I’m handwriting my notes, and I’ve realized that I have very slack handwriting.
How do I improve my hand writing?
(I’m studying education, so having messy handwriting is a problem.)
I have the worst handwriting in the world (when asked if she could forge my signature, my wife replied, “I can do it with either foot.”) In all these years I’ve only found two ways to improve my penmanship.
- Write more slowly.
- Don’t try to write too far across a line. Keep repositioning your hand very few letters. E.g., I write Kuni- move hand a couple of millimeters - lou.
Get a workbook that they give to 3rd graders to teach cursive. Do every sheet, slowly and carefully. Take it seriously.
Back when I was 11/12, my teacher was very into cursive so we had half hour practices a couple of times a week.
Get a sheet of newspaper that’s in columns, turn it so they form lines and get a crayon (no, I am not kidding - two freaking years of this!) Using the crayon, draw an oval (on an angle like ‘O’) the height of your line (about 2in), keep going over the oval 5 more times, make your line flow aaround the oval without hesitation, while trying to keep exactly the same shape, after the final oval, keep the crayon on the paper and progress to the next oval, fill as much of the page with these repeated O’s as you can manage in ten minutes without rushing.
Spend the next twenty minutes copying text from any source with an actual pen and normally lined paper. Concentrate on flowing movements, forming the letters and keeping the spaces even.
This teaches your brain and hand mucscles the angle, size and spacing of letters and combinations so they become ingrained.
I can do lovely writing when I concentrate. Not copperplate, but nice, readable cursive. Still scrawl like a drunk chimp when I’m in a rush.
Yep, it takes concentration, patience, and practice. I put in about an hour a day everyday for a month or so, but I’m not even close to the penmanship I see from lots of people in their 60s and 70s. A friend and I used to write each other when she lived in California and she does calligraphy as a hobby - her letters shamed me into working on my handwriting.
Very simple. Practice.
Yes, practice is the key. And it might help to learn a good italic script. “Please Write,” by Wolf von Eckhardt is a nice little book that gives you some simple exercises – it’s available used for about $10 – http://www.amazon.com/Please-write-handwriting-business-pleasure/dp/B0006EPV6S/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1361545243&sr=1-7&keywords=Please+Write
Go to Catholic school.
I get lots of compliments on my nice handwriting, people even ask me to write for them and make labels and such for their scrapbooks.
I think it looks like crap but it is neat and legible.
Anyway, in third grade I got horrible grades in penmanship so the nuns made me practice over and over and over some more.
Repetition, concentration and let it flow.
Lots and lots of practice. My handwriting was best while I was an undergraduate in college, taking notes in several lectures a day. Since then, it’s deteriorated badly.
I would have thought that, nowadays, such things could be found online (and printed out), though I don’t have any specific links.
Find an example that you like and practice. I think the factor that makes the biggest difference between messy and neat handwriting is consistency both in the height and slant of letters.
When I was in grade school we were still graded on penmanship and my grades in it were always abysmal. I made a conscious decision to change it when I was in my twenties. I just filled pages of loose leaf paper with practice. I’d fill lines with a single letter or write out song lyrics or whatever was being said on the TV. It worked. I now get compliments on my handwriting.
I do only write nicely when I’m expecting that someone else might read what I wrote. If I’m taking a phone message it’s the same mess that got me inducted into Mrs. Carlson’s Chicken Scratch Club.
My cursive is legible only to me. The advantage is that I can write almost as fast as you can speak. The downside is that if I dont rewrite it more legibly soon, even I can’t figure it out.
I gave up trying to improve my handwriting. Hated, hated, hated being graded on it and having to re-do things because the teacher thought it wasn’t nice enough and how pretty it looked was part of the mark. If I need to write something so that it is legible to others, I print, usually in all capitals, or do it on the computer. Works for me and I’m at peace with my messy handwriting.
By handwriting, do you mean printing or cursive? I improved my printing in my 30s, and it wasn’t that hard. It had been messy, and I only used capitals. When my oldest started first grade, I think, I wanted to be a good example, so I learned how to make the lower case letters he was making. Our school used D’nealian, so that’s what I learned. I don’t strictly follow it, but I’m still happy with my printing.
On the other hand, my cursive looked bad when I was in school and college, and looks like crap now. The D’Nealian site claims it transitions well into cursive, but I thought cursive was on the way out in schools, anyway.
ETA: There’s criticism of D’Nealian on the Wikipedia page, but i don’t think those would apply to the OP. One of the criticisms was about the “monkey tails”. My wife did notice that boys all tended to make the letter, then go back and add the tail as a completely separate line.
Just want to post a “weee-eeeird” moment I had… I followed ZenBeam’s link to D’nealian because that’s what I was taught in first and second grade. At the bottom of that Wiki article is a link to a page about Peterson handwriting. “Weird” I thought, “the school where I learned D’Nealian was called Peterson Elementary”. So I looked up Peterson Handwriting and while it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with my elementary school, it does look almost identical to my own style of cursive (especially capitals) that I developed in my late teens.
Forgive me if it’s been mentioned, but a decent pen is essential. A disposable rolling-writer type pen is better than a disposable ballpoint IME, but a good quality ballpoint that has heft in the hand may help with keeping your hand stable. I used to have a Parker Space Pen which was great for writing and also was only about four inches long with the cap on. I’m sorry I lost that because I haven’t been able to find another.
When I was in third grade, the teacher used to keep me in during recess to practice my handwriting. It didn’t help. I still have really bad handwriting.
13 years of Catholic school didn’t work for me. I got a D in penmanship in 6th grade, and I don’t think it’s improved since - at least not my default cursive.
If I concentrate, I’ll do better - but I’ll still make some kind of error without a doubt.
You can’t be forced to improve your handwriting if you’re not interested in doing so. But if you have the motivation and you practice, it will improve.
I don’t know what you mean by “error.” Having good handwriting is not about exact copying of a particular script.
But why exactly do you need good handwriting? Isn’t 99% plus of your alphabetic input via keyboard, mouse, touchscreen…