3 ms·

Would love to but my handwriting is awful. Don't know why. I write so cramped, perhaps I am holding the pen too hard. And my writing deteriorated over the years

by mongol 6y ago

Would love to but my handwriting is awful. Don't know why. I write so cramped, perhaps I am holding the pen too hard. And my writing deteriorated over the years. Became almost illegible in university. Today my hand makes the least effort possible when I write. It is like it wants to drop the pen as soon as possible, but is forced to hold on by its conscious master. The keyboard is a bliss for me, it allows me to make structured notes effortlessly. But I still wish my relationship to handwriting was better.

freehunter 6y ago
The reason your handwriting gets worse is because the more you type, the less you write. You’ve fallen out of practice, and the only key to nice handwriting is to keep practicing and keep writing.
- kitd 6y ago
  Agreed. When I was younger and writing regularly, I could scribble fast and it would still be relatively neat. Now I type all day, the few occasions when I do write just end up in a mistake-ridden scrawl. I find I need to relax my finger grip and slow down, almost like I'm back in junior school.
- joecool1029 6y ago
  Sorry, I've heard that bullshit excuse for years. I moved to typing because writing was so laborious for me. My handwriting is more or less the same as it was 10+ years ago at this point and it's equally slow and illegible on both hands.
Jtsummers 6y ago
My handwriting is horrendous, particularly by the end of an extended writing period. But taking notes, for me, was rarely about reading them. The act of writing helped me remember so much better (especially if I'm not writing a transcription, but a summary and examples). My math/CS notes were understandable, in general, in college due to the ability to use shorthand notations or to write things in clearly hierarchical forms (pseudocode, proofs, solving math problems) where the structure aided in interpreting if the handwriting failed. As to improving handwriting, in particularly dull periods I'd pull out a pen and do alphabet practice. Literally just pages of writing out the alphabet over and over. Then words, practicing cursive specifically but it doesn't have to be. This got my short-form or unrushed handwriting quality to a point where it wasn't embarrassing and I liked writing letters to my girlfriend. Learn to have a looser grip on the pen or pencil (I had an iron grip which I picked up somewhere along the way which led to cramping and poorer handwriting).
wenc 6y ago
> I write so cramped, perhaps I am holding the pen too hard. And my writing deteriorated over the years. This was me until I discovered fountain pens and good paper. I used to write on cheap ballpoints and my hands would be throbbing after about 6 pages of notes (I was taking a class with lots of readings). Fountain pens are a rabbit hole of their own, but if you have good paper and a pen with smooth flowing ink (doesn't have to be fountain, gel pens work great too) and a nib size that matches the size of your handwriting (mine is small so I prefer Fine nibs), writing becomes pleasurable. Also I'm big on scribbling marginalia, but cheap hotel ballpoints, small margins and my own bad handwriting have always made it hard to make annotations (I often write things like "This is STUPID" but with cheap ballpoints I run out of room and have to squeeze words to the point of illegibility which leads to me giving up). I recently discovered Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3mm pens from Japan, and they've been a dream for scribbling more substantial thoughts in book margins. P.s. arguing with the authors of nonfiction books in the margins is fun. I recommend it.
contingencies 6y ago
Would love to but my handwriting is awful. Don't know why. I am often complemented on my note taking. My view is that longhand is superfluous. Try to write more briefly and to write in all caps. Use more features like bullets, outlines and spaces and a different color pen for drawings, comments, underlines, outlines, lines indicating relationships, etc. This dates back to when I was perhaps 8 I had a teacher who forced us to use a ruler to create double-underlines for all headings in a separate color. This was, in hindsight, an awesome formative influence. About brevity, think about it like this: if a second language speaker or child can understand the gist of it, you're doing well. I don't actually take notes very often. A few times per month at most by hand, and probably a few times per week digitally. Basically I only take notes when in creative mode (interrogating own brain, reading stimulating material, brainstorming with others) or making research notes (often market research or technology related).
ghufran_syed 6y ago
You might want to try an ipad pro + pencil. Personally I like the lack of friction, I can zoom in and out as I write etc. My notes also end up much neater than on paper, particularly during math lectures and when writing proofs, when you always have a bunch of false starts and dead ends! I also always had a personal hangup about highlighting or writing notes on books ("sacrilege!" :) ), it always felt like I would ruin the book for a future reader. So during a lecture, it's nice to have a PDF copy of the text book imported into the notes software, then I'll sometimes cut and paste diagrams from the book into my notes, or just write notes on the book itself, depending on the situation. It's also pretty nice to be able to take a pic of the board if a prof is going too fast for me, put it directly into the note, then just rewrite it when I get a chance later. Personally I use notability, which I think is nice, but sometimes gives me problems with syncing and access to my notes when icloud has some bug. So I switch on the setting for backup the entire note to google drive (you can use any cloud storage), just so I can always get access to my notes. It's "only" happened two or three times in three years, but... I think it is an icloud issue, not a notability issue, but I feel like they should be able to architect it so that the local notes are still available in the event of an icloud issue, whereas what actually happens is the local notes disappear - hence the need for the separate cloud backup of the note files!
- vira28 6y ago
  What you feel about their macOS app?
cratermoon 6y ago
If you're seriously motivated to improve your longhand, get a copy of Write Now: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success and go through the exercise. My handwriting wasn't awful as a whole but certain letters and letter combinations were disastrously unreadable. I also wasn't fast enough. Whatever you learned in school was probably not optimized for legibility AND speed together. https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/ https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/

by mongol 6y ago

freehunter 6y ago

The reason your handwriting gets worse is because the more you type, the less you write. You’ve fallen out of practice, and the only key to nice handwriting is to keep practicing and keep writing.

kitd 6y ago
Agreed. When I was younger and writing regularly, I could scribble fast and it would still be relatively neat. Now I type all day, the few occasions when I do write just end up in a mistake-ridden scrawl. I find I need to relax my finger grip and slow down, almost like I'm back in junior school.
joecool1029 6y ago
Sorry, I've heard that bullshit excuse for years. I moved to typing because writing was so laborious for me. My handwriting is more or less the same as it was 10+ years ago at this point and it's equally slow and illegible on both hands.

Jtsummers 6y ago

My handwriting is horrendous, particularly by the end of an extended writing period. But taking notes, for me, was rarely about reading them. The act of writing helped me remember so much better (especially if I'm not writing a transcription, but a summary and examples). My math/CS notes were understandable, in general, in college due to the ability to use shorthand notations or to write things in clearly hierarchical forms (pseudocode, proofs, solving math problems) where the structure aided in interpreting if the handwriting failed. As to improving handwriting, in particularly dull periods I'd pull out a pen and do alphabet practice. Literally just pages of writing out the alphabet over and over. Then words, practicing cursive specifically but it doesn't have to be. This got my short-form or unrushed handwriting quality to a point where it wasn't embarrassing and I liked writing letters to my girlfriend. Learn to have a looser grip on the pen or pencil (I had an iron grip which I picked up somewhere along the way which led to cramping and poorer handwriting).

wenc 6y ago

> I write so cramped, perhaps I am holding the pen too hard. And my writing deteriorated over the years. This was me until I discovered fountain pens and good paper. I used to write on cheap ballpoints and my hands would be throbbing after about 6 pages of notes (I was taking a class with lots of readings). Fountain pens are a rabbit hole of their own, but if you have good paper and a pen with smooth flowing ink (doesn't have to be fountain, gel pens work great too) and a nib size that matches the size of your handwriting (mine is small so I prefer Fine nibs), writing becomes pleasurable. Also I'm big on scribbling marginalia, but cheap hotel ballpoints, small margins and my own bad handwriting have always made it hard to make annotations (I often write things like "This is STUPID" but with cheap ballpoints I run out of room and have to squeeze words to the point of illegibility which leads to me giving up). I recently discovered Pilot Hi-Tec-C 0.3mm pens from Japan, and they've been a dream for scribbling more substantial thoughts in book margins. P.s. arguing with the authors of nonfiction books in the margins is fun. I recommend it.

contingencies 6y ago

Would love to but my handwriting is awful. Don't know why. I am often complemented on my note taking. My view is that longhand is superfluous. Try to write more briefly and to write in all caps. Use more features like bullets, outlines and spaces and a different color pen for drawings, comments, underlines, outlines, lines indicating relationships, etc. This dates back to when I was perhaps 8 I had a teacher who forced us to use a ruler to create double-underlines for all headings in a separate color. This was, in hindsight, an awesome formative influence. About brevity, think about it like this: if a second language speaker or child can understand the gist of it, you're doing well. I don't actually take notes very often. A few times per month at most by hand, and probably a few times per week digitally. Basically I only take notes when in creative mode (interrogating own brain, reading stimulating material, brainstorming with others) or making research notes (often market research or technology related).

ghufran_syed 6y ago

You might want to try an ipad pro + pencil. Personally I like the lack of friction, I can zoom in and out as I write etc. My notes also end up much neater than on paper, particularly during math lectures and when writing proofs, when you always have a bunch of false starts and dead ends! I also always had a personal hangup about highlighting or writing notes on books ("sacrilege!" :) ), it always felt like I would ruin the book for a future reader. So during a lecture, it's nice to have a PDF copy of the text book imported into the notes software, then I'll sometimes cut and paste diagrams from the book into my notes, or just write notes on the book itself, depending on the situation. It's also pretty nice to be able to take a pic of the board if a prof is going too fast for me, put it directly into the note, then just rewrite it when I get a chance later. Personally I use notability, which I think is nice, but sometimes gives me problems with syncing and access to my notes when icloud has some bug. So I switch on the setting for backup the entire note to google drive (you can use any cloud storage), just so I can always get access to my notes. It's "only" happened two or three times in three years, but... I think it is an icloud issue, not a notability issue, but I feel like they should be able to architect it so that the local notes are still available in the event of an icloud issue, whereas what actually happens is the local notes disappear - hence the need for the separate cloud backup of the note files!

vira28 6y ago
What you feel about their macOS app?

cratermoon 6y ago

If you're seriously motivated to improve your longhand, get a copy of Write Now: The Getty-Dubay Program for Handwriting Success and go through the exercise. My handwriting wasn't awful as a whole but certain letters and letter combinations were disastrously unreadable. I also wasn't fast enough. Whatever you learned in school was probably not optimized for legibility AND speed together. https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/ https://handwritingsuccess.com/write-now/