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Penmanship

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phreakout13

phreakout13

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 4, 2004
317
0
South Eastern MA
How many of you have neat penmanship? Do you strive for clear writing, or not care? Do you write or print your characters?
I'd like to see some examples of other peoples' handwriting.
I'm really sick of my crappy penmanship. I never write, I print, and it's sloppy and terrible. My goal is to have neat, unique, consistant handwriting. What should I do? How should I start out? First off, I hold my pencil completely wrong. When holding one properly, should the rest of your hand rest on the paper, or should the tip of the writing utensil be the only thing touching the paper?
 
my writing is horrendous, worse than any doctor in the hospital i work at. The middle school i went to had to give me a laptop (NEWTON!!!) to do tests on and take notes because all my teachers were complaining about my handwriting.

But some drs believe i have some small motor issue going on in my hand that causes it
 
Put it this way i couldn't read my own notes at both school and Uni, I would scan some but it is rather :eek:
 
I am an engineer...'nuff said

The only thing I remember how to write is my signature.

Hickman
 
i am very careful with my writing, but thats because i hand write a lot of my poetry and stories first, it seems more natural for me that way most of the time
i print, i cant stand cursive personally. i am very choosy with my pens, i prefer rollerball rather than ball point.

find a pen/pencil that you are comfortable with to begin. makes a world of a difference. remember that everyone holds thier pen/pencil's differently too

take your time writing, and do a lot of it and your penmanship will improve, thats the best advice i can give, i just write a lot and i know i need to be clear and legable so i make sure that it is.
 
One question I have is how exactly to hold my pencil. I'm trying to use the "Tripod Method" and I was wondering if the tip should be the only part touching the paper. My pen tends to pivot off the side of my hand, and after a few inches, I have to reposition my whole arm.
 
phreakout13 said:
One question I have is how exactly to hold my pencil. I'm trying to use the "Tripod Method" and I was wondering if the tip should be the only part touching the paper. My pen tends to pivot off the side of my hand, and after a few inches, I have to reposition my whole arm.
Click to expand...

i actually know i hold my pen incorrectly technically.

i use three fingers and my ring finger and between my thumb and index hold up the pen. when writing the only part of my pen that touches the page is the point, i do know that my pinkie and that whole bottom part of my hand touch the page.

but i think that this is technically incorrect from what i have been taught.
 
iGary said:
I write like an architect, in all caps.

Most people like my writing.
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My cousin writes in all caps and you're right, I love it! It takes all the 'guess work' out when reading hand written notes/ scribbles. My handwriting is so erratic, literally, teachers would not believe that I did my homework myself because it would change all the time.

If a psychologist and hand writing expert were to examine a longer note of mine, they might conclude that I have multiple personality disorder based on how differently I write at different times.

And no.. it's not neat, pretty, nor cute... the way so many other women write. Damn them! I've tried, really, I have... I just... can't. :(
 
iGary said:
I write like an architect, in all caps.

Most people like my writing.
Click to expand...
Me too.

I took to it 'cause my cursive was so bad and I've had a lot of people comment on it being odd but never anyone say they couldn't read it.

After 10years out of 'school' I had to sit an exam last year and was amazed that after sitting and writing for more than an hour how bad my hand cramped up, I just never need to write long passages. I type quicker than I write nowadays!

At work I often get hand written notes given to me which I can hardly read, the only person who's writing I never have a problem with is my direct boss who like you and I is a block letter guy, and a trained engineer and draghtsman.

My brother who had an expensive private education has possibly the worst handwriting I know, as does my father, and amazingly his typing is almost as bad. His spelling is legendary in my office and his emails get forward about so people can marvel at his incompetence!
 
I don't write as much as I do speed-print. It keeps things very neat and small, but it is easily legible. It's funny, my sister is almost the opposite in her style.
 
everyone tells me i have really bad handwriting, and i tend to agree. as a sample, here's some notes i took in pre-cal today (the first sample i could find)
oh, and i never erase when i write with pencil, which is why i prefer pens.
 

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I like my writing and so do most people who read it. They are usually amazed by its neatness in combination with the fact that it is so small! Just to give you an idea, I use not quite a 1/3 of a line of normal looseleaf paper...tiny but neat. :)
 
I have fairly neat hand writing.

I am one of the few people that write their lower case As like "a" (as a computer would type it). I don't know why I do, one day I tried it, and I never stopped doing it.

Working in the medical field you learn to read the most illegible handwriting usually found on medical charts.
 
I write in cursive and I try and make it look nice, not necessarily clear, but nice. I was unhappy with the way I made some of my letters, so I forced myself to change. As for the legibility of my writing, most people can read it, although some people complain to no end. So long as I can read it, I don't really care. But everyone agrees it looks pretty nice. Too bad I don't have a scanner here at college.
 
My penmanship is, on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the neatest, around a 7 or 8.

However, when I take REALLY fast notes, my penmanship is like a 3 or 4.

When I write on the blackboard at school, everyone goes "Wow, he has really neat handwriting for a guy..."

I hate how teachers don't allow you to write in all-caps though.

I personally love all caps handwriting (selective though). I HATE when All Caps people do this:

THIS IS THE WAY TO NOT WRITE

I like when all the letters are the same size:

THIS IS THE WAY TO WRITE
 
I have horrible handwriting, except the letter f. I feel I do a fairly nice f. My s is weird. It's halfway between a printed s and a cursive s. My excuse is that my thumb was nearly chopped off when we learned to write cursive in 3rd grade, so I had to learn to write with this big bandage on my thumb... and it's never been very good since. I'm also like devilot76 in that it changes a lot... sometimes 3 or 4 times on the same page! :eek: I must really have multiple personalities to the extreme.
 
eva01 said:
my writing is horrendous, worse than any doctor in the hospital i work at. The middle school i went to had to give me a laptop (NEWTON!!!) to do tests on and take notes because all my teachers were complaining about my handwriting.

But some drs believe i have some small motor issue going on in my hand that causes it
Click to expand...


same with me, only they gave me a dell at first then i said i wanted a mac so they gave me a 14" ibook with OS 9. I took notes on it and did test it was amazing....
i too have a problem with "fine motor" thing so its a real disability or at my school its not a disabiliy its a difference :rolleyes:
 
homerjward said:
everyone tells me i have really bad handwriting, and i tend to agree. as a sample, here's some notes i took in pre-cal today (the first sample i could find)
oh, and i never erase when i write with pencil, which is why i prefer pens.
Click to expand...

And I thought mine was bad... ;)
 
homerjward said:
everyone tells me i have really bad handwriting, and i tend to agree. as a sample, here's some notes i took in pre-cal today (the first sample i could find)
oh, and i never erase when i write with pencil, which is why i prefer pens.
Click to expand...

my is as bad or worse... :D
 
yg17 said:
Mine sucks. My professors can read it well enough for grading, but overall, it sucks
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oof, I hear that!

Mine is kinda weird... ALL instances of the letter R are UPPERCASE!
I hate lowercase Rs. I don't know why. They're OK typed.. but.. handwritten? NO!

Maybe because an old friend of mine's Rs all looked like Vs.

eh. *shrug*

Other than that, everything's real bubbly. I have awesome lowercase g's y's and s'es (all my lower-case S's are cursive. Uppercase.. different story.)
 
katie ta achoo said:
Maybe because an old friend of mine's Rs all looked like Vs.
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Hey, all my r's look liks v's :mad: What's wrong with that? Also my upper case C's look like L's. And my 5's look like s's, and my s's look like um... no other letter. Oh, and my n's look like u's. I'm really bad. :eek:

Edit: In case anyone is wondering how a n can look like a u, see the attached image I did in photoshop of what my n and u look like.
 

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