The back to school season is as good a time of the year as any to re-evaluate your handwriting. A recent op-ed in the New York Times challenged writers to stop mumbling on the page and drop the loopy cursive letters of the Palmer method or Zaner-Bloser style we were taught at small school desks with chunky pencils.
The new preferred style is Italic, in which letters do not always have to be joined. It's a matter of comfort and personal choice. The success of handwriting is its legibility. Oh, and closing the gaps on the tops of your letters, that's the part we read.
Click here for the NYT piece and a chance to try Italic.
For extra credit, take a free Italic handwriting lesson online here from studioarts.net.
Those interested in handwriting should also keep aware of the forthcoming self-instructional software for learning Italic handwriting:
ReplyDeleteBetterLetters for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which has a pre-release web-site at
http://www.deeppocketseries.com/Better_Letters.html .
The software will appear for sale in Apple's application store later this year (probably later this month), but for now you can go to the above web-site to keep informed. (The fairly minimal information now there will increase as the release date approaches; also, the site encourages you to subscribe to the firm's electronic newsletter, which will provide you with additional information before and during the product's launch.)
The company providing the BetterLetters program -- Deep Pocket Series -- offers this software as part of its line of medical software, in order to help MDs improve their handwriting (although the company owner -- Harvey Castro, MD of Lantana, Texas -- believes that non-physicians will also benefit from this particular product).
I designed BetterLetters at Dr. Castro's request when he saw a need to improve on an earlier (non-Italic) handwriting instruction product that he had already offered. In addition to using a simpler and less accident-prone style of handwriting (Italic) for its letter examples, BetterLetters will include such useful extras as a list of suggested words for practice (containing all letter-combinations which occur in the English language), essays and audio on various handwriting techniques and practice approaches, and a built-in sketchpad facilitating independent practice and application of handwriting skills.
Kate Gladstone -- Handwriting Repair handwriting improvement consultancy
518/482-6763 -- 6-B Weis Road, Albany, NY 12208
HandwritingThatWorks.com