Improving the handwriting

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Rachel Adams

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Is there a book to improve a non-native handwriting?
Do you find the letters written as shown in the photo unnatural?

IMG_20210727_140804.jpg
 

SoothingDave

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Your cursive S is poor. I'm not sure what the next one is supposed to be. Y?

I would focus on printed characters. You don't need cursive except to sign your name.
 

Skrej

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I'm sure there are, but something like handwriting instruction seems like it would be much better conveyed through video.

Here are Google search results on 'teaching cursive handwriting'. As expected however, there are many videos as well. I was lazy and used the same search terms, but I'm sure you could fine-tune the search results to get more of what you want.

I was actually taught cursive in grade school. Many schools no longer teach it.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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ARE there BOOKS to improve a non-native'S handwriting?

Do you find the letters written as shown in the photo unnatural?
Yes, there are books that teach cursive.

Yes, the letters in the picture are not natural.
 

Rachel Adams

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Your cursive S is poor. I'm not sure what the next one is supposed to be. Y?

I would focus on printed characters. You don't need cursive except to sign your name.

I remember wtiting "s" that way in French. My teacher never said it was wrong, but I wasn't sure if it was also correct in English.

IMG_20210728_103230.jpg

I also found it in this photo
 
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5jj

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That is the cursive style I was taught at primary school nearly seventy years ago. I haven't seen it used for years.
 

emsr2d2

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That is the cursive style I was taught at primary school nearly seventy years ago. I haven't seen it used for years.

I was taught it at first/middle school in the 1970s and still use it (sometimes). I doubt it's still taught though.
 

Skrej

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The capital 'g', 'i', 'q' and 's' in Rachel's photo look wrong to me. The others, while different from how I do mine, are close enough they don't bother me, but the 'g' and 'q' especially rankle me. The capital G and Y are virtually identical, and the Q looks like a the number 2!

This version is very close to how I form my cursive letters. My S is quite similar to Dave's.

pic.jpg
 
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SoothingDave

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The capital Y is different, too.
 

Skrej

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The capital Y is different, too.


Oops, actually I meant to say G and Y were the same in Rachel's pic, not G and Z. I went back and fixed my post.
 

Rachel Adams

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Oops, actually I meant to say G and Y were the same in Rachel's pic, not G and Z. I went back and fixed my post.

I typed the letters next to the ones I was asking about. IMG_20210729_123350.jpg

Some look weird. Which of them are acceptable as capital and lowercase letters and which should be forgotten? I see that at local schools some children write them differently, and, unfortunately, aren't always corrected.
 

Skrej

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I should clarify that my comments in post #9 were in reference to your second image in post #5, not your original image.

It's difficult to explicitly say 'this is right/wrong' with handwriting, because handwriting is so unique to each person. My entire class was taught cursive by the same teacher, using the same basic method and shapes, but we still soon naturally started to develop our own little slight variations. I can look at something written in cursive by any member of my family, and tell you who wrote it without even having to read the individual words. I can do the same for my closer friends and colleagues. I may not always be able to easily read it, but I can tell you who wrote it.

It's also a little hard to judge cursive letters written individually, because they lose the context clues of the connected letters, as well as the connecting loops and swirls. The whole point of cursive is that the letters flow freely together, so they always look a bit odd written by themselves. The way I form a capital I for the pronoun standing alone is slightly different than when I write a capital I that's the first letter of a word.

That being said, regarding your labeled picture in post #12, I personally would have trouble distinguishing between your lowercase I and lowercase L, because they look identical. Ideally, the lowercase I is roughly half or less the height of a lowercase L, and should have a dot or some kind of mark (I tend to use a small dash that looks more like an accent mark than a circular dot) above the lowercase I to help distinguish it.

Your Gs are fine, although they look more like printed letters than cursive. Only the left-most S is identifiable to me as an S, but I think that's again a printed S not cursive. However, note that your cursive Ss look like the cursive S in your image on post #5, so obviously some people would disagree with me about your cursive S. Only the third from left J is recognizable to me, and again it looks printed, not cursive. The first L looks like a printed L to me, the second L looks like how I write my lowercase cursive Ls, and the third L looks like a lowercase printed L to me. The first Y looks like a lowercase cursive Y, and the second one looks like a lowercase printed Y.

Again, those are just my opinions. Others might well disagree. Anyone who has seen my handwriting would start screaming about how I should be the last person to lecture anyone about their handwriting.

I suspect that's partially why cursive writing is falling out of favor. It takes a certain amount of skill and familiarity with cursive writing to 'decipher' an individual's writing. People who have poor penmanship, like myself, have especially difficult handwriting to read. Printed (or block) letters are immediately distinguishable to anyone familiar with the English alphabet. If you can read typewritten English text, you can also easily read hand printed (block) text. The same is not necessarily true of handwritten cursive text.

Cursive's advantage is that it allows for quicker writing as you don't have to lift the pen for each letter, just between words. The downside can be legibility.
 

Charlie Bernstein

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If you Google it, there are lots of examples of cursive. They're not exactly alike, but they're all similar. This one is a lot like how I was taught it:

free-printable-cursive-alphabet-letters_39250.jpg
 
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