Improving Terrible Handwriting?

green pizza asks: "My handwriting is horrible, an irregular mix of sloppy print and cursive. I know this, and my coworkers have learned to live with it, but I didn't realize just how bad my chickenscratch was until I tried using a tablet PC. Unlike a Palm which forced me to learn its input method, a tablet PC (and other humans) expect me to write a certain way. Aside from a handwriting class for professional adults on the other side of the country, I have only been able to find lessons and materials for the young, illiterate, or mentally challenged. Have any other geeks found a structured way to improve their handwriting?"

Comments

Practice, practice, practice!

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

I had terrible handwriting (Everybody said I should have been a doctor). I figured on trying to better my handwriting and found that writing through the alphabet over and over for a few weeks. After that, I did repetitive practice writing. Writing pages from books or whatever until you notice any improvement. It sure worked for me, but ymmv.

Right Side of the Brain book

[drivers]

The book "The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" by Betty Edwards has a chapter on handwriting, even though it is a book about drawing. BTW, I recommend the rest of the book to anyone as well. (especially if you think you "can't draw.")

Yup...

[cybermace5]

My handwriting sucks too. I really do intend to improve it though...and I have been.

You can't do it by willing yourself to write better. You've transferred your letter-forming skills into your cerebellum already...you aren't even a conscious part of the letter-forming process anymore. You had to go back to the basics: back to penmanship. There is no way around this other than to practice and unlearn your poor penmanship.

Roll back the clock to first grade. Now, here's some good material:
D'Nealian Practice Pages

Remember to scroll down that page to the manuscript pages with guides. Print those out and go to town. Fill up a set of those pages every day, and your handwriting WILL improve.

Re:The Easy Answer

[jellomizer]

Yea while my handwriting is naturally bad. If I really slow down and put a lot of time in my writing the difference is like night and day. Normally I will have to fight my natural tendency to writing the most optimized way. Like making an E with 2 strokes of the pen which makes it look kinda like a euro symbol but a little more edgy. every time there are sharp angles in the letters you need to pick up you pencil and do an other stroke. And most of the time you need to go Top Down for all the strokes, Left to right is possible.
Next is when you are board just take some paper and a pencil and practice your letters. After some time you will get a little speed but don't expect it to be as fast as typing. Because it isn't

Take up Calligraphy....and buy a better pen/stylus

[No One's Zero]

Seriously,

I had this same problem and thses two things helped me more than anything else.

First try writing with a couple of differant pen types. Most people will find that they print much better with a certain type of pen; felt tip, ball point, microball etc. Find one you like. Also like swords, weight and balance are important. The same goes for stylii.

Then go get yourself a calligraphy book and a proper caligraphy pen. (the type with the metal tip) To use such a pen you have to always pull the tip across the paper down, or sidewise, but not up. This will teach you to slow down, and plan each pen stroke (or you will ruin a bunch of tips).

It is more or less impossible to write properly in cursive using a proper caligraphy pen because of the fact that you cant draw strokes "upwards." But i've noticed that most handwriting rec software seems to take print better anyway.

Also if the software is halfway decent and learns, the fact that you draw each letter the same way each time should help the rec quite alot.

NOZ

Google Michael Sull...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or go to http://www.spencerian.com/

book suggestion

[solferino]

I found Rosemary Sassoon's Teach yourself better handwriting very useful. It is specifically targeted at ppl who are trying to fix up their handwriting and not at child first time learners. Rosemary states in the book that very different approaches are required for these two different pedagogical needs.

An interesting part of the book is where Rosemary addresses pen-grips and suggests a rather radical option of holding the pen between index and middle finger. I've switched over to this and enjoy it as I never felt comfortable with the oppositionary tension between index and thumb of the standard grip.

Here is an addall link to the book (2nd edition) so you can compare prices.

Here is a link to the book (1st edition - the one I used) on Amazon so you can check the reader reviews

Here is a link to the publisher's page on the book (2nd edition)

Here is a link to some information about the author Rosemary Sasson

Re:Force Yourself To Slow Down

[Brad Siemssen]

Yes SLOW DOWN!!!

I used to have terrible handwriting. At one point I decided to fix that, and started printing everything, very slowly. Now I am complimented on my neat penmanship.

I found I need to focus on two things, the first is to slow down enough that I do write well. Second, get all the extra help for pen control you can. There are environmental factors that make handwriting bad, eliminate those.

What I found to work for me is:

• SLOW DOWN
• Print everything, when that is working well, move to cursive.
• Always have extra paper under what you are writing on. The paper provides padding that slows down the pen and keeps it easier to control, and keeps the texture of whatever you write on from messing up your text.
• Keep the paper so it does not move. I use a clipboard all the time. The clip keeps the paper from moving.
• When starting, only use a Bic Roundstick pen. These are the classic cheap ball point pen, with very slow, but reliable ink flow. You do not want a liquid ink pen, or any of the "roller" ball types of pens. The ink flows way too fast in these "fancier" pens, which is great when your speed is up but causes blotting when you move the pen slowly.
• If needed press hard. When I started I used two pieces of paper for every page I wrote. The top sheet would curl into a little scroll, and the it was possible to simply read the indentations left on the second sheet.
• Use lined paper or graph paper for everything.

As you get better you'll be able to lighten up on the pressure. When you can get neat writing with barely any pressure on the pen then you'll be able to get your speed up. At this time you'll also likely want to change to using a "gel" ink pen. Never go with a liquid ink pen, they'll blot if you move the pen to slow.

online lessons + practice

[klaasvakie]

Gunnlaugur SE Briem, the person who developed the typeface for the London Times has a lesson on writing italic. Actually his whole webpage is very worth reading.
Here it is

Re:Take up Calligraphy....and buy a better pen/sty

[No One's Zero]

one more thing....RTFM. MS transcriber (pocket pc) for example lets you set how you draw each letter (to a point) and increases the accuracy quite a lot. I had the silly thing for about 3 months before i bothered to set it up properly...

Re:Use an old Newton OS 1.x Newton PDA

[RevAaron]

Short answer- the Newton HWR system has been ported to other systems.

Long answer-
On a NOS 2.x device, there are two parts to the HWR system, two seperate and different HWR softwares.

One is by ParaGraph, and it's called CalliGrapher. When configuring your Newton, it is called the cursive recognizer. CalliGrapher exists on a few platforms- Windows CE/PocketPC (as both CalliGrapher and the MS-licensed Transcriber), desktop Windows (called PenOffice there) and on Psion EPOC32. No port for Palm OS, but we may see one finally with OS 6 finally appearing. I still use CalliGrapher on WinCE these days and like it quite a bit. It's faster on today's faster CPUs- a 400 MHz XScale PXA255 is quite a bit faster than the Newton's 162 MHz StrongARM SA-1100.

Then there was the "printing" recognizer. This was Apple's own Rosetta. It has been ported to OS X, where it is now called InkWell. I usually used the cursive recognizer, switching to the printing recog far down the line. The printing recognizer was a wee bit faster, and allowed you to write umlauted and accented characters fine, even with an english Newton OS.

Lots of interesting info here.