rebooting the handwriting

My handwriting is atrocious. It’s scrawly, uneven, with malformed letters (r never recovered from Miss MacFarlane’s ligatures, t usually left unstroked) meandering up and down the line. It’s got blotchy, affected borrowings, too: tailed and stroked 1s and 7s in the European style, and a d that was least seen in a partial differential: 𝛿. In short, a style all my own, wanted by none.

I’d prefer to have my handwriting legible to others, and even by me. I don’t want my notebooks to look like a spider’s hauled its bedraggled carapace out of the inkwell onto the page. Unfortunately, cursive is right out to learn. I can’t read it, in any style. In fact, I find the German Sütterlin to be as logical to learn, as I can’t read that either, but at least it looks badass.

The style I’m trying is pre-cursive. Yes, it’s meant as a transition from printing to cursive, but I like its simple clean italic lines. I imagine I’ll join it up a deal more when I’m writing quickly. The hardest part for me is sticking to the line and stopping my writing wandering off up the page.

We’ll see how this goes …

(and thanks to I want to write right! | Ask MetaFilter for the suggestions.)

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *