Improve Your Handwriting

Having good handwriting is useful for writing letters and cards and filling out important paperwork. If you wish your handwriting was a little easier to read, don’t worry! There are a few techniques you can use to make your handwriting more legible and aesthetically pleasing.

Analyzing Your Handwriting

1. Write a paragraph. Choose a topic—it can be whatever you want, try and find something you enjoy to write so you will not get bored—and write at least five sentences about it. If you’re not feeling too creative, simply copy a passage out of a book or newspaper. The goal is to get an idea of what your handwriting looks like on average. The more you write, the more accurate your analysis will be.

2. Identify the primary shapes. Is your handwriting full of loops and curves? Is it primarily straight lines and stiff in appearance? Do you have hard corners, or do your letters blend together?

3. Look for a slant. The angle at which you write your letters can make or break your handwriting. Is your handwriting perpendicular to the lines under it? Does it fall to the left or to the right significantly? A slight slant is typically not a problem, but too much of one can make reading difficult.

4. Check the alignment. Do your words tend to be written on an upwards or downwards angle? Do they overlap with the lines on the page? Is every word individually angled, or do your entire lines of text head in a similar direction away from the line?

5. Look at the spacing. The distance between your words and letters helps determine the quality of your handwriting. There should be enough space between each word to fit the letter “O.” Using more or less space than this can be an indicator of poor handwriting. Pay attention also to the closeness of each individual letter. Cramped writing or letters that are spaced far apart are also difficult to read.

6. Pay attention to the size. Turns out size does matter, at least with handwriting. Does your writing fill up the entire space between two lines? Can you write all your words in less than half the space between two lines? Taking up a large amount of space or using too little are both things to avoid.

7. Analyze your line quality. Look at the actual lines that comprise your writing. Are they drawn with heavy pressure, or are they faint and hard to read? Are your lines straight, or are they kind of squiggly and uneven?

8. Determine your flaws. Considering all of the aforementioned, what is it that your handwriting needs in order to improve? Possible changes can be made to the shape of letters, your spacing, alignment, writing size, line quality, and the slant of words. Changing one or more of these will improve your overall handwriting legibility.

9. Look to other handwriting styles for inspiration. So now you know your letters are too large and your shapes too round, now what? Go onto font websites and look for handwriting samples that you like. Make a copy of each style of handwriting that is feasible for you to mimic. Don’t be afraid to look for samples that might vary significantly from your own handwriting, as you can pick and choose certain aspects of different handwritings rather than adopting an entirely new one.