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Tony quidprano
Jan 19, 2014





My writing has always been poo poo, I never really applied myself in school and it definitely showed when it came to this. My writing looks like an 11 year old took a hit of meth and then had a stroke before deciding to jot something down. I never really have given a poo poo about it but I definitely got an impression in college that it was affecting how my work was actually perceived while being marked. I got through despite it and thought I never had to worry about it again but now I'm starting to pursue a designation that consists of 3 exams with the third one having a written essay format and an extremely low pass rate and I'm starting to wonder if something like this would help tip the balance and am leaning towards the idea that I should finally fix how my writing looks.

Is there any recommended way to approach fixing how my writing looks or should I just be writing out words via repetition every night?

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PT6A
Jan 5, 2006

Public school teachers are callous dictators who won't lift a finger to stop children from peeing in my plane
If my co-workers could regularly write this legibly I'd be thrilled. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

litany of gulps
Jun 11, 2001

Fun Shoe
I'm a high school English teacher, and at this point I've had over a thousand students pass through my classes. You're fine. Top 5% in legibility, easily.

inkajoo
Oct 4, 2015

nyes
it's a fuckton better than mine, and worse, i can't seem to even nail down a cohesive style

you're gonna be fine, son

spog
Aug 7, 2004

It's your own bloody fault.
My handwriting is shite and I've also been wondering how to improve it.

Mostly I use it for writing notes on the fly, which I don't expect to be perfect, but it's a scrawl,

Also, these days, even when I have the time to do it carefully, it is still crap.

Can I relearn to write correctly? And if so, how? Should I buy a kiddies book?

Biffmotron
Jan 12, 2007

You totally can learn to write properly as an adult. The trick is to improve the aesthetic experience of the whole text by adding more white spaces between words, and consistency in the basic elements that compose letters: slanted vertical lines at the same angle, the loop in a, b, d, g, o, p, q, and the arcs in h, n, m, u. You probably learned Zaner Bloser or D’Nealian script poorly in elementary school, because you were still working out how fingers fing and basic dexterity, and there's no reason that you can't relearn one properly now. On the other hand, if you're going to redo penmanship, why not learn something stylish?

Palmer script is what most people think of when they think of good handwriting. Spencerian script is fancier and slower, with a more 'formal tea party invitation vibe'. If you're willing to spend a little money, I personally endorse Getty-Dubay as a modern compromise which looks good and is easy to learn.

It does take some practice. Maybe 15 minutes a night going through a copybook and practicing forms, and another 15 just writing. And while anything better than pens stolen from hotels writes okay these days, the fountain pen thread is a rabbit hole. I can't claim I have good handwriting, but I definitely have better handwriting these days.

Before-random notes from grad school circa 2010.


After-opening to Dune, today

Preggo My Eggo!
Jun 17, 2010
I learned how to write in all caps because there are a lot more straight lines, and they're all straight up and down, straight across, or at a 60 degree angle. There are only a few pen strokes to master.

The other trick, which works really well for writing in all caps, is to always move the pen in a top to bottom direction -- never bottom to top. The H is especially difficult at first because your brain wants to do it all sloppy, but if you're disciplined you'll have the hottest H's on the block.

mostlygray
Nov 1, 2012

BURY ME AS I LIVED, A FREE MAN ON THE CLUTCH
Your handwriting is superb and very legible. If you want it to be pretty, it's no longer writing. It becomes art. You use different parts of your brain. If you want a draftsmans hand, practice that. If you want pretty script, practice that.

Just remember, you're not writing, you're drawing.

I can read all my handwriting from 3rd grade and it's impeccable. My current writing is only the first few letters of a word followed by a horizontal line. Not sure where I picked that up. I can read it, but no-one else can.

Using a fountain pen helps too. You have to slow down to use one.

Eric the Mauve
May 8, 2012

Making you happy for a buck since 199X
OP, I’m under the impression you posted this thread to get advice on how to get better at writing, rather than positive affirmation that your handwriting isn’t that bad. So let’s dispense with that first: your handwriting is perfectly legible, which alone puts it in the top 40% of the civilized world, but it’s sloppy.

The others in this thread who are trying to make you feel better are right about one thing, though: outside academia no one is going to care, and in fact it’s ultra rare that anyone will ever need to read your handwriting but yourself.

All that said, if you want to improve, you can! You get better at handwriting the same way you get better at anything else: care, and practice. Lots of practice. So get some good paper (I recommend the HP premium 32-weight paper that’s available pretty much anywhere) and a good pen (Uni-ball Jetstreams, Uni-ball 207, and Pilot Metro are good, cheap options for ballpoint, gel, and fountain respectively). And then write. A lot.

Seriously, just once a day, sit down for ten minutes and write a page’s worth of whatever random bullshit happens to pop into your brain. You can copy from a book, but it’s better if you use your own words. Throw it away when you’re done with it if you want, but I recommend keeping it so you can see your progress as you go along. Progress will be slow, but you WILL, slowly but steadily, get better.

Write slowly. Take your time. Focus on keeping the lines as parallel as you can and the spacing as consistent as you can. It will be frustrating. You’ll want to hurl your pen across the room and scream “How the gently caress can I suck so bad at this!?” Just keep writing. You’ll slowly improve.

But, again, put in all that work only if you really want to. Neat handwriting is a nice thing to have but of very little utility in the business world.

Cowwan
Feb 23, 2011

Going to second the Getty-Dubay rec. I still don't have amazing handwriting, but it's way better after working through Write Now. Just about everything in the system is done in the name of ease of writing and legibility, and the cursive is a natural progression from the print instead of a completely different system.


Same time,

Eric the Mauve posted:

Write slowly. Take your time. Focus on keeping the lines as parallel as you can and the spacing as consistent as you can. It will be frustrating. You’ll want to hurl your pen across the room and scream “How the gently caress can I suck so bad at this!?” Just keep writing. You’ll slowly improve.

But, again, put in all that work only if you really want to. Neat handwriting is a nice thing to have but of very little utility in the business world.

Learning a system helped, but so did this. The point about it not being that important is very valid too. After the initial showing off that I can write good now and actually having a signature nobody cares or notices. It's still nice to be able to read my own handwriting.

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Professor Shark
May 22, 2012

I got into pens and started keeping a journal, plus having to have my writing legible for students. Now my handwriting is better and my printing is miles ahead of what it used to be.

Biffmotron posted:

After-opening to Dune, today


What ink is this?

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