by Akshata

All through school and college, somewhere in the gap between the final exam and the start of a new academic year, I forgot how to write properly. It was funny and maddening how just two months of almost writing-free vacations could make me forget what I had learned and practiced since I was in kindergarten.

I spent the first few days of my return to class trying to rediscover the ins and outs of my handwriting, and then tearing up the crisp sheets of new notebooks that had been uglified by my attempts to do so.

After I got acquainted with the computer and began to use it on a regular basis, this handwriting-related amnesia turned into a fixture in my daily life. Every time I picked up pen and paper, I ended up frustrated that my handwriting kept changing, yet staying somewhat similar, from one snippet of writing to the next. One minute is was too sharp, the next it was too curved. One minute it was too upright, the next it was too slanted. It was my handwriting, but it wasn’t my handwriting.

It was as if a hundred students were imitating in their notebooks what their teacher had written on the blackboard. None of them got it completely wrong, but none of them got it completely right either.

I made multiple attempts to regain my natural style of writing. In the past few months, I have succeeded at it. Now my writing is fairly effortless, as it was when I was drowning in assignments in school and college. Even on the odd occasion I forget how to write properly, I get back on track with ease, simply by bringing my focus back to the mechanics of writing well. I have outlined those below to help anyone wanting to improve their penmanship, no matter how bad a state it is in right now.

Write from your upper arm, not from your wrist

When I took up a drawing class a few years ago, the instructor made me draw only circles and lines for three days straight. Concentric circles, overlapping circles, tall ovals, squishy ovals, straight lines, curved lines, zigzag lines, dark lines, light lines, wavy lines, grids, reverse lines, and every other kind that you can imagine. It was mind numbing, made more so by my impatience to get to the “real drawing”.

As I understood later, that line-and-circle exercise is what brings the fluidity to an artist’s brush or pencil strokes. It does that by ensuring that the strokes on canvas or paper arise not from the forced, constricted movement of the wrist, but from the free-flowing movement of the entire arm. Imitate this movement and you can see the difference for yourself. In the first case, only your thumb and forefinger move up and down, clutching the pen or pencil in a death grip. In the second case, the side of your palm makes smooth designs on the surface of the paper, led by the movement of your elbow, which in turn begins at your shoulder.

Replicating that arm movement can do wonders for your handwriting, but it is not easy, because you never know if you have got it right. That’s why you need the next step.

Tilt the paper

Keep your notebook angled away from you when you write. This automatically makes your elbow move outward and away from your body, which in turn relaxes your arm. Without realizing it, you loosen your hold on the pen/pencil and engage your entire arm, both of which are key to free and fluid writing.

As JD Bentley wrote in this post:

Shapes are better when they just happen, not when you try hard to make them happen.

Take your time

Write as if you have all the time in the world, and let the tip of your pen merely whisper over the surface of the paper. You’ll begin to notice that your pen strokes are becoming elongated, stylish, and curvier, all of which make for beautiful, legible handwriting. Use a fountain pen or a gel pen, and the results are even better.

If you slow down your writing at least till you have had sufficient practice at writing well, your arm internalizes that easy movement and makes you consistent at recreating it. As time elapses, it does not matter even if you write faster. The speed will not have too much of a negative impact on the aesthetics of your writing.

Memorize & Practice

Overall, my handwriting looks consistent, but when I look closely, I notice that I mix up letter styles too much. Sometimes I dot the is with a tiny speck and sometimes with a hollow circle. Either I cross the ts too high or too low. Sometimes I write capital F facing left and at other times, facing right.

I find myself pausing frequently in the midst of writing a letter, because I can’t remember how I usually write it. If this is your dilemma too, create a letter set for reference. Write each letter with care and ensure that it is closest to your ideal. Practice it till you can write it in your sleep. The accidental inconsistencies, even the minute ones, can detract from the beauty of your penmanship. The deliberate ones can add to it the charm of a signature style.

Most importantly…

Own your handwriting no matter which phase of improvement it is going through. Instead of trying to capture the elusive beauty and essence of someone else’s handwriting, focus on adding some flair to your own.

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Akshata is a writer, doodler, and people watcher doing her best to find the sacred in the ordinary. In addition to writing about her slow living experiments at akshata.co, she writes for the popular technology blog MakeUseOf.

A persuasive confessional for The Cramped by Andy Welfle

I’ve always been in love with the technology behind the act of writing. Given a pen, pencil, eraser, paintbrush, notebook or other piece of scribomechanica, I’d play with it for hours. My grandmother used to sit me down and let me try out her manual typewriter; a 1970s-era Underwood speckled with white-out flecks and a dual-colored ribbon loaded in. We played with her fountain pens, and one of my favorite possessions is an old, 70 year-old dusky blue Esterbrook Dollar Pen that I inherited after she died. It still works like a champ.

As a kid, I used pencils as much as anyone. A child of the 90s, I used those thick, untipped blue pencils given to me in grade school, bright, neon Yikes! pencils in middle-school, and the ubiquitous Bic Matic mechanicals in high school.

I lost touch with graphite in college, though. I had some spending money for nice rollerball pens, and I found myself typing notes as often as I wrote them.

After college, though, I had a reunion. I was working as an administrator for a small nonprofit, and my day consisted of writing little lists of things to do, erasing line items, re-writing them, and doing it all over again. I’d pencil in appointments, erase parts of the entry, and rewrite.

A pencil was perfect for all this.

I realized that I was born again. I did a little research, found some nice pencils, and marveled at how much better an experience quality pencils provided than cheaper, generic big-box-mart could ever give. That led to writing about them, which led to pencil blogging.

So it’s hard to condense why I like pencils into one post. I’ll try, but I have to break my reasons into two categories of apologetics: the high-minded philosophical reasons, and the pragmatic, practical reasons.

The Philosophical

Using a pencil ushers you into a long, grand tradition of writing. This is the argument that I think appeals most to fountain pen users who are pencil-curious. Like fountain pens, pencils are a tribute to technologies gone by, like shaving with a straight razor or driving a car with a manual transmission. Ernest Hemingway wrote about his pencils. So did John Steinbeck. Heck, Henry David Thoreau was born into a family of pencil-makers and worked at his father’s pencil factory.

Using a pencil is the purest form of writing, without getting your fingers dirty. There’s essentially no difference between writing with your pencil and drawing on a cave wall with a charred stick. Sure, the formula has been refined and the stick has been encased in wood, but in practice, it’s the same — just rub some carbon off onto a flat surface. It’s built into your psyche; your ancestors have been doing it for tens of thousands of years.

Pencils offer a lesson in temporality. Life is fleeting, and so is your pencil. My grandmother’s 70 year-old Esterbrook, if I keep it in good condition, will probably go another 70 years. But even the best pencil, no matter how well I take care of it, will disappear with use. It’s fundamentally selfless — in order for me to create, it destructs. And if it has an eraser, it absolves me from my mistakes with literal pieces of itself.

(Don’t worry, I won’t take this metaphor to a Messianic level.)

Let’s get back down to earth, shall we?

The Practical

Pencils are dang cheap. A decent fountain pen will cost you — what? — Sixty bucks? A nice, disposable rollerball will sell for four or five dollars each. With a few scant exceptions, the nicest wooden pencils you can buy will cost less than two dollars each. Some of my favorite pencils, the Palomino Golden Bears, are three dollars. For a dozen.

The tip is adjustable. For writers, like me, this isn’t as big a deal as it is for artists. If you’re handy with a knife, or have some nice sharpening equipment, you can put as fine a point or as blunt a nub on a pencil as you choose and really vary the thickness of the line. I, myself, prefer a long, sharp point, fine enough to easily stab someone, but I know those who write bigger and want something with which they can apply pressure to paper without breaking.

Graphite is fade proof and waterproof. Okay, so it’s not rub-proof, But it’s great for writing in extreme weather conditions. You know that thing that’s been going around about how during the great race to space, the Americans spent millions of dollars developing a pen that writes in zero-gravity, and the Russians just used a pencils? Okay, that’s been debunked. But, if it’s pouring rain and you’re out in the field with a Rite-in-the-Rain notepad, you’re golden.

There are a lot of cool, interesting pencils out there. Just google “Blackwing 602” and read the story of the most famous pencil in the world. Read up on bullet pencils. Go watch the Yikes! pencil commercial on YouTube. Then you tell me pencils are boring. There is a such a wide world of visually and historically appealing pencils than the jaundiced, yellow-washed aisle at Walgreens where you might otherwise pick up your graphite.

Pencils for (almost) any occasion

I’m biased, of course. I have a blog and a podcast about pencils. But I don’t have stars in my eyes — I know perfectly well there are situations when a pencil isn’t appropriate. But fountain pens? Typewriters? Even Markdown text editors like I’m using to compose this article? Plenty of situations aren’t ideal for those, either.

I’m not here to advocate that you switch to pencils and only to pencils. But think about how you can fit it into your workflow. Do you make a lot of lists or put entries in your Hobonichi planner? Pencils are perfect.

While my old Esterbrook (and a few other choice fountain pens) are fun to use, and great to whip out on occasion to impress clients, the humble wooden pencil will always remain the most flexible and useful tool in my drawer.

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Andy Welfle blogs about wooden pencils at Woodclinched, co-hosts Erasable, a podcast with other pencil enthusiasts and sometimes just likes to make GIFs. Find him on Twitter @awelfle or App.net @andyw.