interfere with the process of education!"

[peapicker]

One thing that bugs me more than almost anything is a hypocrite for an instructor, whether at the elementary or the university level. It is worse at the lower levels, because the kids are too trusting and easily bullied.

[ViolinWriter]

Thank you Kate for truly completing the picture of "just plain nasty". Your story reminded me of a master class at a certain very famous music school. The instructor was a very famous instructor who was noted for creating masterful players out of teen-age violin wizards.

 

After analyzing one player's performance, he said put your left hand this way, and move the fourth finger this way, and stand a little differently and turn you head this other way.

 

Then the master played for the master class, just to make sure we all saw how he did what he was urging the student to do. Except for one thing. He didn't do any of what he had been recommending. None of it. All the student should have done is lean his hand a little back and then sort of ... Well that's getting a little too violin-techie.

 

However, not one person was willing to stand up, address the master teacher, and point this disconnect out. Except me.

 

I was told, to my face, that I was insolent and ill mannered, but not ejected from the class (thankfully).

 

At another master class, there was a woman teaching who had a quick and somewhat acid wit. If we were threatening to her in terms of doing something or spotting something she missed, we learned quickly where we were not to tread, ego wise. She had a saying that could apply to Just Plain Nasty.

 

Being a (bleep) takes wit, ingenuity and planning. Being nasty is merely common as dirt.

[jimk]

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

[Latro21]

i voted 'somewhat unimportant'.

 

as long as my writing isnt meant for someone elses reading, i dont much care how it looks as long as i can read it. i do however go back and fix little silly meaningless errors to make things look 'right', such as an 'a' that is open, an 'o' that isnt round enough, an 'e' that isnt slightly wider than an 'i', an 'r' that doesnt have the normal shape i write them in, etc. ill also end up crossing out words that are properly spelled but doesnt suit my liking due to some 'error' as mentioned above.

 

if im writing something that another person will read, i write larger and tend to use more of a standard cursive using some of my adapted letterforms [with the exception of a printed 'z'-i hate the cursive z], or actually i print the writing instead, since i have very neat printing after using it almost exclusively for my entire school career and then some [my teachers told us to print our homework, especially me since my cursive is tiny, because they said it was hard to read everyones cursives, but printing was more legible due to the uniformity of it].

 

i do want to get a flex nibbed pen though, and ive been adapting some new letterforms to my writing to make it look nicer to me and more unique.

[cercamons]

Well some of your stories give me hope.

 

I was raised in the 1950s and my teachers broke their hearts and mine trying to teach me proper penmanship. I spent many recesses and a few lunch hours inside laboring over an unacceptable assignment while listening to the other kids outside having fun. I finally realized, very recently, that my failure to improve even slightly probably was a subconscious rebellion.

 

Now, I am trying to relearn. My writing is horrible, but after a few months of work, I can pass my notes over to someone else and they can piece out what I was saying. I'll keep working on it.