WRITE RIGHT: Improve your Hand Writing Skills

By,
Y.Mallikarjuna Rao,
Director,
National Hand Writing Academy,
Hyderabad.


You are the way you write.
If your handwriting is legible and beautiful, it helps to communicate others and indeed it impresses them. The strokes which contribute to measure your positive psychological patterns make your handwriting a complete one. The science of hand writing is age old and it is called as Graphology.
So, don’t just write legibly and beautifully but also write scientifically.
Your handwriting is not ‘hand’ writing. It is actually ‘brain’ writing.
In order to score more or deserved marks, make sure that you have grip over the following four factors while writing your exams. They are:

1. Command over subject / concept
2. Grammatical correctness
3. Spelling accuracy
4. Handwriting skills

This article basically focuses on the fourth factor i.e. handwriting skills, so let us focus on this last but not the least factor.
Firstly, concentrate on rectifying the common mistakes that occur while writing answers in the booklet.

Do not jumble the letters
Generally though one has a thorough knowledge on spellings, syllabus and making a word in a language, there is always a chance that we swap or jumble letters of a word, due to because of hurry or lack of focus. To avoid this, while preparing for the exams itself, one must check out whether the spellings are reproduced properly or not, on a rough note book. Until we gain confidence, we must work on the spellings of the tough words.

Cursive Writing- Shows elegancy and dignity
It is suggested to use ‘CURSIVE’ handwriting, as one can save time and show elegancy and dignity in the presentation. In the process, most of the writers tend to break a word. Please avoid that. It leads to meaningless communication.

I, J and T - two stroke letters
In most of the occasions, we break the words in cursive writing because of the three letters I, J and T, which are called two stroke letters.

So, practice as many words as you can with these three letters – I, J and T; and there is a method do to that. The first focus should be on completing the word. You shall continue to write the word and then get back to these letters and complete them either by placing dot (.), which is the second stroke of I and J and dash (-), which is second stroke of T.

Legibility – the most important quality
Legibility is one of the most important problems of our handwriting. This problem is mainly to do with “letters”. Somehow, people fail to write certain letters legibly. This problem must be tamed by students and job aspirants.

For example, take a look at the following example -

Regulate the letters size:
Both over-sized letters as well as tiny letters can irritate the evaluator/reader. Hence the size of handwriting must be quite ‘normal’. In order to regulate size of handwriting, one must focus on the concept called ‘Zoning’.

All the small letters can be divided into three zones – upper, middle and lower zones. Upper zone consists of - b, d, f, h, k, l and t, basically the letters which go up. Middle zone letters are - a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w and x; and lower zone letters are - f, g, j, r, q, y and z, basically which go lower.

On a single-ruled paper, write all the middle zone letters (a, c, e, i, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w and x) in 50% of the two printed liner. Write all the upper zone letters (b, d, f, h, k, l and t) in full size and lower zone letters (f, g, j, r, q, y and z) till 50% of bottom two printed lines. Then, practice words with different zones in their appropriate sizes.

Note: ‘f’ is the only letter which is found in both upper and lower zones, in cursive style.

‘Letter’ is a sensible part of word:
From your writing which is written recently, make out the illegible letters that are spoiling your handwriting or create negative impact. Remedy for this problem is to practice those letters with the rectification and make some words with those letters and practice.

No ascending of descending lines:
As answer book-let is of plain papers, you must focus on writing lines evenly. After drawing margins, before writing the first line, measure the distance from top margin to the starting of line. And maintain the same amount of gap across the breadth of line. If the gap above the line is gradually increasing, your line would descend. And if the gap is reducing, the line would ascend. Try to avoid these two possibilities.

Connect the letters properly:
Majority of cursive writers make a few regular mistakes with some letters. Observe the following -

Identify the letter that you are not comfortable with and practice them more. After some conscious effort you can get command over them.

Space them Right:
For a legible and effective written communication, one must give an equal importance for the spaces among the letters of word, words of a sentence and sentences of a paragraph.

In the above example, after spacing on right side of the letter, it looks more legible. Thus spacing shall be practiced consciously until it will become a routine.

Right Slant:
Regarding the slant of handwriting, make it in 600 if it is cursive and always right in 900 if it is non - cursive. Avoid left slant in both the styles and avoid varied slants.

Published date : 08 Aug 2014 06:17PM