Giving Spencerian a Try

March 13

tl;dr I am diving into Spencerian as a means of making my cursive handwriting more beautiful, and to give myself something new and different to scratch my creative itch.

Background

I grew up in up-state New York in the 1970s, first learning to write block letters, and then cursive in later grades. I remember my parents and grandparents calling block-letter writing "printing" and cursive writing "handwriting", though I later learned the term "cursive" for the latter. Just last week I discovered that the system of writing I was taught, from roughly 1970 to 1974, was the Zaner-Bloser system. This was an era in which cursive was viewed as "grown-up writing", and so mastering it was the ultimate goal. In the years that followed I wrote almost exclusively in cursive. But at some point in my late teens I discovered that engineers wrote in block letter form, and since I wanted to be an engineer, I switched to almost exclusively writing in block letters. Over the next forty years my cursive writing skills atrophied to the point where I completely forgot how to write certain capital letters. I recently had to go dig up a Zaner-Bloser cursive alphabet chart from Google to remind myself of what I had forgotten. Today, if I write at an unhurried pace, I can produce very legible cursive handwriting. But it isn't beautiful.

That's where Spencerian comes in.

I'm not really into calligraphy, though I do enjoy writing Tengwar with stub pens now and then, and I also enjoy occasionally writing in Elian script using a flex nib fountain pen, but beyond that I'm just not all that interested in creating "letterform art". I have, however, recently become interested in making my cursive handwriting more elegant and attractive. I purchased the Mott Media reprints of Spencer's training books and am just getting started.

Chosen Approach

In terms of equipment, I have all kinds of pens and pencils to choose from from my collection. However, I want to make an honest effort to use the pen grip recommended by Spencer. To that end, I am using a Platinum desk fountain pen since it most closely resembles the kind of dip pen depicted in Spencer's illustrations, but without the annoying need to refill the nib with ink after every couple of words (or every 10-15 practice strokes). I really want to be dogmatic about this and not resort to writing in the way that currently feels comfortable. I know that this new pen grip, and Spencer's writing mechanics, will feel very foreign and awkward for a while, but I also know that it will never feel comfortable and natural unless I embed it deeply in my muscle memory. That can't happen if I give up and just fall back on what is already comfortable for me.

I also intend to be very dogmatic about the technicalities of the letter shapes and spacing. By my own measurements, most of the practice sheets I've found online don't provide 52° slant guides, or even letter cells with ratios that produce 52° slanting when aiming for corner-to-corner strokes. Indeed, even Spencer's own copy book grids aren't correct in this respect. So I've made my own grid sheets using Adobe Illustrator. I know that consistently nailing the 52° and 30° slants won't be easy, but great results only come from putting in great amounts of effort, right? This also extends to the letter shapes. I see examples of folks whose Spencerian lowercase "d" stems are too tall. Or lowercase "p" stems that aren't tall enough. Etc. Spencer's theory book is very specific about the shapes, sizes, and spacing, and my goal is to rigidly adhere to its guidelines.

It remains to be seen if I will be able to sustain interest in this long enough to see meaningful results. I will be doing the stroke drills without any expectation of "success" for a long time, reminiscent of when I learned touch typing in junior high school. Hopefully being armed with correct expectations will help me endure the drudgery of it, long enough to get to the point of enjoying myself.

March 14

good luck. please post your progress so we can follow along and cheer you on, and envy you...

I gave up on spencerian and tried for palmer method... which I find to be more my style anyways. i'm not there yet... I may never be.

March 14

I find it intriguing when adults take up learning Palmer or one of its descendants. This would suggest that they were never taught to write in cursive as children in school. When did schools stop teaching cursive handwriting in Canada?

March 14

I leaned D'Nealian in school.

but like everyone who went to school in the 80s and 90s, my handwriting went to pot and I switched to print, which also looked like (bleep).

I like how palmer looks (it's clearly what my mom and dad learned in the 50s and 60s) so it's what I tried to teach myself.

I have no idea if they still teach handwriting in school in Ontario (or any other province) as I don't have kids in school 😕

Monday at 12:11 AM

On 3/13/2025 at 11:50 PM, zslane said:

tl;dr I am diving into Spencerian as a means of making my cursive handwriting more beautiful, and to give myself something new and different to scratch my creative itch.

Background

I grew up in up-state New York in the 1970s, first learning to write block letters, and then cursive in later grades. I remember my parents and grandparents calling block-letter writing "printing" and cursive writing "handwriting", though I later learned the term "cursive" for the latter. Just last week I discovered that the system of writing I was taught, from roughly 1970 to 1974, was the Zaner-Bloser system. This was an era in which cursive was viewed as "grown-up writing", and so mastering it was the ultimate goal. In the years that followed I wrote almost exclusively in cursive. But at some point in my late teens I discovered that engineers wrote in block letter form, and since I wanted to be an engineer, I switched to almost exclusively writing in block letters. Over the next forty years my cursive writing skills atrophied to the point where I completely forgot how to write certain capital letters. I recently had to go dig up a Zaner-Bloser cursive alphabet chart from Google to remind myself of what I had forgotten. Today, if I write at an unhurried pace, I can produce very legible cursive handwriting. But it isn't beautiful.

That's where Spencerian comes in.

I'm not really into calligraphy, though I do enjoy writing Tengwar with stub pens now and then, and I also enjoy occasionally writing in Elian script using a flex nib fountain pen, but beyond that I'm just not all that interested in creating "letterform art". I have, however, recently become interested in making my cursive handwriting more elegant and attractive. I purchased the Mott Media reprints of Spencer's training books and am just getting started.

Chosen Approach

In terms of equipment, I have all kinds of pens and pencils to choose from from my collection. However, I want to make an honest effort to use the pen grip recommended by Spencer. To that end, I am using a Platinum desk fountain pen since it most closely resembles the kind of dip pen depicted in Spencer's illustrations, but without the annoying need to refill the nib with ink after every couple of words (or every 10-15 practice strokes). I really want to be dogmatic about this and not resort to writing in the way that currently feels comfortable. I know that this new pen grip, and Spencer's writing mechanics, will feel very foreign and awkward for a while, but I also know that it will never feel comfortable and natural unless I embed it deeply in my muscle memory. That can't happen if I give up and just fall back on what is already comfortable for me.

I also intend to be very dogmatic about the technicalities of the letter shapes and spacing. By my own measurements, most of the practice sheets I've found online don't provide 52° slant guides, or even letter cells with ratios that produce 52° slanting when aiming for corner-to-corner strokes. Indeed, even Spencer's own copy book grids aren't correct in this respect. So I've made my own grid sheets using Adobe Illustrator. I know that consistently nailing the 52° and 30° slants won't be easy, but great results only come from putting in great amounts of effort, right? This also extends to the letter shapes. I see examples of folks whose Spencerian lowercase "d" stems are too tall. Or lowercase "p" stems that aren't tall enough. Etc. Spencer's theory book is very specific about the shapes, sizes, and spacing, and my goal is to rigidly adhere to its guidelines.

It remains to be seen if I will be able to sustain interest in this long enough to see meaningful results. I will be doing the stroke drills without any expectation of "success" for a long time, reminiscent of when I learned touch typing in junior high school. Hopefully being armed with correct expectations will help me endure the drudgery of it, long enough to get to the point of enjoying myself.

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