How to Improve your Handwriting by John Davis

You’ve decided you want to improve your handwriting and you’re probably hoping a fountain pen will do the trick -- maybe a friend told you it would. Maybe you’re just adventurous and you want to try your hand at calligraphy (or you might, once your handwriting improves). Good for you!

A fountain pen may make your writing look a bit better, but if your writing looks as if frenzied chickens got loose on the page, chances are this won’t be enough. Most likely, you’ll need to retrain your arm and hand.

After coaching handwriting and teaching calligraphy over the years, I’ve learned to see the characteristics of those who’ll be able to pick up the necessary motions quickly from those who’ll have to work a bit harder. Tight, crampy letters drawn with fingersCrampy, uneven letters are often the result of drawing the letters with the fingers rather than using the whole arm to write.

People who inevitably have trouble with handwriting and calligraphy write with their fingers. They "draw" the letters. A finger-writer puts the full weight of his/her hand on the paper, his fingers form the letters, and he picks his hand up repeatedly to move it across the paper as he writes. Writing done using correct muscle groupsIf you use the right muscle groups, your writing will have a smooth, easy flow and not look tortured.

People for whom writing comes more easily may rest their hands fairly heavily on the paper, but their forearms and shoulders move as they write. Their writing has a cadence that shows they’re using at least some of the right muscle groups. They don’t draw the letters with their fingers; the fingers serve more as guides.

This exercise may help you determine which category is yours: Sit down and write a paragraph. Doesn’t matter what. Pay attention to the muscles you use to form your letters. Do you draw each letter with your fingers? Pick your hand up repeatedly to move it? Have an unrecognizable scrawl? Does your forearm move? Chances are, if you learned to write after 1955-60 (depending on where you went to grade school), you write with your fingers.

My goal isn’t to make you into a model Palmer-method writer or a 14th Century scribe. If you can compromise between the "right" methods and the way you write now and improve your handwriting so you’re happier with it, then I’m happy, too. Some people even hold their pens like this!A few people hold the pen between first and middle fingers, which feels really awkward to me, but I’ve seen it work.

It will take time to re-train muscles and learn new habits. Finger-writing isn’t fatal, but it is slow and often painful (if you have to write much). The first thing you must have (beg, buy, borrow or steal it) is patience and gentleness with yourself. The second requirement is determination.

If you finger-write, that is the first, most important thing you must un-learn: Do not draw your letters! Do not write with your fingers! Put up signs everywhere to remind you. Write it in the butter, on the shaving mirror, stick notes in the cereal boxes. But learn it!

I hesitate to include this, because it sounds much more difficult than it is . . . but . . . let’s look at the most basic things: holding the pen and positioning the hand. Fig. 1--most commonFig. 1. This is the most common pen-holding position, with pen between first and middle fingers, held in place by the thumb.

Most of us hold the pen between the thumb and index finger, resting the barrel on the middle finger (fig. 1). This works better than holding it between the thumb and the index and middle fingers, with the whole assembly resting on the ring finger (fig. 2). If you do it the first way, you’re off to a good start. If the second, you’ll be okay. In both, the remaining fingers are curled under the hand. Fig. 2--Two-fingers-on-top positionFig. 2. The two-fingers-on-top method for holding the pen while writing.

Pick up your pen and look at your hand. You’ll have better control and a better writing angle if your pen rests over or just forward of the bottom knuckle on your index finger, not between thumb and index finger (see fig. 3). (I hold my fountain pens in the latter position, but when I pick up a calligraphy pen, it drops obediently right over that big knuckle--go figure!) Fig. 3--Correct position over knuckleFig. 3. Note that with this position, usually used for calligraphy (or among really disciplined writers), causes the pen to rest atop the knuckle of the forefinger.

For handwriting, the pen position is less important than for calligraphy. I recommend working in your familiar position unless it’s really bad. What’s essential is that you be comfortable, the pen feel balanced and you have no tension in your hand. Rest the heel of your hand and the angle of your curled-up little finger on the paper.

Hold the pen lightly; don’t squeeze it. Pretend the barrel is soft rubber and squeezing will get you a big, fat blot. (If you were using a quill, you’d hold it so lightly that the actual act of drawing the quill along the paper would create the proper contact.)

Many books recommend you write with your table at a 45-degree angle, but that’s impractical for most of us. If you can prop up a board or write with one on your lap, that’s a good place to start, but a flat surface is fine. Once you try an angled surface, you’re likely not to want to quit, so be careful-- here goes a whole new budget’s worth of art supplies!

Sit up straight, but not stiffly; don’t sit hunched over or slumped. Don’t worry too much about this position stuff; the important thing is what makes you feel relaxed and comfortable. Your writing arm needs to be free to move, so squished into the La-Z-Boy probably won’t be productive.

Hold your fingers fairly straight and write slightly above and just between your thumb and index finger, right where you’re holding the pen. Don’t curl your hand over and write to the left of your palm; that’s a crampy, miserable position. More lefties do this than righties. Don’t hook your hand backwards like thisCommonly called the "hook" position, this is often seen in left-handers. It makes it harder, but not impossible, for them to use a fountain pen, because their hands tend to drag over the wet ink.

When you’re practicing and you reach the level on the paper at which it becomes uncomfortable to continue to move your hand down the paper to write, move the paper up. Once you recognize your "writing level," the paper should move up at that spot rather than your hand moving down the paper. (This isn’t critical. If you notice it and it bothers you, that’s what you do about it. If it doesn’t bother you, skip it.)

I’ve found only one reference to using the right muscle groups to write, and this is critical. I can’t be the only person who knows this; I’m neither that smart nor that good. Calligraphy instruction books address hand position, desk position, lighting, paper, you name it--but for some reason, not using the right muscles.

As you’ve probably surmised, the "right muscles" are not those in the fingers. You must use the shoulder-girdle and forearm muscles. This muscle group is capable of much more intricate action than you think and tires much less easily than fingers, besides giving a smooth, clean, sweeping look to the finished writing. Though it seems paradoxical, since we’re accustomed to thinking of small muscles having better control, the shoulder-girdle group, once trained, does the job better.

To get a feel for the proper muscles (and start training them correctly), hold your arm out in front of you, elbow bent, and write in the air. Write big. Use your arm and shoulder to shape letters; hold your forearm, wrist and fingers stationary and in writing position. You’ll feel your shoulder, arm, chest and some back muscles doing most of the work. That’s good. That’s what they’re supposed to do. Try to duplicate it each time you practice. Shoulder girdle runs from collarbone around to shoulder blade and spinePeople always look puzzled when I mention the shoulder girdle. If you raise your hand in the air and make large circles, note the muscles you use in doing so (here, shown in darker pink). That’s the shoulder girdle.

Write in the air until it becomes as natural as breathing. It’ll be awkward and feel silly at first. If you have a little kid around, get him/her to do it with you. You’ll both have fun, you won’t feel so alone, and it’ll be good for the child’s handwriting, too. If you don’t have a kid, tell your co-workers you’re improving your financial karma or hexing your boss.

As you become comfortable, reduce the size of the air-letters you make. If you have access to a chalkboard or a stick and a fence (or even a finger and a wall), write on them. They’ll give you a feel for the muscles you need to use and writing on a vertical surface makes it virtually impossible to finger-write. (If you’re one of the people who can’t write on a blackboard because you keep wanting to shrink the writing down so your fingers can do it, this is really important for you.) If you keep wanting to hunch up close and put your hand on the chalkboard or wall to write, resist the urge! You’ll be indulging those dratted fingers.

Remember: Your fingers should move very little and your wrist even less. Your forearm does most of the guiding, while your shoulder provides the power.

At some point, you’ll want to try this with a pen. Hold it gently. Place it on the paper in an ordinary lined spiral notebook (the lines act as ready-made guidelines for size and spacing). If you can get hold of a first-grader’s Big Chief tablet, which offers big lines with a dotted line between two bold lines, use it. There’s a reason children start out writing big and the letters get smaller as they get older and more skilled—-that’s the easiest way to learn.

Start making Xs and ///s and \\\s and OOOOs and overlapped OOOs and spirals and |||||s. Do not draw these strokes and figures! Use the same shoulder-forearm muscles you’ve been practicing with. Make your lines, loops, circles and spirals freely. Work into a rhythm and make it a habit. Make slashes as uniform as possible in both directionsWhen you start making slashes and circles, they’ll be uneven. With practice, they’ll become more uniform, and uniformity is your objective.

Your goal is smooth, uniform, evenly spaced lines, loops, circles and spirals, without drawing them. This is where you’re most likely to get discouraged. If you use a spiral notebook for practice, you can leaf back and see your progress. At first, your strokes and lines will be bad—over-running and under- running the lines, too small, too big, crooked, uneven, just ugly. Check your position; check your muscle groups; and try again. And again.

Concentrate on keeping wrist-hand-fingers largely stationary and in proper alignment. Let the big muscles do the work. It will be more tiring at first, because you’re using muscles that aren’t accustomed to that kind of work. It’ll be hard and frustrating, ’cause your body will want to do it the way it’s done it since first grade… even though that way is wrong. It may help to concentrate less on the accuracy of the shapes you’re making than on the muscles making them. Retraining your arm is the goal, not making pretty little circles and lines first time out. Aim for uniformity and consistency in all exercisesUniformity and consistency are your aim in all the exercises, whether loopy or slashy. Though it seems uncomfortable, these exercises will make a huge difference in your control and smoothness.

When you start putting the strokes and lines on paper, start out big. Three, four, even more lines in your notebook. (Big Chiefs are handy for this.) This helps ensure that you continue to use the shoulder girdle. Don’t try to make pretty letters at this stage. Do the exercises as much as you can—-shoot for every day. Ten or fifteen minutes a day should show results in a few weeks for most people. And note that both air-writing and paper exercises can be doodledduring meetings and while on holdwaiting for somebody!

Concentrate on that shoulder girdle. Let it do the work. Write big. Write words and sentences at the same time you’re doing strokes and exercises. You need both working together to succeed.

Gradually, as your control increases, make your strokes and letters smaller until they’re the size you normally write. You’ll know when you get there. By this time, you probably won’t have to make extra effort to incorporate this stuff into your writing; it’ll be automatic. And your writing should look much better (and be easier and feel better, to boot).

Thanks to computers and tablets, good handwriting seems less important than ever.

But handwriting is an important developmental skill, and your handwriting says a lot about you.

We spoke with calligraphy expert Laura Hooper of Laura Hooper Calligraphy, a calligraphy expert who offers handwriting classes in cities around the country. Hooper shared seven tips to help anyone improve his handwriting. 1. Get The Right Materials

Before you start writing, invest in materials that will help you practice.

Some people believe that a fountain pen is superior for handwriting, but this may not necessarily be true for you. Find a pen or pencil that feels comfortable to hold, and that flows smoothly without having to push it too hard onto the paper.

Once you find a writing utensil you like, you can start to experiment with different-sized nibs and thicknesses, as well as colors. People who are left-handed may be interested in buying specially designed left-handed pens, which are fast-drying to prevent smudging and hooked to allow lefties see what they’re writing.

Aside from a pen, you’ll want a notebook, preferably one with grid-lined paper. This will be useful when you’re practicing capital and lower case letters, and will allow you to keep track of your progress.

Hooper also suggested buying a light box. “For personal correspondence or holiday cards, a basic light box is handy,” she said. “It allows you to put guidelines underneath what you’re writing on, and you’ll have nice straight lines to help you as you work.” 2. Stretch

“Before I start working, I usually flex my hands and roll my wrists a bit so they’re loosened up,” Hooper told us. “Especially if I haven’t written in the past few days, you get a little bit tight just like any other muscle.”

In the beginning, you’ll be working muscles you never thought you needed to write in your wrist, forearm, and shoulder. Do a few minutes of stretching to loosen yourself up. 3. Develop Good Posture

Sit up straight and use your non-dominant hand for balance for more control while you’re writing.

“Without thinking about it, I use my non-writing hand for balance,” Hooper said. “This allows me to steady myself so I have better control with my right hand.”

When you’re practicing, sit at a table at a hard-backed chair — not on a couch or in a recliner. Hooper said that having the right posture and giving yourself ample room is important when you’re re-learning how to write. writing handwriting journalShutterstockMake sure your grip isn't too tight, and steady your page with your non-dominant writing hand.

4. Assess Your Grip

Pick up your pen and check out your grip: the writing utensil should rest between your thumb, index, and middle fingers, resting lightly on the ring finger knuckle, according to Hooper.

Hold your pen and pencil closer to the nib, but not too tightly — your grip should be supportive, but without unnecessary tension. Don’t squeeze your pen because this will just make your hand cramp unnecessarily.

If this doesn’t feel comfortable for you, don’t worry — there’s no perfect way to hold a pen. “It really depends on the person,” Hooper explained. “We have a lot of adults in our class, and when you’ve been writing for over 20 years, it’s difficult to correct what someone has been doing for that long.” 5. Retrain Your Wrist and Arm

Most people write with their fingers, which means that they “draw” the letters. Calligraphy artists and professionals, however, don’t use their fingers at all. “Keep your arm and your wrist in the same position for every letter and motion,” Hooper advised. “You’re not wiggling your arm and your wrist around — it’s very controlled.”

To practice, hold your pen and write big letters in the air. The muscles you’re using are the ones you’ll be using to write on paper. Picture yourself writing on a chalk board. You have to use your arm and your wrist to write because if you were drawing the letters with only your fingers, the letters would be too small for someone across the room to read.

Writing this way will also make your writing more fluid. “What I try to instruct my students to do is pulling the pen rather than pushing it up and down the paper,” Hooper told us. A finger writer puts the full weight of his or her hand on the paper and picks up the hand repeatedly to move it across the page. A calligrapher will let his or her letters flow freely.

Once you get used to this way of writing, your fingers will move very little, allowing your forearm to guide the pen and your shoulder to lightly push it into the paper for a much more streamlined style. 6. Slow Down

“One thing I see a lot in my classes is that people write really fast as though they’re trying to do it as fast as they can,” Hooper said, “but it’s not a race. The point isn’t to see how fast you can do it, but how nice you can make each letter. Go slow and concentrate on making each letter look its best.”

This is especially true when you’re practicing by yourself, which brings us to… writing practice calligraphypennyshima/FlickrFocus on making your lines and loops as uniform as possible while practicing.

7. Practice, Practice, Practice

Start by writing a row of lines and loops, concentrating on making the shapes evenly spaced with identical-sized lines and spirals.

Gradually as your control increases, you can start writing out the alphabet, and then connecting the letters together in groups (ab, az, am, etc).

Make your letters larger than you usually would to get your arm and wrist accustomed to doing most of the work. Once the movement starts to feel more natural, slowly decrease the size of the letters to your normal writing style.

“The key is to practice,” Hooper said. “Seems really simple, but it’s true. I recommend getting a set or printing out a set of grid lines and writing each letter several times as carefully as possible. Then move onto letter combinations.”

After you’ve gotten a good handle on letter combinations, start writing the phrase “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” over and over again. The sentence contains every letter of the alphabet, which gives you lots of opportunities to practice making every letter as perfect as possible, as well as connecting your letters together.

Keep practicing whenever you can, and you’ll see a vast improvement in your handwriting.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s International Correspondence Month. I’ve made a dent with my box of envelopes, but I still have about 15 letters to go before the end of the month (totally doable, if you ask me!). I make goals like this for myself quite frequently, and I’m excited that this one is sticking! Ideally, I’d love to write this many letters all the time, but it’s a matter of carving out the time. It’s not as quick or convenient as sending an email, but it certainly means more to get something hand-written than a quick 2-liner in your inbox. At least, that’s how I feel. istillloveyou-tutorial-better-handwriting-6

With the rise of the digital age, good penmanship has gone down the crapper. If I had a quarter for every time I heard the whine “I wish my handwriting looked better”, I’d be living it up in my multi- million dollar dream home. It’s an epidemic of bad handwriting! Most schools aren’t teaching cursive, either! I’m glad to be in a state that still requires cursive as part of the third grade curriculum. Not only does it teach kids a slice of history, but it promotes better literacy (often times kids that don’t learn how to write cursive have issues reading script fonts), better fine-motor skills and concentration. It may be impractical to hand-write everything in this modern age. However, we should shift our perception of handwriting from an archaic means of communication to something meditative, meaningful and personal.

Calligraphy and penmanship have very similar foundations. So let’s talk about 5 ways to make your everyday handwriting better.

1- Practice

Handwriting, like any skill, won’t get better without practice. We’re all great at typing, right? It’s because we’re using it ALL the TIME. Why does our handwriting atrophy, you ask? Simply because we are not practicing. It’s not being used in the every day, so if you want to improve your handwriting chops you’re going to have to carve out purposeful practice. istillloveyou-tutorial-better-handwriting-1

Spend at least 15 minutes a day writing out the alphabet, or writing your to do lists. 2- Use the Right Tools

Handwriting isn’t as tool-intensive as calligraphy, but if you have crappy pens, you’ll have crappy results. You know those cheapie bic pens? Yeah, we don’t have those in our house. They’re awful. The gel-like ink doesn’t flow easily and smoothly off the paper, requiring you to apply more pressure when writing. Also the narrow shaft of the pen requires a tighter grip. Both aspects are a recipe for hand cramping and fatigue. I personally prefer the pilot precise v5. It’s a skinny pen, but the ink flows smoothly from the pen allowing for a light grip and a light touch. istillloveyou-tutorial-better-handwriting-8

If you want to invest in some pen awesomeness, I would highly recommend the Kaweko Sport or the Lamy Safari. They’re easy-to-use fountain pens with nice weight and grip to them.

If you want something a little more advanced, the Noodler’s Ahab Flex Pen (the green pen in the pictures) is really fun. It’s a fountain pen with a little bit of flex, but you have to know what you’re doing when it comes to inking the pen (more colors and great how-to videos here). Sometimes you can’t control the kind of paper that you use, but if you want to buy a nice paper, try Clairefontaine lined paper. It’s deliciously smooth. You can alternatively use a 90-100GSM high quality color laser paper. 3 – Slow Down

This is something that I tell my calligraphy students constantly. You can’t expect consistent results when you’re going too fast. The key is to go slow enough that you can anticipate the next move before it happens and so you can create consistent movements. I pick on Chris all the time for his handwriting. His handwriting is pretty hard to read because he’s usually rushing to write as fast as he types. Pretty penmanship will never be as convenient or as fast as typing. It’s a fact. So slow down! istillloveyou-tutorial-better-handwriting-4

I like the quote from Modern Family (“Old Wagon” episode from Season 2), “Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.” You’re less likely to mess up style or spelling if you’re taking the time to think about each movement. Therefore you’re going to be faster than if you rushed, messed up and had to start over. istillloveyou-tutorial-better-handwriting-2 4 – Proper Positioning

If you had respectable elementary school teachers, they should have stressed this fact a TON from kindergarten through 6th grade. Holding the pen properly is a big deal. Bigger than you may think. Hold the pen nicely between your thumb and index finger and rest the pen lightly on the spot between the knuckle and tip of your middle finger. This light grasp will keep your hand from cramping and fatiguing which leads to a deterioration in handwriting. See the above video for an example of how that looks. 5 – Consistency

Practice doesn’t make perfect. Practice makes permanent. You want to practice with guide sheets to maintain consistency. If you can hone in on your consistency, your handwriting will get so much better. istillloveyou-tutorial-better-handwriting-7

What does this mean exactly? Use guides. Practice with guides. Ruled paper is your best friend. You want your lowercase letters to stay within the same x-height (save for the ascender and descender strokes). You want your uppercase and ascending lowercase letters to be at consistent heights. You want your descenders to have a consistent height. Practicing with guides will help ingrain that consistency into muscle memory. Download cursive and print alphabet guide sheets below to help you practice.