Thread: I'm typing this because my hand writing is atrocious

I like the finer things in life and so one of the things I like is fountain pens. Being a teacher I always have two fountains pens with me, one red ink and one black ink. But to my shame, even though I am an English teacher, my hand writing is atrocious. Sometimes I find it unimaginable that someone with the manual dexterity to move a razor sharp blade around the face and remove only whiskers and lather, can not move a pen across a page to produce legible words. Normally this isn't much of a problem. All of my lessons are typed. I use a computer and projector in my classrooms. But once a month I have to fill out a pay form where I have to write my name up to forty times on one page. Thai bureaucracy requires that I write my name twice for each day on a monthly pay sheet just in case my name changes from day to day. If you read my hand writing on this particular pay document you might imagine that my name does in fact change from day to day from Nathan to something illegible and unpronounceable. This is something I would like to improve. So how does one improve the quality of ones hand writing? Do you have the same problem and have you improved your writing skills?

Hmm, seems like the perfect opportunity to improve - you get to practice writing your name 40 times on that day. I suspect you may want to look up how do they teach kids to write. Or probably more interesting may be an intro to calligraphy or something....

My handwriting is atrocious too. And as far as being able to draw, I couldn't draw a matchstick. Funny thing is Gugi my signature is a beautiful one, because it's the only thing I've ever practiced.

There is a book out there called, 'Write Now,' that has excellent reviews on helping adults to improve their handwriting.
Click here: http://www.amazon.com/Write-Now-Complete-Self-teaching-Handwriting/dp/0876780893

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Poor handwriting is a common failing. This book teaches italic handwriting, an attractive, simple script which, with practice, becomes a neat, legible hand. A history of the changes in letter forms over the ages is outlined. The text is hand-lettered rather than typeset, showing the simplicity and elegance of basic, cursive, and edged-pen italic. Pages with sloped and spaced lines may be copied for practice. After this slight book, a course such as the authors teach will appeal. This item can be recommended to anyone who wants improved handwriting, as well as to teachers and adult literacy tutors to instill neat writing along with reading. A caveat to purchasers: the advice "do write in this work book" will be taken by some as an invitation to deface library copies.
- William A. Donovan, Chicago P.L.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

"It is a joy that my four sons can communicate legibly thanks to italic." -- Kay Fujita, Teacher

"Italic handwriting is legible and handsome...I recommend Write Now – the book to use. Long live legibility!" -- Paul O. Jacobs, MD

"Just this week, I received a message from an RN at our hospital that my handwriting was beautiful and legible." -- Janet M. Madill, MD

I have the same problem. My handwriting has never been great, in high school i had to rewrite papers sometimes. Years of typing has pretty much destroyed what writing skill though.

Can't help you with the handwriting, because I'm a fellow English teaching straight shaver with lousy handwriting-we should start a club!

My view is your handwriting is the ultimate expression of you as an individual. If your penmanship is bad, celebrate it. If you try and change it you are really changing yourself the same as having plastic surgery on your body. I have terrible penmanship and I would never seek to change it. As a matter of fact I do all my writing via print. I'm not sure I remember my cursive writing it's so long since I've used it.

I would imagine the easiest way to improve it would be to simply slow down, my hand writing is also poor but if I am not under pressure to write something quickly, and if I don't join my letters up, it all of a sudden becomes half way decent.

So I have now started doing something about my handwriting. I read online that the main problem most people have with their handwriting is that they write with their fingers. My hand writing shows that perhaps writing with one's fingers isn't the best way to do it. So I bought myself a large notebook, printed out a sentence and the alphabet in a cursive script font, and started practicing. After about a week of practice I can see some improvement. Now my hand writing looks like it was written by an eight year old instead of looking like it had been written by a monkey. I am now writing in cursive script, but takes up three lines instead of one and still needs a lot more work. But now I can imagine being able to write a neat, legible, handwritten letter.

The only drawback is that my signature now looks different. I went to the bank the other day to withdraw money for a deposit on a house. It took me a couple of tries to get my signature to look like its normal squiggle.

I found out about finger writeing about a week ago myself. I have always blamed my poor penmanship on being left handed, but that was just an excuse.

Besides practiceing writeing with the whole arm like you have, I found that proper desk/table height helps quite a bit. I put a phone book on a chair to write at the kitchen table when I practice. I also found that its easier to write well with a ballpoint than a fountain pen, and a calligraphy point on a fountain pen is eaven harder to write well with than a round nib.

also, when I practice my writeing I repeat phrases in my writeing like "my penmanship is getting better" or "I am writeing more smoothly now" as subconscience ques to myself. I'm not sure that it actually helps, but it couldn't hurt.