Five Ways To Brush Up Your Handwriting
Your handwriting is terrible and you know it. Your significant other is always asking what a particular scribble is on a shopping list. Of course you wrote “berries” but they scrunched their nose at it for five minutes before giving up and buying “cabbage”.
In the digital age, handwriting seems as quaint as building a ship in the bottle. For many it conjures sitting in an elementary classroom and the tedium of trying to fit loops within dotted horizontal lines.
Cursive may be a dying art but there are always cards to send, notes to scribble, postcards to post and ideas to get down in a notebook. More importantly, you want the person on the receiving end to understand the message by being able to read it. Admit it: you’ve written a late-night insight only to discover the next morning you can’t read your own handwriting.
It’s not necessary to have the pristine handwriting of a professional calligrapher. Besides, handwriting is as unique as your own personality. But yours may have regressed over time. (Your handwriting, that is. No comment on your personality.) What’s the harm in a tune-up? Here are a few simple ways to freshen up your penmanship so you don’t wind up with a refrigerator full of cabbage.
Slow Your Roll
Writing is a beautiful dance between you and the paper. And in any physical act, relaxation is your friend.
Have you ever felt exhausted after writing several lines on a Hallmark card? Felt like you were stabbing your way through a letter? Shaking your arm out every other page as you write your novel out in longhand?
Let the writing implement do the work for you. You needn’t press so hard onto the paper or grip whatever you’re using to write so tightly. Send a breath into your arm and fingers. Let them guide the flow and be the instrument of thought. It doesn’t necessarily matter how you hold the pencil or pen, just recognize where tension is building and work on consciously releasing it.
You’d be surprised how much emotion can get kicked up writing a letter to someone. Accompanied by some deep breaths, you can focus on trying to write as neatly as possible.
Blame Your Tools, Carpenter
Think how many pens you’ve accidentally taken home from work. It’s safe to say you weren’t stealing prime company assets. They’re cheap pens guaranteed to leak and smear and ruin that perfect get-well soon card.
It’s time to root out the culprits around your desk and consider tossing them or giving them as a White Elephant gift (actually, don’t do that). If you’re willing to spend a few more dollars, you’d be surprised how good a pen can feel between your fingers. It’s like upgrading from a compact car to a sleek sports car with just a click or a pop of the cap. Hey, bazillionaires: you can even buy a pen made by Porsche!
Any art supply store will offer a wide variety. Maybe avoid fountain pens for now until you’ve really got a hold on your lettering. Do you smear ink as you write? I’m looking at you, lefty. Consider fast-drying pens and avoid rollerball pens. Try ballpoint which has fast-drying ink. Rollerball pens have liquid ink inside of them and are incredibly smooth. Once you fall in love with the look and feel of a pen that’s just for you, you’ll bring your pens from home to work. Just make sure none of your co-workers ask to borrow it.
I Detect a Slant To Your Writing
Let’s focus now on the paper. You may be surprised to learn that you’re writing on it at an incorrect angle.
If you’re right-handed, the bottom left corner of the paper should be in line with your body. If you’re left-handed, the reverse is true. This change will also facilitate a slight slant to your script. Also, it’s going to provide more ease if you’re writing for longer periods of time.
Send it Around the World
Years ago, we used to send letters to each other. Then the internet showed up and soon we were writing letters via email. Because, wow, email! But then email fell out of favor and now we text memes of cats to each other via our phones. LOL.
Letter writing has been left in the dust. Our handwriting has atrophied as a result. Writing a simple letter can take less than ten minutes and is a great way to reach out to someone. People love getting letters! Usually, they wind up in a stack of keepsakes to be cherished in the future. Rarely do people curl up by the fire and read email chains aloud.
This is a perfect way to practice your handwriting and possibly revive a lost art with someone you love. Heck, I’m sure there are still penpals across the world who’d be interested in striking up a long-distance relationship.
Guide Thyself
A blank page can be exciting. The potential of it all! You can fill it with one big word or hundreds of tiny words! If you want to aim for neatness however, consider putting a piece of lined paper underneath whatever you’re using. Our elementary school teachers were onto something after all: script consistency.
If you pull out an old journal you may see that the words at the top of the page are neat and small. But as the entry progresses and the emotions get bigger, the words follow suit farther down the page. The space between the lines grows too.
Sometimes, a limitation can strengthen a practice. A boundary gives you consistency in the baseline of your letters and can give you a point of reference for the height of your upper and lowercase letters. As you progress, you’ll see a uniformity not only to your words but also your page.
Once More With Feeling
Ink, as any tattoo artist will tell you, is permanent. True, there are erasable gel pens just as there are skin grafts. But unless you’re the type of person who never makes mistakes, vast swaths of white-out won’t cover up a multitude of crossed-out sins.
This is why we love our computers. No fuss, no muss.
Before committing yourself to the paper, consider writing your thoughts down first. Maybe do a first draft. That way, you’re not making it up on the fly or destroying the environment with each crumpled-up sheet. Any misspelled words, if you care about that sort of thing, can be looked up. You need not worry about neatness here.
Once your ideas are put together, then you can take a deep breath and just focus on writing without the fear of errors. You might be surprised what other information and inspiration might happen as you write it.
Conclusion
Keep working at it. You may not have 20 minutes a day to practice, but consider taking out a (not cheap) pen and (properly-slanted) paper next time you have something to write rather than defaulting to the computer. True, it’s more work but it can be a beautiful, meditative way of communicating. Maybe after a few years of mindful practice, someone will say, “I love your handwriting.”
