Does handwriting feel like a foreign skill to you in this digital age? You are not alone. It is common for most adults to ignore their handwriting skill. Most would focus instead on digital skills, such as typing. But you may be missing out on the great benefits of handwriting. Here, we will suggest 5 tips to improve your handwriting. As you improve your handwriting, you will feel more confident and enjoy your beautiful handwriting.
In short, here are the 5 tips to improve your handwriting:
- Use your handwriting muscles correctly
- Write big before going small
- Use a handwriting workbook to practice well
- Properly position your body and arm
- Use a raised angle table
Understanding each tip and putting them into practice will help you to improve your handwriting. In each tip below, we have included actionable advice to help you improve quickly.
1. Use Your Handwriting Muscles Correctly
Writing with the correct muscle will help you prevent handwriting fatigue. Not only will you be able to write longer, you will be able to write more beautiful letters. Importantly, your handwriting experience will be pain free.
To get started, you will need to understand the muscles involved while you are writing.
The muscles that help you grip the pen is your forearm. A common issue is over-straining your grip. This causes your forearm to ache. Further, you will find it difficult to write for longer hours with a tight hand grip on the pen.
The solution to prevent overly tensed forearm is to use only the required amount of force. This means holding onto the pen with a light grip to keep it firmly in your hand. You should feel that your forearm is not tensed up.
With a proper grip on your pen, you will next need to learn about using the correct muscles to form the letters.
Commonly, many people tend to use their forearm, which moves their wrist to write. This causes many of the painful aches at the wrist and forearm, as you are constantly tensing it up. Further, the forearm is a small muscle group.
To form letters effectively you will need to rely more on a larger muscle group instead of the forearm. This larger muscle group controls the shoulder girdle. Using these muscles, you will be able to move your whole arm in the writing process. By doing so, you will less likely tire yourself during your writing.
For those whom formed writing habit around using their forearm to write, this might be a surprise. Making the switch to use your shoulder girdle will require practice, but it will be well worth the effort.
2. Write Big Before Going Small
To practice using the muscle group around the shoulder girdle to write, you will have to start by writing big letters. This helps you to engage the bigger muscle group controlling your shoulder girdle.
Next, you will want to feel and focus your attention on moving your shoulder girdle as you write. This is the fine-tuning process, where you become more attuned to the muscular action used. The more you practice, you will gain greater precision with controlling the muscle group around your shoulder girdle.
Once you have gotten consistent with your writing of big letters, you can proceed to the next stage. This stage will be about using your shoulder girdle in a more refined manner. You will begin practicing writing smaller and smaller letters.
At the end of this practice, you will have improved your handwriting control. Your handwriting endurance should also improve.
3. Use A Handwriting Workbook To Practice Writing Well
To develop a beautiful handwriting, you should find a handwriting workbook to practice. This handwriting workbook will usually contain beautiful typeface, which you can reference letter forms. You will get to trace a beautiful typeface of letters.
Through tracing beautiful typeface of letters, you will internalize its consistency. For many adults, this might seem easy or a waste of time. But it can do wonders for your handwriting consistency. It is a good idea to revisit letters’ forms to get a consistent handwriting style.
Beyond letters tracing, some advance handwriting workbooks will provide fundamental handwriting skill refinement. These advanced practices involve drawing of shapes and lines. These shapes and lines are selected as they are part of letters. By practicing them alone, you can focus on getting the control of the pen stroke properly. When you combine them in writing letters, you will be able to form the letters with consistency and well-defined shapes.
Another reason to practice with a handwriting workbook is its planned practice sequence. It can guide you to write well in a progressive manner. For example, a beneficial sequence for handwriting practice will begin with capital letters. This is because capital letters have sharp shapes, which are easier to train at the start.
After reading all these ideas behind a good handwriting workbook, you might want to get one. To help you get started, we have developed our Smart Handwriting Workbook. It will be free to download below.
(Free Smart Handwriting Workbook coming in February 2019)
4. Properly Position Your Body And Arm
Positioning your body and arm in a comfortable and effective manner is important. It helps you to write with less effort, and less aches.
To position your body properly on a chair, you need to plant your feet on the ground and keep your torso upright.
For arm positioning, give a slight lean on your writing arm. But, do not place too much weight on it. You should still feel that your writing arm is able to move freely.
With your non-writing arm, you will be using it to hold down or move the paper, as you write.
5. Use A Raised Angle Table
A raised angle writing table can help you to write better. The elevated angle helps to position your wrist and elbow for smoother motions. With the table raised, you will feel more ease of reading and writing, as it reduces the strain on your eyes.
Importantly, the elevated angle table forces you to sit upright, as it is difficult to lean too much. This keeps you in a healthy posture when writing. Further, when compared to a normal flat table, on a raised table you are less likely to lean forward and slouch.
For some, it might not be practical to get a raised angle table only for handwriting. A general all-purpose flat table will have more uses than a raised angle table in the home. Do not worry, there is a solution to get the benefits of a raised angle table without actually buying one.
A popular option among handwriting aficionados is the use of an ergonomic slant board. This ergonomic slant board can be set atop any flat table for you to write on. Acquiring an ergonomic slant board is also a cheaper and more portable option than a custom table.
We highly encourage you to write on a raised angle for better and faster improvement.
Takeaway
Improving your handwriting takes awareness, effort and patience. You will need to be aware of your body posture, weight on your handwriting arm, and the muscles you used when writing. Using a raised angle table can help you to build these good handwriting habits.
Getting a handwriting workbook to practice can provide a systematic process for improvement, you can quickly build up the proper handwriting technique. Remember that handwriting is a muscular skill, like any sport, improvement in it will take time. You will need to be patient and keep at it.
Before your handwriting practice, refer back to this article, if needed, to refresh your mind on the ideas to apply. This will help you to ensure each handwriting practice is effective.
Related Questions
Why learn handwriting in this digital age? Learning to write by hand is a more intimate connection for the body and mind. It brings the person mentally closer to the letters written and ideas being expressed. This deep experiential writing experience cannot be replaced by typing. Especially at a young age, the intimate connection formed by handwriting can benefit children immensely in their language learning.
What are the benefits of handwriting? Handwriting has many benefits. The most recognizable benefits are its ability to help improve focus, memory and stimulate the mind. Other less known benefits are its ability to stimulate creativity, which is useful when engaging in a creativity task, helps with dyslexia, and can even slow down mental aging.
