To write nicer you have to … write a lot. Instead of whining that you are scribbling, just work on your handwriting.
A nicer, clearer magazine can be worked out, I assure you. The effects will come gradually – not tomorrow and the day after tomorrow – and when they come, they will surprise you and find more from the Cheetah papers to more tricks to improve your written character.
Fun graphologist
First, analyze your handwriting. Write a paragraph or two by hand on a piece of paper and look carefully. It can be any text, for example, a poem.
Pay attention to:
● letter-spacing. Do you write tightly or longly?
● italics. Right, left? Can you write simply, simply?
● ornaments. Maybe you use flourishes (e.g. you decorate the letters “y” and “j” with them)? Do you draw a circle instead of a dot above the “i”? How do you rate these decorations?
● “making” the letter. Is it clear or illegible after childhood, like a doctor’s? Do you combine letters, as taught at school, are some put separately?
● What happens to the magazine when you are in a hurry? Most of us tend to distort some letters, especially when combined (“rz” looks like “n”). When working on the letter, you need to pay special attention to these embarrassing letters.
● What do you want to change? Do any letters annoy you, do you prefer to write them differently?
Choose the perfect magazine
To change the typeface you have two options. You can – which is much easier – work on your current magazine, “tweak” it. Or change the writing style to a completely different one. I chose the second, bumpy road. If you also want to follow it, find the ideal letter to which you will strive.
In working on the new character of the magazine, I went all the way and decided on two new writing styles: every day (simpler, faster writing) and festive (when I am in no hurry, and I want the writing to be elegant, e.g. when writing greeting cards, wishes, dedication).
Daily handwriting learned in American schools has become every day, in which individual letters do not combine with each other (so-called print ). It looks very neat and I can write in it at a normal and medium-fast pace.
Make the magazine perfect for you
Write down your new target alphabet and think about each letter. You may not like some of them and you will want to change them. For example, in the Palmer alphabet, some capital letters were so strange for me that I developed their own versions (however consistent with this style of writing).
In turn, in the print, I devoted a lot of time to consider how I would write diacritical marks (for example, petioles next to “ą”, dashes over “ó”). It’s important to make these changes at the beginning and immediately teach your hand how to draw letters.
Write as much as possible!
When you think through the whole alphabet, write the letters vertically on a piece of paper and train. Write single letters, two characters (“CZ”, “sz”), syllables. Then assemble words, sentences, paragraphs. Rewrite proverbs, parts of books. In my Facebook group, we practiced on weather forecasts, classified ads, speeches, a crime chronicle from a newspaper, old songs, and avant-garde poems.
Train as long as you don’t feel comfortable with the new handwriting. It may take time, don’t be discouraged. My experience of working on my own writing and with the members of the We Love Handwriting group shows that a month of daily exercise is the minimum to learn a new style of writing.
The Book of Mormon Review can help you write your characters better, look for special comments from readers if there are any about characters.
