Terrible Handwriting Into Beautiful Handwriting ?

[Wile E.]

Did anyone here have that awful, chicken scratch handwriting--and were you able to make it beautiful through practice??

 

My handwriting has always been atrocious. Im just not sure my handwriting could ever look that great?

[WayTooManyHobbies]

Beautiful, no. Legible, clear, and something I'm content with? Yes.

 

It probably depends on your standards and aspirations. There are certainly a large number of FPNers with amazing handwriting, and also quite a few with not so great scrawling. In between, there are a lot of people who have improved their writing to the point where it's "good enough".

 

Good luck in whichever quest is yours!

[gryphon1911]

I'm working on that very thing right now.

 

So far, what I have learned:

 

1) slow down

2) concentrate on the writing

3) don't death grip the pen

4) paper position and writing work space are more important than you think

5) sitting position matters

6) pen angle can make the difference between a smooth writing experience and the feeling of writing with an ice pic

7) you cannot get away from practice, but proper practice will get you there faster than poor practice.

 

Here is an ACTIVE THREAD discussing similar things.

[the_gasman]

I'm no expert but I think that you will be able to produce attractive writing BUT that your success will depend on whether or not you are prepared to put the time and effort in. IOW, it depends solely on how much you want it.

 

You should learn your writing as if you were a child, learning for the first time. When I was at primary school I was guided by lines for the heights of baseline, descenders, ascenders, etc., and lines angled from the vertical to encourage a slight italicisation (although I was oblivious of that name at the time).. At that age we also wrote extremely slowly, concentrating on letter shapes and (a few years later) the joins needed for cursive writing.

 

Like many children, I demonstrated how hard I was concentrating by keeping my tongue protruding from an angle of my mouth (and lightly gripped by my teeth) in an attempt to avoid being rapped over the knuckles with a cane wielded by a marauding teacher. I can't imagine that you would need such compassionate guidance!

 

My initial efforts were with chalk written onto a slate board but we eventually moved onto dip pens, ink-wells, and paper.

 

Good luck with your venture. It will be extremely rewarding. Why not chart your progress by posting some images of your writing? Maybe a before and after timeline.

 

Cheers,

David.

[ac12]

Yup

Been there, done that.

Here are some random thoughts.

 

You need to have dedication.

The reason is you have to practice, a LOT. You have to retrain your hand and arm muscles to do things that it may never have done before. And that will take time/repetition to gain that muscle memory. I think the recommended is at least 30 min a day, every day. In my case I did a min of 1 hour, and many times 3 hours a day of practice.

It is like the scene in Karate Kid "wax on, wax off."

 

There is a saying "fast is slow, and slow is fast." What this means is, to go fast, you have to first start slow, to master the basics, and gain muscle memory. Speed comes as your muscles gain muscle memory and can write without you thinking about it. But be careful, writing has a certain minimum speed, below which I start to get shakey. So don't go too slow or you will be drawing rather than writing.

 

BTW, my cursive/script writing is a slow leasurly/relaxed writing. It is NOT a fast business writing. If I speed up, I start to loose control and the writing becomes worse and worse. You may have to bucket your writing with 2 or more hands. A relaxed writing, and a fast business writing. Sometimes I will switch to block printing, to be able to read my fast notes.

 

It took me 3 months of daily practice until writing with my arm became somewhat natural. I used to be a finger writer. I still could not write well, but my arm knew how to write, without me constantly thinking about it. It took several more months before I was happy with my handwriting. And 3 years later, I am still refining my handwriting.

 

One basic decision is which hand to learn; Palmer or it's varients, italic or its varients, etc.

I chose Palmer, as it was what I learned as a kid, and wanted to do.

Others may choose italic.

IMHO, do not try to learn several hands at the same time, you will just get your head and writing muscles confused. And you need to give enough practice time to learn the hand. Learn one, then after you are somewhat comfortable with it, then go learn the next one.

 

gud luk in your journey. The road will be long and hard, but the rewards will be great.

Edited January 27, 2016 by ac12

[Sasha Royale]

The combination of patience and determination is omnipotent.

[ac12]

Sasha is right. It took me getting totally DISGUSTED with my handwriting before I finally made the effort to fix it.

[goatgolfer]

I have acquired the desire to write a novel with the expression of the nib/ink/paper that meets my feeling. What I have not acquired is the ability for my hand to match my speed of thought and inspiration especially with dialogue. Anyone found their own sweet spot of {Pilot Metro w/fine nib because it doesn't use too much of 0.4 ml of /Noodler's Heart of Darkness/Target Vietnamese comp book) in a legible cursive that I can read again..

 

I too have the nun with the ruler looking over my shoulder.

 

I also send my mother letters slowly produced with thought on Crane stationery with a MB 149 in MB Blue-Black Med Nib. She enjoys reading them and I enjoy writing them.

 

Variant on OPs question.

[ac12]

 

I have acquired the desire to write a novel with the expression of the nib/ink/paper that meets my feeling. What I have not acquired is the ability for my hand to match my speed of thought and inspiration especially with dialogue.

 

 

 

 

I CANNOT write as fast as I think. If I try, the resulting scribble will be unreadable the next day, when I have forgotten what I had thought about.

For FAST writing, I have to resort to a keyboard, or voice recording then transcribing what I said.

[Wile E.]

Thanks for all the great responses!

 

Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me.

[dasXFnib]

Thanks for all the great responses!

 

Looks like I have a lot of work ahead of me.

But the benefits WILL be worth it!!!

Practicing handwriting is......like a sewer....

What you get OUT of it.....depends on what you put INTO it.....!!!

Always try to get the dibs.....on fountain pens with EF nibs!!

[Ray_NEMBFV]

I would say I'm in the hinterlands of the beginning and end of that journey. Chicken scratch developed from years of poor palmer methodology overseen by Sister Nathan correcting me, but too concerned with playing at recess. I literally found the original Palmer method books online and I have pages of ovals and lines, starting from lesson one (which is actually sitting and posture), but just like playing a guitar, you're not going to play at a high level without daily practice. After a time, you will be amazed a how far you've come and not so daunted that you have so far to go....

 

Good Luck

[akustyk]

I would say I'm in the hinterlands of the beginning and end of that journey. Chicken scratch developed from years of poor palmer methodology overseen by Sister Nathan correcting me, but too concerned with playing at recess. I literally found the original Palmer method books online and I have pages of ovals and lines, starting from lesson one (which is actually sitting and posture), but just like playing a guitar, you're not going to play at a high level without daily practice. After a time, you will be amazed a how far you've come and not so daunted that you have so far to go....

 

Good Luck

 

I wonder about my own ability to learn a skill that typically requires thousands of hours of work, just like playing the guitar. I learned to play an instrument pretty well. I started as a child and I only reached a level of proficiency after twenty years of hard work. I cannot imagine trying to learn to play another instrument half as well at the age of 45. It's just not possible, for me, anyway.

 

Is it really possible for one to learn what they didn't during years of instruction when their brains and their environment were much more suitable to such learning? I doubt that I ever will learn penmanship, realistically, given my schedule and responsibilities. Penmanship is a skill that cannot be helped by our intellect, experience, work ethic, etc. Even if I spent one hour every day, I'd need to spend about twenty years to achieve the required level of proficiency, and only provided my brain and muscles work as well as they did when I was 18. Not happening. Sorry.

[bobje]

Barbara Getty and Inga Dubay have a book and a consulting practice focused on improving the handwriting of physicians. Their book is called "Write Now." They're former students of Reed College's Lloyd Reynolds, who transformed Oregon into a location for calligraphy and mainstream italic handwriting in the 1970s.

[SmuShyDoge]

Slow down when you're writing to make your handwriting look nice. And steadily progress from slow to fast handwriting until you've reached the point where you just like normally write your sentences. It's just the matter of time and patience and practice. Am not an expert, though. Just my opinion.

[ac12]

 

 

I wonder about my own ability to learn a skill that typically requires thousands of hours of work, just like playing the guitar. I learned to play an instrument pretty well. I started as a child and I only reached a level of proficiency after twenty years of hard work. I cannot imagine trying to learn to play another instrument half as well at the age of 45. It's just not possible, for me, anyway.

 

Is it really possible for one to learn what they didn't during years of instruction when their brains and their environment were much more suitable to such learning? I doubt that I ever will learn penmanship, realistically, given my schedule and responsibilities. Penmanship is a skill that cannot be helped by our intellect, experience, work ethic, etc. Even if I spent one hour every day, I'd need to spend about twenty years to achieve the required level of proficiency, and only provided my brain and muscles work as well as they did when I was 18. Not happening. Sorry.

 

 

 

YES YOU CAN

I'm older than you and I relearned to write. I was disgusted at my old handwriting, and finally decided to do something about it. You don't have to reach the level of a master penman, but just to a level that you are satisfied with. Which for me was a pretty low bar, considering how bad my handwriting was. And I keep raising the bar as time goes on, looking for places to make my handwriting look better.

 

But as I mentioned in other posts, it takes dedication and practice, or said another way, the dedication to practice...everyday.

You don't need to do 3 hours a day, 30 minutes a day...everyday should do it. And stick in practice writing wherever and whenever you can; shopping list, notes, etc. The more you practice (correctly) the faster muscle memory will develop.

 

When I relearned, the biggest change was converting from finger writing to arm writing. For me, that was the hardest part of my relearning, and it was mainly building muscle memory. I had to train my arm and hand to do something that it never did before, and at a fine control level rather than a coarse level. It took 3 months of daily practice before I could ignore my arm, and it did what it was supposed to do. Until then I had to constantly check that I was not regressing back to finger writing. But it still took another several month before my handwriting got to the level that I was happy with it. Not great, but decently good.

 

Second was to relearn the shapes of the letters. I went back to traditional Palmer shapes for some letters, and I kept my personal styles for other letters. But I had to relearn the basics of writing the shapes. The Palmer excercises of writing loops will help train your muscles to move as they should. And to me, that is the key, retraining your muscles to move correctly.

 

Finally slow down. In my experience 'speed kills.' I write slowly and leisurely. The faster I write, the worse my handwriting gets, to the point that it is almost illegible. In fact, when I want to write fast, I sometimes switch to block printing, where I stand a much better chance of being able to read what I write.

 

One trick that I used was to write a journal. So my practice was not all loops, I wrote words. Probably did this sooner than I should have, but I was impatient. And that made practice more interesting for me. I could put the excercise practice into use. And as I wrote, I kept track of where I was "messing up" and want to fix something. Example transitioning from a 'w' to another letter has been a problem. I leave the 'w' at the x-height level and have to start the next letter at that level. Sometimes it looks OK, other times YUK. I still do this today.

Edited February 3, 2016 by ac12

[richiwalt]

Below are two samples of handwriting:

 

the first image was of my best handwriting from July 4th of 2015; Below is a current sample as of Feb of 2016.

 

Basically seven months of concerted effort to improve. Fun the whole journey ...

 

http://richimages.net/Penmanship/IMG_1375.JPG

 

http://richimages.net/Penmanship/IMG_1374.PNG

 

 

I spend the $20.00 and bought the Spencerian Theory book, with the five copy books from Amazon. I started learning the lowercase letters - and retrained myself to only form them from the basic principle strokes ...

Edited February 19, 2016 by richiwalt

[Rednaxela]

Unbelievable Richiwalt, what a difference. The first sample is already very good, but the second one is just amazing!

 

I like your majuscules, but couldn't find them in the Spencerian Theory book. Are they from a different method?

[richiwalt]

Unbelievable Richiwalt, what a difference. The first sample is already very good, but the second one is just amazing!

 

I like your majuscules, but couldn't find them in the Spencerian Theory book. Are they from a different method?

http://www.richimages.net/Penmanship/IMG_1457.JPG

 

Thanks so much for your kind comments, Rednaxela ...

 

So, one thing I've found about Spencerian, there are so many variations of Capitals ... In first post, those are simply my own versions of the capital letters. In fact, only recently have I started to practice a version of capital letters I like. My practice so far has only been on the lowercase letters.

 

http://www.richimages.net/Penmanship/IMG_1461.JPG

Edited February 20, 2016 by richiwalt

[Sailor Kenshin]

Beautiful, no. Legible, clear, and something I'm content with? Yes.

 

 

 

Same here...though I feel I have room for improvement.

 

If I practice. If I slow down. If I pay attention to letter forms, slant and spacing.....

 

And ditto on the good luck.