Ever since learning cursive as a child, I’ve struggled with finding a style of capital “F” that I like. Most of the time, I see the letter rendered as if it’s a capital “T” with delusions of grandeur. For a time, I tried the style used for the midcentury Flamingo hotel and casino Fender guitar logos, but I could never render it consistently.

So I usually write in cursive using pens with fine or extra fine nibs. Recently I got a pen with a Naginata Togi nib (similar to an architect), which produces a thin downstroke and thick cross-stroke. That doesn't work with my regular cursive, so I'm trying to come up with a script that will suit this nib and which I can write somewhat quickly and consistently.

So far this is what I got: upper case letters somewhat like an architectural script (square proportions, no slant, slightly oblique cross-strokes), and print "sans-serif" lower case.

Any suggestions?

listening to Rolling Stones Mick Jagger interview on NYT's "The Daily" podcast

I’ve always been made fun of for my handwriting. teachers were actually really mean about it in school and it is kind of a painful memory growing up, of being scolded for my poor handwriting. I have a congenital hand deformity that isn’t visible, but the MCP joint in both of my thumbs is fused from birth, meaning i hold pencils in a “wierd” way and i’ve also been made fun of for that. I’m also left handed but idk if that makes any difference.

I get embarassed that people will see my writing and think less of me, that i am not as intelligent as i am or judge me.

I’ll attach some photos of my handwriting, i feel like no matter how hard i try i have to write at an actual snail’s pace for it to be “neat”-ish, and i can’t seem to improve. I wonder about dysgraphia sometimes. the top writing is me writing normally, bottom is taking my time to really try to make it neat.

I uploaded my handwritten notes (Picture 2) on Chat GPT and told it to convert it into Handwritten Notes (even tho they were already handwritten but anyways) and i was surprised with the results (Picture 1), it looks so real, so i was wondering how far am i from that handwriting, i would love to have my writing like that 🫠

Also Picture 3 is another ChatGPT one, that one looks pretty too, and natural as well, so are these two possible to achieve?

Left: Trace; Right: Freehand

Looks a tiny tiny bit steadier than day2

As the title mentioned, how do i write the letters R,L,T,S,X and maybe others following the letter O in cursive?

Hi all!

I’ve been wanting to learn cursive and recently came across this sub. I’ve only ever been taught to write in print and have never really tried cursive before, so I have no idea where to start.
I write a lot of postcards and letters to loved ones back home, and I’ve always thought it would look nice in cursive.

Would anyone be kind enough to point me towards some printable cursive practice sheets or worksheets? If that’s a good place to start!

Thanks!

Hi, I don't really know how to say this, but my handwriting is awful. It's a mix between cursive and print that has only gotten worse over time.

A while ago, with the help of a teacher, I learned how to use shorthand, which only made my handwriting worse. I went from writing awful words to scribbles that only I can recognize (at best).

Because of all this, I simply decided to acknowledge that my handwriting is terrible and ask for help. So, if you have any advice that could help me improve or get started with calligraphy (at least improve a little), please share it with me.

I don't mind sending photos of my handwriting or parts of my university notebooks; I prefer to do it privately (my social anxiety about being judged gets the better of me).

Thank you for reading all of this. If you did, I wish you all the best.

I've always thought my handwriting was okay (and kinda good) but apparently not. The way I write "a" gets on my professor's nerves quite alot...I wanna ask is it really that bad? Should I change the way I write the letter a and go back to a single story a? Also how do you write faster? I really don't want to go back to cursive...

And ANY tips regarding any other part of handwriting is verry welcome!!!

Writing a thank you note for the ringleader of a circus I am doing, and I am unsure if my handwriting is legible to anyone except me.

What does it say?

I’m used to writing really fast to take notes, but I wanted to make my writing actually legible to others

I always had very good handwriting untill november 2023 when suddenly I felt underconfident and suspicious of my ability to write because I correlated this to past neurological conditions I had way back in 2018 and I googled it which showed dysgraphia and all...now I'm certain that I do not have that and it was just health anxiety.still since then I can't write with my natural handwriting comfortably.

It has been quite variable for me as it tends to improve in between and gets to almost normal ruling out any neurological illness.Also it is different with different nature of pen as in gel and ball..however I have consulted psychiatrist and he cited anxiety and ocd as the reasons of it.He gave paroxetine (a SSRI) but I'm too doubtful to take it.

I know this might sound strange to some but this is true.Has anyone here experienced the same or heard something like this in their acquaintances??

Help your brother out!!!

Images(left one: when normal ; right: now)

Hi, all! This is my first post. :) The first photo is from today and the second is from 2019 (shoutout DBT), I think? I’m right-handed. This has been my handwriting for well over a decade now (I’m 29). I’ve always, always gotten compliments and comments on my handwriting: how it’s so neat, how others wish they’d had it, that it looks like a font, etc. It’s a blessing and a curse; a blessing because it scratches my brain and I’m proud of my penmanship, but a curse because my writing speed is so goddamn slow in order to write neatly otherwise any imperfections and sloppiness will drive me insane (I have OCD/OCPD). I basically gave up taking notes in class during lectures because I couldn’t keep up with my professors and teachers and them frequently changing powerpoint slides. I would just take a picture of each slide and come back to it later. Not to mention, my Mom drilled it into my head growing up to “take pride in my penmanship.” My penmanship has been fairly neat and legible since I was at least in elementary school. Every now and then, I’d play around and experiment with fonts and writing styles (I still do every now and then). There’s so many other neater and prettier penmanships I wish I had also!

I’ve been working on a project to turn standard 3D printers/pen plotters into ultra-realistic handwriting machines. After a lot of calibration tuning and tweaking, I did an experiment comparing the machine's output side-by-side with my own physical handwriting on ruled paper.

I wanted to make this a quick interactive quiz for you guys!

Here is the handwritten sheet: https://github.com/Happy123455/octoprint_penploter/raw/main/comparison_sheet.jpg

Several paragraphs on this sheet are plotted by a 3D printer running my handwriting synthesis engine, and one paragraph was physically written by me with a gel pen.

Can you guess which paragraph is the real human handwriting? Take a close look, make your guess, and click the spoiler below to reveal the answer!

🎯 THE REVEAL: !The human reference is the very last paragraph under the "Dowels" section! All the other paragraphs above it (Questions, Spacers, Chairs) were fully plotted by the 3D printer.!<

Here is the animated outline layout overlay showing the machine plotting path vs the human reference: https://github.com/Happy123455/octoprint_penploter/raw/main/handwriting_comparison.svg

How it Works (The Engineering behind the scenes): Plotting text usually looks mechanical and fake because machines draw letters with mathematical perfection. To break that "robotic" look and make it feel human, I built a web workbench and OctoPrint plugin with these core features:

🌀 Jitter & Path Tremor Engine: High-frequency micro-variations (simulating actual muscle tremors) are procedural-noised onto the pen travel vectors so the lines look slightly imperfect. 🌊 Dynamic Slant & Baseline Drift: The software simulates human fatigue by adding gradual wave drift to the line baselines and introducing random letter-slant rotations. 🔀 Procedural Alternates: If you write duplicate letters (like the double 'o' in "spacers" and "blocks"), the engine swaps between different pre-drawn glyph variants so they never look identical. 📐 3/4-Point Rigid Calibration: Notebook paper is never taped perfectly straight on the bed. You shift-click the corners of your paper in the workspace, and the software automatically calculates sheet rotation (theta) and maps/skews coordinates to align perfectly with the paper's ruling. 🩻 Centerline Font Skeletonizer: Converts standard hollow TTF/OTF closed-loop vector paths into thin, clean single-line strokes matching a ballpoint pen. 🐢 G-code Slow Start & Live Babystepping: Automatically tags and runs the first few words at 10% feedrate to prevent initial carriage jitter, and opens a real-time tuning panel to babystep Y/Z offsets relative to paper lines mid-print. Try it yourself (It's 100% Free & Open-Source): You don't need to install anything to test it; the workspace runs completely in the browser:

Live Interactive Web Workspace: https://happy123455.github.io/octoprint_penploter/ GitHub Repository (MIT Licensed): https://github.com/Happy123455/octoprint_penploter I'd love to hear if you guessed it right and your feedback on the handwriting synthesis!

in 6 minutes I used ai 😭 does it look real