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You are here: Home / Calligraphy / Worksheets / 8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet)

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet)

March 10, 2017 by Lindsey Bugbee 112 Comments
Filed Under: Everyday Skills, Free Printables, Printable Goodies, Tutorials, Worksheets Tagged With: freebie, letters, printable, tutorial, video

The TPK blog focuses a lot on calligraphy, which is the art of making beautiful letter formations (usually with a dip pen). Thus far, though, I’ve never touched on everyday handwriting! In this post, you’ll learn eight tips for creating nice handwritten notes with the pen of your choice. You can also download a free worksheet to improve your cursive handwriting!

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8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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 …

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

… Or you can doodle a few “telephone wires” or similar forms.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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!

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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.

Elegant and Effective Letter Writing Tips | The Postman's Knock

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.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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).

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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.

8 Tips to Improve Your Handwriting (Plus a Free Worksheet) | The Postman's Knock

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,

Lindsey's Signature | The Postman's Knock

Filed Under: Everyday Skills, Free Printables, Printable Goodies, Tutorials, Worksheets Tagged With: freebie, letters, printable, tutorial, video
*This post contains affiliate links to Amazon

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Welcome to The Postman’s Knock

I'm Lindsey Bugbee

designer + illustrator + calligrapher

The Postman's Knock is a blog focused on teaching creative techniques and offering guides to learning modern calligraphy and illustration. I hope you enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it!

If you are new to calligraphy, check out the Beginner's Guide to Modern Calligraphy!

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112 Comments

Leave a Comment

  1. Mary Johnson says

    February 13, 2019 at 6:37 pm

    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.

    Reply
  2. Carla says

    February 13, 2019 at 4:38 pm

    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. 😉

    Reply
  3. Karen Parkin-Demmons says

    February 13, 2019 at 9:05 am

    Thank you for explaining the lettering in detail. I find practicing letter styles and techniques very relaxing.

    Reply
  4. moshfiqur says

    January 27, 2019 at 6:57 pm

    it looks very helpful thanks for the teaching. sorry that i couldnot found the download link for practice sheet. can you help me please?

    Reply
  5. Pujad das says

    January 14, 2019 at 2:14 am

    wow!
    Great idea for improving handwriting.

    Reply
  6. GAYATHRI S says

    January 9, 2019 at 3:26 am

    Can we practice calligraphy using ordinary pens??

    Reply
    • Lindsey Bugbee says

      January 27, 2019 at 1:40 pm

      Sure! Check out this article. 🙂

      Reply
  7. GAYATHRI S says

    January 9, 2019 at 3:25 am

    Thanku so much for the advice and suggestions you put up.I will try to follow this.!!!!!

    Reply
  8. Eunice says

    December 26, 2018 at 12:51 pm

    Thank you for your advice! I can’t wait to use this worksheet!

    Reply
  9. Anna says

    December 10, 2018 at 7:05 pm

    I always learn something new when I read your blog! Thank you for clear and informative posts!

    Reply
  10. Devendra says

    October 31, 2018 at 8:03 am

    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.

    Reply
    • Devendra says

      October 31, 2018 at 8:05 am

      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.

      Reply
  11. Hgb says

    October 28, 2018 at 9:20 am

    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.

    Reply
    • Lindsey Bugbee says

      October 29, 2018 at 12:08 am

      Thanks! 😀

      Reply
  12. Terry says

    October 22, 2018 at 6:43 pm

    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?

    Reply
  13. Md ifran says

    October 15, 2018 at 4:32 pm

    Thanks for giving this post.it helps a lot

    Reply
  14. Mark says

    September 29, 2018 at 3:25 am

    I want to learn how to write

    Reply
    • Lindsey Bugbee says

      October 1, 2018 at 12:31 am

      I hope the blog helps you 🙂

      Reply
  15. Shreyansh Gautam says

    August 26, 2018 at 6:33 am

    Very good

    Reply
    • Lindsey Bugbee says

      August 26, 2018 at 10:34 pm

      Thank you!

      Reply
  16. Panagiotis says

    August 23, 2018 at 7:50 am

    Congrats very interesting blog keep up the good work.

    Reply
    • Lindsey Bugbee says

      August 23, 2018 at 10:16 pm

      Thanks for reading! 🙂

      Reply
  17. life is nothing says

    August 20, 2018 at 3:20 pm

    ummm idk why im here maybe cause of my teacher

    Reply
  18. Mayra says

    August 16, 2018 at 9:10 am

    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.

    Reply
    • Lindsey Bugbee says

      August 16, 2018 at 11:56 pm

      Me too! It’s amazing how tiny adjustments like simply rotating your paper are able to change the way you write! 🙂

      Reply
  19. Naim says

    August 8, 2018 at 1:24 am

    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.

    Reply
  20. Vanessa says

    July 21, 2018 at 6:57 am

    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.

    Reply
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