Write Now: A Complete Self Teaching Program for Better Handwriting

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for improving handwriting.
Review: After moving a great distance from my kids, I wanted to keep in touch. Typed letters and email seem so impersonal, but my handwriting was awful! I picked up this book in the hopes of improving my poor handwriting. The book takes you away from the loopy hard to read cursive you may have learned in school, and presents a much easier to read (and write) italic.

I noticed an improvement in the first few days, probably because I was concentrating more on my writing. Now, after a month or so I don't need to concentrate, and my writing has improved greatly.

The book also contains interesting historical tidbits, breaking up lessons with cool facts.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for improving handwriting.
Review: After moving a great distance from my kids, I wanted to keep in touch. Typed letters and email seem so impersonal, but my handwriting was awful! I picked up this book in the hopes of improving my poor handwriting. The book takes you away from the loopy hard to read cursive you may have learned in school, and presents a much easier to read (and write) italic.

I noticed an improvement in the first few days, probably because I was concentrating more on my writing. Now, after a month or so I don't need to concentrate, and my writing has improved greatly.

The book also contains interesting historical tidbits, breaking up lessons with cool facts.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Self-Improvment Tool
Review: Before I found this book my handwriting was routinely bad and had it had been suggested several times to me by my own family to makes and improvement. When I took a job as a court clerk my handwriting ability became even more important. One day I received a piece of paper back that I had written that was so bad that the recipient sent it back saying they couldn't even read it. THAT WAS IT! I knew I needed to improve my handwriting. I evaluated a few others and decided upon this book. It balances practical handwriting techniques with easy-to-follow instructions and exercises complete with cursive and basic forms. It's all here from spacing to instructions on how to sit when to write and it is all flexible enough for you to develop your own, BUT STILL CLEARLY LEGIBLE style. I highly recommend it and for those of you intersted you can directly order this book from Portland State University at http://www.cep.pdx.edu/ for faster delivery.

Rating:
Summary: It's Never Too Late to Change Your Handwriting
Review: I am a teacher and we were examining this handwriting system for adoption in our school. I purchased the book to learn it myself. In about a week with about 15 min. practice per day I completely changed my style. I am very pleased with the results of my own "retraining" as well as those of my 5th grade students using the school version of this program. Kudos to both of the authors for developing a straightfoward, interesting approach to improving handwriting. You won't be disappointed!

Rating:
Summary: Penmanship Charlatans
Review: I am a victim of the Getty-Dubay method. This system, what I call the metric system of handwriting, was forced upon me as a grade schooler, back in the mid 80's.

The school I attended, Redmond Elementary in Redmond, WA had adopted this handwriting system. We were told that this was the system every school in the country was switching to. They even went so far as to say that one day, you would not be allowed to sign a check if it was not done in Cursive Italic.

We moved to Chicago in 1989. The teachers in my new school were shocked and repulsed by my handwriting. "But, it's CURSIVE ITALIC!" I would tell them. They had never heard of it. I was ridiculed by my classmates for writing like a "baby", and being "illiterate".

My teachers would not allow me to continue writing in this manner. I was threatened with remedial penmanship programs if I didn't conform. In short, I had to learn how to write, all over again.

To this day, a few scars remain. Some of the capital letters I still write in the Italic way. I do not loop some of my lower case letters.

I encourage you to look at a sample of Cursive Italic writing before you try this, although you probably won't have much luck searching for this dead style on the internet. It looks positively childish. It is printed letters randomly connected by seriffs in awkward places.

When I learned to write normal cursive, I couldn't believe how natural and free-flowing it was. Cursive Italic requires you to stop and lift your pen to add unnatural seriffs, despite the author's claims. With regular handwriting, you only stop to cross t's and dot i's (which Cursive Italic does not eliminate).

Listen to someone whose handwriting is affected by this snake oil to this day. Avoid this method of writing.

Rating:
Summary: What I didn't learn in elementary school
Review: I was frustrated that I couldn't write quickly and legibly. The cursive I was taught in elementary school was too elaborate and slow (cursive is supposed to be faster than printing). I wrote faster but my writing was so bad, I had trouble reading it myself. I felt funny learning to write again as an adult. But this book helped me to write faster than I did before, but at the same time, so clearly that even others could read my writing. Now I enjoy writing and am happy with the way it looks.

Rating:
Summary: It's Never Too Late to Change Your Handwriting
Review: Like so many others, I learned the standard "ball and stick" print style of handwriting and progressed to the "looped" cursive style when I was in grade school--and I got very high marks in penmanship. By high school I could write fastest in cursive, but I was taking notes so fast it became illegible. Somehow I made it through graduate school taking notes fast and figuring out what I wrote later. Ever since then, I've chosen the computer over handwriting as much as possible. (Not to mention the "looped" cursive isn't very masculine.)

Enter "Write Now". What a great book! "Write Now" teaches a style of handwriting called Italic (meaning "from Italy"). My first thought was that this was some "new" style and couldn't be as good as the "basics" I was taught. Turns out, what I was taught is the "new" style (19th century) and Italic is the more traditional (16th century). It is the style that was used by Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo.

Italic focuses on efficiency, ergonomics, legibility, and speed. It easily transitions from print to cursive to calligraphy with little change in the way you write the characters. "Write Now" is broken into three sections: 1) Basic Italic (print) 2) Cursive Italic and 3) Edged Pen Italic (calligraphy). With good explanations and illustrations, it is a pleasure to learn a new style of handwriting.

"Write Now" is geared towards adults (or teens) and presents a "cartoon's guide" to the history of handwriting throughout--a good reference even if you don't want to improve your handwriting. The author's are veteran educators and have produced an entire series of books on Italic handwriting to take kids from kindergarten through grade school. They are also in very high demand for in-house hospital seminars to those who most desparately need handwriting help--doctors. :-)

I recommend this book highly. My handwriting has already improved. I actually look for reasons throughout the day to use my new skills. If you're like me, don't pass this one up.

Rating:
Summary: improve your penmanship by learning and doing
Review: This book covers basic handwriting through to the cursive writing style. The first style (the authors refer to this as 'edged italic') is the most basic form of italic handwriting and is generally thought to children to help them improve their handwriting. Now before you stop reading this review, let me state that any adult can gain from this book. In particular, it is this reviewers opinion that if you use pens in any form of writing capacity, you should definitely read these books: there are pages on pen styles, writing positions and inter-page notes on writing/alphabet history. The book starts with an introduction to the formation of scriptive letters. Of importance is the use of typographic terms such as X height, descenders, ascenders etc. and how these are relevant to improving your handwriting. As mentioned, this is a 'how to' book and you can follow along with the examples, whilst learning new techniques. Information for left-handers, italic nib users and anybody wishing to learn more about the styles of writing that are currently thought, can do no better than this book. On the downside you have to 'wade' through extraneous information (page notes) on a page to locate what it was you were interested in on the previous page. A pet peeve of mine- writing books should be an exercise in linear thought, most are not, but if this doesn't bother you well and good, and, in truth, because its a read and learn book, its 'liveable with'. Most people's handwriting will improve after some self tutoring with this book. If you have already mastered the art of good cursive writing and are familiar with the theory behind it, you may be set to take a couple of lessons from book two, the more comprehensive; 'Italic Letters' by the same authors.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful tool
Review: This book has many practical aspects: most pages are opportunities to practice letter forms and joins (for the italic). It covers both non-cursive and cursive. The points they stress (there are just a few basic forms to remember; consistent spacing and slant are key) are easily internalized.

I bought this book at their free (annual) seminar at Portland State University (Oregon). As a continuation of that program, I'd rate this book as five stars.

As a team, these two are the best: one comes from an elementary education background, the other from an art/calligraphy background. These two sensibilities balance perfectly, and create a synergy that is really inspiring.

I really hope that schools are beginning to switch to the Getty-Dubay method; if I had learned this way, my handwriting wouldn't _need_ to be improved!