People often assume that calligraphy and handwriting are synonymous, but they’re not. In general, calligraphy is comprised of stylized, embellished letters — it’s more art than writing, really. Conversely, handwriting refers to the style and technique that you use to jot things down day to day. Handwriting needs to be quicker and more practical than calligraphy. While everyone has their own personal handwriting style, there’s always room for improvement! In this post, you’ll find eight tips to help you improve your handwriting.
1. Use a Nice Pen
The adjective “nice” is subjective — you’ll have to hunt to find the pen that works for you! My choice of pen for everyday writing is the Pilot G2 05 because of the stroke width, the grip, and the jet black ink. I also like that it’s so responsive; I don’t have to exert a lot of pressure on the pen to ensure consistent ink flow.
You can find thousands of pens on the market, so I encourage you to shop around. Pick up a pen here and there, and give it a try! It doesn’t matter if you prefer gel pens, fountain pens, ballpoint pens … whatever you connect with the best is perfect.
2. Maintain a Relaxed Grip
A nice, relaxed grip is one of the main things that will improve your handwriting. A “relaxed grip” means that none of the muscles in your hand are overly flexed, and your fingernails shouldn’t be white from squeezing the pen’s barrel.
Many people tend to clutch the pen, which will result in an achy hand after a few minutes of writing. We often clutch without realizing we’re doing it, so try to mentally check yourself every few minutes to make sure you’re still holding the pen comfortably.
3. Start with Drills
Whether you plan on writing in cursive or print, it can be difficult to form nice letters without warming up. Doing a couple of simple drills will help you to write clear, confident characters. You can use the Drills section of the Improve Your Cursive Worksheet …
… Or you can doodle a few “telephone wires” or similar forms.
Whatever gets your hand used to writing for the day will be perfect!
4. Experiment with Paper Rotations
As children, we are generally taught to keep our paper in a vertical position in front of us. If that works for you, great! If not, feel free to experiment with different paper rotations. Keeping the paper at a certain angle can go a long way in helping you to improve your handwriting!
Most right-handed people are fine with the traditional vertical paper position … but I’m not one of them. I have always found it easier to write — particularly in cursive, which is my style of choice — when my paper is rotated 90 degrees. I’m not kidding: you can watch this super-short video to see!
Paper rotation is a personal thing, so I encourage you to try all sorts of different angles. Right-handed people should start at the vertical position, and rotate the paper to the left until writing feels easy and comfortable. Left-handed people should start at the vertical position, and rotate the paper to the right.
5. Practice with a Worksheet
If you want a structured way to improve your handwriting, I made a free worksheet for you! It’s three pages long and focuses on cursive writing — you can download it by clicking here. Basically, the worksheet takes you through drills, capital and lowercase letters, words, and sentences.
The cursive writing featured in the worksheet set isn’t any sort of formal style. Instead, it focuses on the letterforms that I, personally, use in everyday cursive handwriting. Those letters are easy to create, and they connect to each other beautifully to make for quick writing.
If you would prefer to practice with a book, there are many options available! I’m particularly intrigued by Great Literature Copywork and the Advanced Cursive Handwriting Practice Workbook for Teens (which I would absolutely use as an adult).
6. Sneak in Practice When You Can
Just like anything else, you can improve your handwriting with use. The more you write using good habits and implementing styles that appeal to you, the better your handwriting will get.
You can get practice through a number of ways — for example, you might send someone a hand-written letter in place of an email or text. If you have the time and interest, you can start writing in a journal every night. Entries don’t have to be long; they can be short accounts of how your day went!
7. Write on Lined Paper or Use a Template
Writing nice, even words are a big shortcut to neat handwriting! If you want to write a letter to someone, you can put a piece of notebook paper under printer paper. More than likely, you’ll be able to see the notebook paper lines through the printer paper, and you can use those lines as guidelines for even writing. Or, if you don’t mind the lines, you can write someone a letter directly on notebook paper.
This point reminds me of another tip: always use a “padding” piece of paper. No matter what piece of paper you’re writing on, it should always have another piece of paper under it. For some reason, the slightly cushier surface provided by two pieces of paper makes it easier for all pens to write!
8. Embrace Your Personal Style
Handwriting is a very fluid, personal thing that is always evolving. It’s not like calligraphy, where you more or less write the same every time. Instead, you’ll have neat days, and you’ll have not-so-neat days (like the notes pictured below).
No matter how your handwriting looks, it is a wonderful reflection of you and your personality. That’s why people love receiving handwritten notes: they represent a piece of you! So, don’t get too hung up on a radical change: instead, focus on making clearly formed letters that are easy to read.
I hope that you enjoyed this post, and that it inspires you to ditch the keyboard and write something by hand this weekend! Don’t forget that you can download the Improve Your Cursive Worksheet for free if you want a cursive refresher. It’s not a complicated little worksheet, and it should be helpful!
Thanks very, very much for reading TPK, and enjoy the rest of your day!
Warmly,
Thanks Lindsey, I’m 14 and my handwriting is barely readable so the templates you gave should help a lot, thanks a bunch.
You’re welcome, Jason! I hope they help 🙂
Great tips!
Thanks, John! I hope you find they help.
Lindsey, Thanks for the 90 degree tip…this really does help my every day handwriting!
No problem, Kalani! That’s a tip I find you wouldn’t often think of but helps tremendously!
Thanks for the article, Your article helps to improve the handwriting and the communication also for the students.
You’re welcome, Nihal! I am glad to hear it 🙂
I appreciate your blog very much. I enjoy having the practice sheets and do my best to follow them to improve my writing. Also, the content of your posts are so helpful even though I unable to Patrice in classes. Thank you so much.
this post was very helpful to read.I am relay happy to read this article. thanks for it.
Thank you, Lynda! Your support means a lot. I love getting great comments like this.
What a shame that cursive handwriting is not taught nearly as much in the schools. As a high school teacher I often saw kids who could not read or write in cursive.
I also think this it’s too bad. I think it’s great to learn cursive and fundamental to basic handwriting skills!
Planning to work on this myself, but hoping my teenager will be working with me. She loves art and would love to write beautiful calligraphy so I’m hoping to lure her in. 😉
I hope she works on it too! Thanks, Carla 🙂
Thank you for explaining the lettering in detail. I find practicing letter styles and techniques very relaxing.
You’re welcome, Karen! I find it relaxing too–I’m glad you do!
it looks very helpful thanks for the teaching. sorry that i couldnot found the download link for practice sheet. can you help me please?
You can find it here: https://thepostmansknock.com/catalog/improve-cursive-worksheet-set/
Hope it helps out!!
wow!
Great idea for improving handwriting.
Thanks, Pujad! I hope it helps.
Can we practice calligraphy using ordinary pens??
Sure! Check out this article. 🙂
my finger is not good routed on writing paper and not good grip of pen so how can i do
Thanku so much for the advice and suggestions you put up.I will try to follow this.!!!!!
You’re welcome! I do hope you give it a try.
Thank you for your advice! I can’t wait to use this worksheet!
You’re welcome, Eunice!
I always learn something new when I read your blog! Thank you for clear and informative posts!
I’m glad you love the material I put out 🙂 You’re so welcome, Anna.
I am too interested to learn calligraphy ,but I do not get branded or imported pen ,paper and other materials which is releted to calligraphy. How can I get all these things.
I am too interested to learn calligraphy ,but I do not get branded or imported pen ,paper and other materials which is releted to calligraphy. How can I get all these things.
Cool. Make sure to also check out http://www.handspeaks.com/2018/05/26/copy-handwriting-of-someone-and-lose-yourself/ it’s such a cool vlog.
Thanks! 😀
How can I determine if I’m holding a pen/pencil incorrectly? My handwriting is decent (or was until I started trying to write “correctly”) but the problem is that my hand cramps quickly – presumably because I don’t write by hand often enough (or so I thought until recently) but likely also because I use my hand and fingers and not my shoulder and forearm. In my attempt to correct this latter problem I’ve also changed my grip, such that the eraser-end rests on or above the knuckle rather than on the web close to my thumb. That combined with attempting to use my shoulder muscles has resulted in an oft-atrocious scrawl (which improves only when I go back to using my wrist and fingers), but I’ve refused to go completely back to the “old” method. Now I’m wondering if I should have kept my original grip but focused on using the larger muscles, if this combination is even possible. Does it matter where the upper end of the pencil rests (and points), or should the “business” end be the sole focus?
Thanks for giving this post.it helps a lot
You’re so welcome!
I want to learn how to write
I hope the blog helps you 🙂
Very good
Thank you!
Congrats very interesting blog keep up the good work.
Thanks for reading! 🙂
ummm idk why im here maybe cause of my teacher
Haha! Well I’m glad you found it!
I write with my paper at almost a 90 degree angle as well! It’s just easier for me. When the paper is vertical, I usually write messier.
Me too! It’s amazing how tiny adjustments like simply rotating your paper are able to change the way you write! 🙂
hi
this is naim here from linguahome the home of languages i have gone through caligraphy site that inspired me a lot and decided to learn so that i could teach my students . fabulous !
wishing you the best of luck in further future.
Naim, I am so glad you found inspiration in my page! Thank you for sharing it with your students, too!
This is actually an excellent idea for improving my handwriting. Thank you for being ever so kind to share these freebies and goodies with us.
You’re welcome, Vanessa! I’m glad you get so much out of them 🙂