Improve your Handwriting

Do you remember back in school learning how to write? Perhaps you might remember when your teacher had you pick up a pencil and write out the letters of the alphabet many times. Or when you were in first grade, learning cursive for the first time. It was always one of the most exciting things to learn because you could add so many of your own personal touches to the writing. Maybe you made it more rounded, or maybe you slanted your writing and added flourishes. Whatever it may be, it was such a fun thing to learn. Realizing how to improve your handwriting is an art form that stays with you for life. Sadly, in the last couple of years, we have seen a decline in handwriting, most notably cursive, as we have seen technology take over our writing, such as keyboards and mobile phones. There seems to be an argument that it's more important we teach our kids to type, rather than have good handwriting. The problem is, if we eliminate cursive, that means that kids can no longer read their grandparents' letters.

Another sad thing to see these days, if you don't teach handwriting, that means no handwritten letters. Although no one really writes letters these days, since it's much easier to send a dm on Instagram or send a message on WhatsApp. But despite all this, keyboards should not just replace the use of handwriting entirely since it’s a lot easier to remember things when you write them down with a pen. For example, your grocery list, or your recipes, I could go on. Maybe you decide you want to open a journal, but don’t know where to start.

The one thing that needs to come back is cursive handwriting. Like, I don’t see why it’s considered not important for a kid to know anymore, plus think about how it allows your ideas to flow on paper. Typing is great, but it’s also a very mechanical thing compared to having to form the letters from scratch. Also, you might have heard that the use of handwriting is very good for the brain, and activates several neural pathways, which allow you to be more engaged than when you’re typing really fast. Anyway, once you know cursive, you can have your style and have something that is unique to you. That is one of the most beautiful things about it. Plus, it would be nice to have nice penmanship when you write a thank-you card, or maybe you want to write someone a letter, but are worried about how your handwriting looks. Whatever it may be you have in mind, writing a letter to a family member or maybe even someone you have an interest in carries way more weight than any text message could ever offer.

For those who want to know how to improve handwriting for a cleaner look, I would say go back to the old practice sheets you used as a kid. It’s always good to go back and review how to make the letter shapes. Also, keep in mind that you’re not going to get any better until you slow down. Trust me, I practice handwriting every day, and when it starts to look sloppy, I stop and go back to handwrite the whole alphabet. It may be a pain at first, but you will notice that when you slow down, your letter forms will look a lot cleaner, and most of all, easier to read. Trust me, if more people cared about this kind of thing, we would have more people with better handwriting that is actually readable. On the other hand, Cursive is a whole other thing that requires a lot of slow work to look good. Most people will say it’s faster than print, which it is when you don’t care about how it looks. To be honest, cursive may look very pretty, but it’s not helpful when someone is trying to read a letter you wrote them. If you write too fast, the recipient is most likely to read every line as a scribble because all the letters just blend into each other.

Also, some people might want their writing to look like the Declaration of Independence, but to be honest with you, that is not cursive. It is a version of a script called English Round Hand, most commonly known as engrossers’ script. Now you might think it’s Cursive simply because all the letters are connected, but what makes it different is the fact that instead of keeping the pen on the paper for each word, you would write out each letter using a stroke technique. This took much longer to write out, but this was the form of handwriting most commonly taught in the 1700s. We also have to keep in mind that in those days, all writing was done with a goose feather quill, which you had to dip in ink. It was an extremely tough process, but despite all that, it was worth it to see beautiful text like that on a piece of parchment.

I personally like to use a little bit of Round Hand and cursive combined when I write, because I love that vintage kind of look. It just gives it more of a sense of elegance, which I simply love about it. But at the same time, I also like to make sure I maintain my own style of writing, because I want to keep what is unique to me. Another style of writing that I think is beautiful is Spencerian script. Now that form of writing is, in fact, the earliest form of cursive invented as we know it today. It was just a lot fancier and had more decorative flourishes, and was invented by a guy named Platt Rogers Spencer. He loved the art of handwriting and thought, why not make a style that looks like the beautiful waves of the ocean. So that’s where that idea came from. Although I’ve never personally liked this style because I didn’t like using all those flourishes, I thought it made my writing look messy and hard to read. So I choose to stick to a very basic script, which is basically a hybrid of Engrosser’s script and cursive.