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Post by Catida on Dec 13, 2020 20:11:28 GMT
Since becoming interested in fountain pens I have also started to search info about the right/best way of holding the pen. This, in turn, has lead me to read about improving ones handwriting. There seems to be so many methods, and many opinions about the "right" grip, angle of the pen, how you should place your arm, how to tilt your paper etc! Only thing that seems clear is what I'm used to doing is wrong
Have you, in your adult life, systematically tried to improve your handwriting, or change the way you hold the pen? How? Have you made progress? Do you practice, how?
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Post by davidv on Dec 13, 2020 20:55:43 GMT
Yes. I have changed both my pen grip and my handwriting as an adult.
I changed my grip first after getting into fountain pens, and then changed my handwriting style and modified my grip again later. I’m of the opinion that there isn’t a true right way to do these things. There have been many opinions about hand writing styles over time. I suppose a certain way could be truly right for a given method. But anyways...
In my original grip, I held the pen with my thumb curled around the front of the pen. The top of the pen would point up and to the right, but not at all backwards. This grip was good for pushing down hard on the page and I still use it if I need to use ballpoint pens.
After fountain pens I switched to having my thumb and 2 first fingers meet together, with the back of the pen pointing toward my right shoulder.
Later I modified my hand writing after the model in the book Write Now, by Getty and Dubay. In the process I altered my grip again, such that I hold the pen at a bit more vertical of an angle and the back of the pen points backwards and to the right, but would pass a fair bit to the right of my shoulder.
It took maybe a month to change my writing over to the way I do it now. So I practiced a fair bit then, during which time I only wrote this new way. Now I have trouble writing certain letters the way I used to as it no longer feels natural. For a while I tried to stay pretty true to the model I was following, but then just stopped worrying about that and let my writing morph into something that was my own.
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Post by ginny on Dec 13, 2020 22:57:39 GMT
No, I haven't done that as an adult. I have written with a fountain pen for several decades - I think since grade 2 in elementary school when we were allowed to use fountain pens as opposed to pencils - and while I went to school, I changed my handwriting several times. But ever since I finished school in the mid 80s, I have pretty much been writing the same way. I use biros at work and when I have to jot down notes at home (like, say, a shopping list), and my handwriting looks less tidy then, but for letters and my journal, it's always been fountain pens. I'd say my handwriting is quite legible, and it always has been.
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Post by although on Dec 13, 2020 23:15:08 GMT
I use a shallower angle when using fountain pens. For ball pens, I still use a rather steep angle to the paper. I go back and forth as necessary. I added the shallower angle when I started using fountain pens as a young man.
In the past few years, I have modified a few letters. I've added some fancier capitals, and improved my lowercase r's.
I have wondered about the whole write with your arm, not your fingers thing that is presumably better for caligraphy. I've toyed with that, and it's a hot mess. I very much use my fingers to form most of the letters. That being said, my hand writing is still pretty rubbish...
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Post by ole on Dec 14, 2020 2:00:45 GMT
I am quite confident that my grip is right. Although when I occasionally see pictures of people demonstrating pen grip I just shake my head. Presumably it's right for them. lol I've taught a lot of technique for musical instruments over the years and the principles of controlled finger movement are always the same. However, I understand that some people like to write with their arm. Good for them, but the concept sounds bizarre to me. Nevertheless, if you are able to write to your satisfaction regarding speed and/or legibility (or some other criteria deemed important) without stress, then I guess it's just fine. Lately I've been practicing my writing. (Not my grip.) This is for several reasons. I want to write more clearly and faster. It seems my writing has deteriorated a lot in the last year or two because of nerve and muscle problems, especially with frozen fingers, so I'm hoping to counter that a little. When I started writing a lot some months ago, I decided that it didn't matter what it looked like, messy is fine, as long as it was legible - and it generally is very much so. But I do think that I can get it reasonably neat with a bit of practice, and I'd prefer that. I use my own font because I don't think hand writing is commonly very legible. The font was pretty much set many years ago, but lately I thought, with my testing of pens (nibs), ink, and paper, I could just as well write the alphabet and other symbols over and over again to cement the font and my interpretation of it. So that's what I've been doing. Like I said, it's pretty much set, but somehow I got a bee in my bonnet about having an ampersand, which I'd never really tried to write before. I think I got a good one. So, pages and pages, mostly alphabets, written in different inks on different papers is what you see on my living room table. Being a bachelor now, I really need to invite some people over for dinner so I can get that table cleared.
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Post by penguy on Dec 14, 2020 2:37:33 GMT
I guess you would say I use the tripod grip. The way I hold the pen is determined by the nib to a certain extent. When I use a stub or cursive italic nib I hold the pen so the nib is at about a 45˚ angle to the line I am writing on which gives me the thick-thin line quality. I could hold the pen so the line I am writing on and the nib are parallel but I don't like the scrip that result as much. When I use a flex nib I hold the pen at a 45˚angle or slightly less. Each nib seems to have a sweet spot and so you may need to adjust the angle depending on each pen's nib.
I do practice my handwriting a bit, usually it is more doodling than actually practicing. I have three scripts that I use, the Palmer method which is what I learned in school...but I hate their capitals so have borrowed from other scripts, I found an Italian hand from 1520 in a little book of script styles and sometimes have fun using it, then I found the script style taught to French students and that has lots of open loops and the capitals are quite different and sometimes try that. I used the French elementary students script in my last letter to mistero, it will be fun finding out what grade I will receive on my attempt! The one problem I have is when I switch script styles it takes a while to get in the swing of things, without reverting to the letters from the script style I had been using just before. Does anyone else have multiple script styles that they use.
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Post by davidv on Dec 14, 2020 3:28:15 GMT
I have wondered about the whole write with your arm, not your fingers thing that is presumably better for calligraphy. I've toyed with that, and it's a hot mess. I very much use my fingers to form most of the letters. That being said, my hand writing is still pretty rubbish...
Lloyd Reynolds (an influential Italic Calligraphy teacher and handwriting advocate) didn't like arm movement. For him, handwriting was more of a wrist and fingers thing. I've decided to listen to him and have no desire to go down the whole arm movement thing.
I would guess that arm movement might have been more useful when people were using pressure get line variation as part of regular writing. I try to write with the lightest pressure possible, so I'm really not doing the same thing. When I write, my fingers only ever get tired if I grip a pen too tightly. When I practice keeping the grip light, there's no fatigue.
As for calligraphy, I think arm-only (or arm mostly) movement is really only a thing for pointed pen (put am willing to be corrected on this; I don't know much about pointed pen calligraphy). I've not heard it discussed as a thing in broad-edge calligraphy circles.
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Post by stompie on Dec 14, 2020 10:20:15 GMT
The correct grip helps you to write a lot longer as there is less strain. With dip pens, an incorrect grip will haver you chewing through sheets of paper especially the sharper nibs which require a very light hold. Whole arm movement is more for extreme flourishing which you will find impossible to do if you just use your wrist and fingers. I doodle more than practice, in that I have no set practice routine I follow. That said, I doodle a lot
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Post by sails on Dec 14, 2020 13:48:17 GMT
Since becoming interested in fountain pens I have also started to search info about the right/best way of holding the pen. This, in turn, has lead me to read about improving ones handwriting. There seems to be so many methods, and many opinions about the "right" grip, angle of the pen, how you should place your arm, how to tilt your paper etc! Only thing that seems clear is what I'm used to doing is wrong
Have you, in your adult life, systematically tried to improve your handwriting, or change the way you hold the pen? How? Have you made progress? Do you practice, how?
As a southpaw child with horrendous handwriting, I was forced to stay after school, where they tried to get me to switch to right-handed writing.
Didn't work.
As an adult, after discovering fountain pens, I tried to change both my grip, AND write 'from the shoulder.'
Keh.
What did work was practicing (by tracing the letters at first) a form of business hand. And remembering to slow down, slant consistently, and space words far enough apart for easy reading. So yeah, that part worked.
Oddly enough, I can write with my right hand if I HAVE to.
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Post by distractedmom on Dec 14, 2020 15:12:51 GMT
I can write left-handed if necessary sails, as I broke my arm the summer I was 11 and spent 6 weeks writing and drawing with my left hand. I wonder how many of us *can* write with our non-dominant hands if necessary. My handwriting was terrible as a child, until an 8th-grade English teacher assigned us daily practice. We had to turn in the practice sheets at the end of each 9 weeks. I never practiced daily; I always did all 45 sheets the night before they were due. That intense work altered my penmanship, as her criteria was that your letters resembled hers. Recently, I have picked up a couple of hand lettering books to play around with faux calligraphy.
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Post by radellaf on Dec 14, 2020 15:56:04 GMT
I have. I always paid attention to handwriting. In college I had to write quickly so I (in the course of furious note-taking) adapted basic unjoined letters into a slanted form with a few inconsistent joins (more it was just using light pressure and lifting the pen barely off the paper). Where I had trouble with certain letters, I tried to change how I wrote those. Making a v not look like a u is one I remember. I also did something for fun: making the "a" look like a typewriter a, with the part on top hooking back to the left. Otherwise, I was loosely using the Verdana font as a model, with some added slant.
I started practicing official Italic handwriting using the "Write Now" book by Betty-Dubay. The main goal was to adapt to fountain pen nibs that were much wider than I liked. Back in the late 1990s, a European F was about as fine as you could get. M was more common. The Waterman Phileas M was so wet it might was well have been a B. I was going more for legibility than speed since, at that point, I'd graduated and was no longer melting pen-points with pages of fast writing keeping up with professors. For engineering classes I was happy with a 0.3mm pencil for diagrams and text within diagrams and other text, plus equations. Other classes it was words, words, words. It worked. I like my new writing. I did practice some of the joined letters, but I just don't love the look. Counter to their purpose, I think joined letters look best when done slowly and carefully. I've been wanting to practice that more. I got the 3rd edition of Write Now with that intention. I need to scan it, if the practice pages are different than the ones I scanned back in 1997. My letter forms are good but a little sloppy. Spacing is something else I want to improve, and that's just a matter of some simple exercises that I just need to actually do instead of just intending-to-do them for 10 years.
Arm vs hand. I like to use some arm. Sorta like a plotter, I'll use arm for the forward-back axis and hand/wrist for left-right. A bit. I'm usually not writing in a position that makes that easy. Usually my elbow is anchored. But, if I'm at a desk & chair that's positioned better, I'll use a good bit of arm motion and find it helps my hand do less work. Also, it makes the writing look a little different, so good for variety. Most of my letter writing is in a kinda cramped spot to the left of my keyboard, often with the paper on the mousepad. There's just too much stuff to get enough clear surface. I can make a wider area, but the pens and monitor limit the depth. I could write on the kitchen table or at work. Lots of desk space there.
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Post by vertolive on Dec 15, 2020 3:06:46 GMT
As a “Do It Yourself Brain Experiment”, I taught myself to print with my left (non-dominant) hand. It took forever, was tremendously irritating, but I managed it and still noodle around with it a bit.
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Post by penguy on Dec 15, 2020 17:03:32 GMT
I am right handed and it seems that the right hand has a certain way of doing things, or the hand brain connections are more well established. I have written with my left hand but no one could say anything good about my penmanship. When I was teaching sometimes when no one was around I would write backwards (right to left) with my left hand and it wasn't too bad, but that was whole arm movement. Perhaps being a printmaker writing backwards was easier. Drawing with the non-dominant hand can result in some interesting drawings, actually some pretty good drawings, I think it is because you really have to concentrate and then that right hand way of always doing something doesn't come into play. I think that using your non-dominant hand is good in that it perhaps makes a right brain/left brain connection, besides for some reason you might find yourself unable to use your dominant hand! Has anyone read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards?
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Post by richila on Dec 15, 2020 19:15:44 GMT
I didn't change my grip, but I did change my handwriting from a hodgepodge to a variation on a French script that I found and practiced daily until it became the way that I write.
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Post by although on Dec 15, 2020 20:07:53 GMT
If I was a lefty, I think I would take up mirror writing. All the righties would just have to figure it out!
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