Hints for Better Handwriting
by The author, a handwriting specialist in Albany, NY, shares some tips for handwriting improvement
To begin improving your handwriting, remember: Your third-grade teacher was not always right!
Your third-grade teacher — or someone else you trusted — probably told you that you must always use proper cursive letter-shapes and always, absolutely always, keep your pen on the paper from the beginning to the end of the word. However, research shows that the fastest and most legible handwriters break these rules.
The highest-speed, highest-legibility handwriters avoid cursive. They join only some, not all, of their letters — making only the easiest joins, skipping the rest — and tend to use print-like letter-shapes when the printed and cursive forms of a letter disagree. This helps them produce legible, accident-resistant handwriting — and you can, too. Learn these handwriting habits of successful handwriters:
1. Whatever your writing style (print, cursive, or some efficient mix of the two as recommended above), you can write it much more quickly and easily if you position your paper for greatest writing ease. Your schoolteachers may have told you to place your paper vertically in the center of your desk — however, most people write much more clearly and comfortably if they move their paper a few inches to one side or the other (right-handers should move their paper to the right, left-handers to the left) so that the center of the paper sits in front of the shoulder of the writing arm. Then tilt the paper so that the left and right edges of the paper run parallel to the forearm of your writing arm.
(NOTE: if you tend to “hook” or bend your wrist in order to write — this applies to about half of the world’s left-handers and to about 1% of right-handers — then you will need to make one change to these instructions.
In your case, the top and bottom edges of the paper — not the left and right edges –need to parallel the forearm of your writing arm.)
2. Whenever a join between letters feels as if it might be difficult, or causes you to lose control, make that join in the air instead of on the paper.The two most usual culprits (worth omitting by turning them into “air-joins”) are these:
Joins involving loops
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