Southpaw learning to write

2009-05-19T07:34:00.000-07:00

Well, I've just finished my first notebook. 72 sheets, 144 pages full of practice.
It feels good to have that one behind me; writing in a notebook is a good idea, as it allows you to see your progress whenever you think you aren't making any :)

The notebook I just finished had squares on the paper, I'm going to start a lined one now. I guess that less guides will fore me to pay more attention to the evenness of my writing.

I'm about one third through copying Romeo & Juliet now. I figure I'll copy the entire play in cursive writing, and then I'll start longhand. Hopefully in a month or two...

2009-05-02T17:26:00.000-07:00

So I've already mentioned that I started copying a Shakespeare play, Romeo & Juliet. I figure if I am writing all the time I might as well learn something in the process, and I've never actually read this play.
So far it proves quite exciting, I didn't know Shakespeare could prove such an entertaining read. I must constantly restrain myself from reading forward, as the writing obviously still goes quite slow.
I'm still doing one page of figures per day though, I am convinced it greatly helps my writing.

On the fountain pen front, I did some great finds. Some worth mentioning: a vintage Parker Duofold and Miller 664 for 2 eur total, I restored and cleaned both and they now look and write great. A vintage Shaeffer triumph and Mabie-todd swan, for which I am waiting for some replacement pieces.
Also one modern pen, a Shaeffer Valor that was simply too good a deal to pass up...

2009-04-26T09:05:00.001-07:00

It's been almost 2 weeks since my last post... Mayor reason is that I've been to Sweden with my girlfriend to arrange everything for out upcoming wedding there.
I've found a few interesting fountain pens in a flea market (or 'loppis' as they call them), but sadly we didn't have any time for more. I think when we go back in June there will be more time, so I hope to do some more nice finds.
What I found now was a 1930s parker duofold, made by penol under licence for parker, and a very nice miller pen from the same era (also Danish). I paid 1 eur for both, so I think I did a good deal there :)
Both need news sacs (they have rubber bladders on the inside to hold the ink, they had hardened), but they are readily available on the internet.

I'm still doing my exercises every day. I've switched in the mean time to 1 page of figures per day, plus copying a few page's worth of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. There is some good improvement in my handwriting already, though I still haven't made the switch to cursive writing and don't tend to do so for a while. I just want to master printing first, and only then make the next step.

I'll post some pictures of my progress later, as right now the table on which my material resides is being used by my girlfriend who is making wedding invitations :)

2009-04-13T06:41:00.000-07:00

I've switched my practice to one A4 page of figures per day, plus as much of the alphabet as I can. On average, I'm writing about 4 A4 pages per day. Also, I've reduced the size of the figures and letters by half.
There are still some letters I am having trouble with (cursive e, the s, the a,...), so I'm going to stick to this regime until they are all fluently.
Here are some more images of my progress:

The ink color is Caran d'ache amazon green by the way. I love it.

Some more links

2009-04-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

I'm slowly starting to look at cursive handwriting. As you know, I started out with capitals, and currently I mix my exercises between figures (yes, I still do those), capitals and manuscript.

I'm happy with my progress, I will post a few pictures later on.
But for now, here are some links toways material for cursive handwriting:
http://www.usu.edu/teachall/text/langart/programs/hwrkshts.htm

http://www.cep.pdx.edu/titles/italic_series/excerpts.shtml

http://www.tooter4kids.com/Preschool/teaching_your_child_to_write.htm#Worksheets1

handwriting without tears

2009-04-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

quick link to a very interesting site about handwriting, both left- and right-handed:

handwriting without tears

be sure to check out their training program...

2009-04-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Here you have a prime example of what can happen when you are left-handed:

I wrote all those Y's without even realizing they were mirrored. I don't have much problems with being left handed asides from the occasional glitch. I do have serious issues telling left from right, and have almost caused a few accidents because of that in my life, but I don't know if that is due to my left-handedness.

Furthermore more practice, I've decided to start making smaller capital letters.

As you can see I found a very nice pink ink somewhere in the storageroom, it had dried a bit after sitting there for 15 years or so, but my nice friends at FountainPenNetwork (FPN) showed me how to revive it.

2009-04-07T14:13:00.001-07:00

No practice today or yesterday. I should have the time tomorrow. I invested some time in cleaning today, as I am a little frustrated that I have lost a fountain pen. I know it's around here somewhere, but it eludes me...

2009-04-04T13:57:00.000-07:00

I was told I should make shorter posts, so here you have it, a shorter post :)

I received and old Waterman pen today from my father, the one I remember him using when I was a child. It is all clogged up with dried ink, will clean it and see if I can get it to write without having it restored by someone more knowledgeable...

progress♦

2009-04-04T03:16:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a little over a week now, and I've been practicing faithfully every day. Some of these practice sessions have been at work, and while I'm sure some of my coworkers have noticed me doing it, none have made any remark on it so far. This probably means they think I am a little bit strange but politely don't mention it :)
Anyhow, there is definite progress on 3 fronts:
1) I can keep at it much longer without getting cramped. I wrote over 4 A4 pages yesterday, without cramp

2) The quality of my figures and capital letters has definitively improved. Nowhere near perfect yet, but that's to be expected

3) I have found the pen position most comfortable for me
I'm holding the pen between thumb and index finger, with it resting on the knukle of my middle finger. This position allows me to hold the pen comfortable, and makes it very hard to write with finger movement, which seems to me is what I want to accomplish.

This is what it looks like with my thumb lifted:

I've started with some new figures, as I notice that I need a lot of practice with horizontal lines. It also makes practicing a bit more varied, which is fun.

When I first started exercising to improve my handwriting last week, the least you can say was that my girlfriend was a bit skeptical. She thought what I was doing was strange, and I don't think she saw the need for it. However, now it seems that she is encouraging me, and yesterday she said that some of my capital letters look better than they used to now already. She also commented that the Waterman Havana brown is cool, I might make a fountain pen adapt out of her yet!

Talking about fountain pens, I made a very nice acquisition this week that I am rather happy with. I was looking on the Belgian EBay for fountain pens, when I stumbled upon a guy listing a mont blanc bohéme doué in mint condition. The object had 0 bids, it was only available to Belgium and he had forgotten to mention 'Mont Blanc' in the title, listing the pen only as 'Fountain Pen Boheme'. His minimal price was VERY reasonable.

So I looked up some information on how to spot a fake Mont Blanc, and with this information I emailed him a few questions, to which he responded in a prompt way. His answers satisfied the criteria, I waited until the last minute to bid his minimum price and... now it's mine! No need to say that I am quite happy :)

While I don't feel it writes any better than some of my much cheaper fountain pens (which might very well be because I am not experienced enough to know the difference), I think it is a very cool and elegant piece of technology. It has a retractable nib; you unscrew the cap, screw it on the end of the pen, and this activates a mechanism that brings the nib out. It only works with cartridges, but that is fine with me. Inserting the cartridges is also quite cool. The cap at the end clicks open and you can insert a cartridge there. I didn't know about that, and I actually think the seller had a small crisis when I tried to unscrew it like a normal cartridge pen when I went to get it :)

leftie still going strong

2009-03-30T04:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I have been practicing faithfully every day, and honestly, even in this short period I think there is some apparant improvement. Maybe what I am putting on paper isn't really looking any better but I have found a pretty comfortable position for my arm and hand, and I understand some of the remarks that are made better.

One of the rules I read is that you should put the piece of paper you are writing on at a 45 degree angle (clockwise), and that the paper should be entirely to the left of your center line. And indeed, I have experienced that in this way you can write an entire line pretty fluently without once lifting your arm (look at the lines of ellipses on the pictures).

Here are some pictures of the sheets of paper I filled. I try to fill one piece with figures and one with the capital letters A,B,C and D every day.

As you can see, I mark the date on them every day, and I bought a big notebook to put them in. That way, I can look back and hopefully see some progress.

As a sidenote, I bought some Waterman havana brown ink for my Lamy 2000, and I think the colour looks surprisingly nice. Here is an example that should give you an idea:

The very first steps

2009-03-26T01:52:00.000-07:00

For a while now, I have been a fountain pen adapt. I have always liked the idea of writing with a fountain pen, it has a certain flair to it that cannot be matched by any ballpoint, pencil, or other writing aid.
I am 34 years old and thus I grew up in an age where school teachers still obliged everyone to write with a fountain pen; I went through my fair share of Pelikan and other schoolpens, destroying them with my teeth as children tend to do. Since then, I've never really liked writing with a ballpoint pen, as I find it slides over the paper too easily.

That might be a strange observation for most of you as right-handed people usually draw their pen over the paper. I, however, am a leftie, and as such I push my pen over the paper. Being left-handed brings with it all kinds of complications when writing, starting with the fact that not all right-handed fountain pens are suitable for left-handed people, resulting in scratching, the pen getting stuck in the paper, etc.
Another important complication that lefties have with fountain pens when writing our western left-to-right script is that you tend to smear the ink. Your hand passes over it before the ink has a chance to dry, resulting in smudges on the paper and ink on your hand. I remember going home from grade school with the entire side of my left hand covered in ink, pencil or paint more than once.

I believe than an additional factor that influences my writing is that my early grade school teachers tried to make me write with my right hand for a while. This of course failed, so they accepted me writing with my left hand soon enough, but it always kept me a little behind versus my classmates, plus my teachers had no idea that left-handed people need to learn to write in a different way.

I don't really know where this explanation is going, but I know what the conclusion is: I think my handwriting is ugly. My letters are uneven, and I can't even write in a straight line. Here is an example of my writing, the first two lines being writting in a normal way, the second two while trying to write as cleanly as possible:

Now, I am by no means an accomplished fountain pen collector, but I do own a few of them and I recently bought a new one, with a very specific goal in mind: signing my marriage certificate. It's a bit more upmarket than my other fountain pens, made by S.T. dupont, with platinum nib and finishing; quite appropriate to sign a marriage certificate for me.

This 'aquisition' process set me thinking about my writing, and I decided to do some research on the subject of handwriting, leading me to a wealth of information and some insights that were quite astonishing to me: I have been writing incorrectly for decades, using the wrong muscles and with my hand in the wrong position.

Hand position

When writing, my hand is in a position called "the hook". It is a position where the pen is parallell to the wrist, and is adapted by many left-handed people as it avoids your hand smudging the ink before it dries:

The correct writing position however, looks like this:

Sitting position

When I am sitting at my desk, I sit slumped a bit forward, leaning on my desk. This prevents the correct writing position, one should sit with a straight back. This apparently does not only help with writing, but also in preventing back injuries and muscle strains.

Muscle groups

When I write, my arm, palm and hand stay perfectly still and my fingers to all the writing. From time to time, I move my hand along the paper. This apparently is all wrong and leads to cramped and uneven writing. Writing should be done with your shoulder and underarm, whilst the palm and fingers should stay perfectly still.

I tried writing in the correct way, and my conclusion is simple: I cannot do it. The info that I found on the subject is conclusive too: If I want to write in the correct way and improve my handwriting, I'm going to have to start all over again, starting like the children in grade school do.

This is why I've taken the decision to learn to write all over again, doing small exercises every day, using the correct position and muscle groups, in an attempt to improve my handwriting. Partly to share my progress with other people who might want to do the same, and partly to keep myself motived, I started this blog. Apparently, all it takes is 15-30 minutes a day, and some progress should be visible after a few weeks already. The good thing is these exercises can be done whilst in a meeting, at work, while waiting, ...

some of the first exercises that I started with:

Write the letters of the alphabet in the air, or with your finger on a wall. Make them very large, as if writing on a blackboard, and keep your fingers and wrist still.
with your hand in the correct position, start with drawing some simple and large figures in a piece of paper, trying to make them as even as possible.

Later on, writing letters and other exercises will be added, but first some basic control of these muscle groups in my shoulder and arm that I've never used for writing must be gained. While I am at it, i decided to learn to form letters again as well, might as well improve my italic and capital letters as well.

Training materials can be found on many grade school websites, including letter formation guides.

Resources:
Here are some of the resources that I used in my research. This is by no means a complete list of the wealth of information that can be found on this subject, and if anyone has links to more interesting information on this subject, be sure to let me know.

handwriting tips
UK National Handwriting Association
Left-handed children organisation
Letter formation guide
Letter formation guide for Left-handed people