How to Make Your Handwriting Better W/ Historic Inspiration!

Painstakingly and inconsistently mimicking selective aspects of various handwritings may not be not the best way to improve one's own. Rather, strive to achieve an unself-conscious legibility that is characterized by internal harmony in form, slant, proportion, and spacing.

"Letters possess gracefulness, not when they have been written with listlessness and haste, nor with toil and diligence, but with heart and soul."
Giambattista Bodoni

Imagine now this beautiful aspect of civilised communication being banned from schools.

I now know what I am going to do with that Ouroboros Onion Skin Journal I got from Vanessa Root. Great idea for a video, certainly a way to keep inspired. Thanks HJ! Hope you, your family and your viewers all have the happiest of holidays!

Im def going to create a "script" library like you did!! Awesome idea! We could also use it for ideas of copperplate like that "I" you showed. I use the Midori journal system I think im going to dedicate a whole insert to one. lol

Awesome idea!

If one uses the same writing tool to make a big initial on a page, rather than emulating the historiated majuscules of illuminated manuscripts, the weight of the strokes in the letter are comparatively weaker that the strokes of the letters in the text. As the size of the letter is increased, the strokes' width must also.

Great video! What Shakespeare book is that at the end of your shelf?? It's too blury for me to make out the author or title/subtitle.

Greetings from Australia.
A very interesting video. Brilliant work, Hemmingway.
In the age of computers, handwriting is becoming a lost art.
I believe that some members of the younger generation just won't make the effort to communicate in a meaningful way. We are living in this social vacuum where a meaningful post will be answered with a banal smile emoji!
I teach classical piano, and I use my fountain pens in endorsing the piano diaries of my students. They are well aware of my pens, and I have penabled a few of them. They probably think that I'm an eccentric, but who cares.
Thanks for your video. I will be purchasing that handwriting book for my own library.

I love your enthusiasm for cursive handwriting !

Very fun. Thanks!

Very fun. Thanks!

Such a great idea to use historical letters as handwriting inspiration! Love it!
Btw, the Oscar Wilde letter is addressed to Bram Stoker and the first sentence reads: "I'm anxious to accompany your friends to the Lyceum tonight." -- The Lyceum was the theatre where Stoker worked.

Got my preowned Boheme today. I love it and it will definitely help me improve my cursive by simply picking up the pen! Great ideas. My handwriting sampler went by the wayside a while back. I think I will have to revisit it now.

Thanks, HJ! That's a great idea. I think I'll start a cursive handwriting library journal. Yall have a Happy New Year!

This was so fun!

Interesting idea to actively try to emulate the style of historical writers. While I guess everyone picks up some stylistic influences from seeing other peoples' handwriting, this is a nicely structured way to get to the handwriting that you actually like. It's not all that easy to actually figure out the handwriting of some famous people --- while in the past one wrote a lot more by hand, that doesn't mean it was any more legible than the scribbles we tend to produce nowadays :-)

It's exactly what I did to learn how to write and I think it's the best way to do it ! Cool that you talk about it :)

I love every bit of this! Growing up, I used to pick elements from my classmates’ handwriting to incorporate in my own hand. I will look for that book (The Magic of Handwriting), it seems fascinating!

Yes! I’ve started doing something similar in around 6th grade. Here in Germany cursive writing and fountain pens were, and I think still are, mandatory to use until 10th grade when people can switch to ballpoints/printing if they want. I might be wrong about the current situation, but children at least still start out with cursive and fountain pens, usually Lamy Safari or similar. Still have mine!

If you want, I could send you the old German Sütterlin/Kurrent alphabet. It was in use until around 1938, when it got banned. It’s beautiful and both familiar and very different at the same time compared to modern systems.
There’s also a great book about it with writing excerpts similar to the book you’ve shown, called „Deutsche Schreibschrift“ by Harald Süß. It was never translated to English, I think, but if you want some photos, I’d be glad to help.
I incorporated a few of the letters into my day to day writing style, as well.

Thank you for the great video!

Thanks so much for this great idea! I've been concentrating on imitating the D’Nealian Handwriting style. Your style and the famous people you copy have more character.

I took up the practice after you talked about it before. But rather than fragments, I am making collections of letters or passages that take up a page — to live in the hand, try to experience how each person moved their pen, how the letters stayed the same or changed through the piece, and learn something about writing in context compared to others of their era. (That 3 E for example was very, very popular.) There is a lot you learn about yourself and the writer by following it through.

I take the stress out of it by starting in pencil and writing over in pen. I find that by that point, my brain is starting to understand the pen movements and I mimic it better. (Sometimes in writing other letters you also get a better handle on the letters that are specifically attracting you.) The end result is something I can read and enjoy on its own, use up ink, and it is also an absolutely fantastic way to practice control if you’re a writer whose hand tends to fall back into old habits. And just like there is magic and connection with a handwritten letter, there is magic in seeing words as they were written. It’s almost time travel, showing much more than a reproduction in serif.

And it’s super easy to do by just Googling people with terms like letters or correspondence, especially since that book is (infuriatingly) out of print and very pricey.

This was a phenomenal video!!! I am really into handwriting and the study of the history of writing and writing instruments. Thank you so much for do this.

I have a folder on my phone with photos of examples. I find I am not able to accurately capture some of the letters myself but need to save and then and practice.

Great episode. I found myself writing along with you. Thanks for highlighting Ada Lovelace. She is one of my heroines. I like your idea of taking interesting individual letters and making them part of your handwriting. I took almost an hour to watch this as I kept going down multiple rabbit holes researching things like when was the first metal nib produced. (Apparently Ancient Egypt, but they were not very good).
"Even if it looks like a read out from an EKG" made me laugh."

Interesting! I will consider…thanks.

What a fun and creative way to express what inspires you, I'll try it. The most important thing you said, to me, is your reference to handwritting dysmorphia-so often I hear people with perfectly legible, even pretty handwriting apologize for it. When someone hears I use fountain pens I'm so often asked if i do calligraphy and I respond, "no just my regular handwriting with great joy!"

Is there a good site with scanned letters in cursive or other scripts? Ive looked through some of the iampeth.

Hi HJ! AS EVER, an interesting video, on a great way to improve your cursive (LONG MAY IT LIVE) writing! If one doesn't have the book you show, it can be fun to research and find examples of the writing of different luminaries throughout history. Perhaps you might share some of the library and museum sources where you have found some of the examples you use. And besides, you had me when you played The Blue Danube!

I loved this video. I often spend time practising my handwriting, but although I have an ink library, I haven't yet started a handwriting library. I've tried to find this book a few times now but to no avail.

These are my favorite videos. Creative ways to enjoy pens, journals, and other stationery supplies.

Excellent tips and look at how famous writers write their words. After watchin I thought I'd look at Neil Gaiman's handwriting, some examples his is like mine, a mix of printing and cursive where certain letters blend together.

I do want to improve my writing so I'll be following some of your tips here.

This is a great idea I think I'll get the book. Very nice video thanks HJ.

In one of your videos, you mentioned a love of king fu movies. I was a HUGE fan of old and new kung fu and Asian cinema in general for a long time, which my ex wife hated 😂. Whenever I practice my handwriting, I like to think of the calligraphy scene from Hero. I think about it all the time. There’s something noble and poetic about perfecting your craft. This line of thought makes writing the same things over and over feel less silly.

Great topic!!!!!!!!!! Well done.............

Really enjoyed this presentation. I want to begin researching historical handwriting examples

Something I read long ago and was reminded of when you mentioned Oscar Wilde's "i"s standing alone: handwriting that is in part script and in part printed is supposed to be a sign of an artistic temperament.

Unfortunately the book is hardy available----I saw one site selling it for $200. yikes...

Thanks for a terrific idea for a new notebook! Love your videos!

I really enjoyed this look into such incredible hand writing. I really enjoy your approach of imitation of handwriting you are inspired by. I recently discovered your channel and i am inspired myself to develop my hand writing. Thank you.

im working on adding some spice on my cursive/handwriting, i have started a journal of my own too, thank you for the idea and video, sir.

A place to examine historical writing is your local Court House where Land Deed books are recorded. As a Title Examiner we had to chase Title Chains in the old Grantor/Grantee books. All recorded in dip fountain pens.

This was very interesting and I’m definitely inspired to start this type of project with my new fountain pen, your enthusiasm is very catchy😉

Happy New Year🎉

I have looked for this book with no success. Where else (specifically) could I find this kind of resource?

What a great idea! Great video! I am struggling with my F’s both upper and lower case. Off I go to find Winston Churchill’s hand writing. 🤓😃

I just looked around for that Magic of Handwriting book. I found a copy on eBay . . . going for $590! I think I’ll be living without it!

My great, great grandfather wrote letters home from civil war battlefields. He couldn’t spell to save his soul, but his penmanship was amazing.

I'm always grateful for and fascinated by the little bonus handwritten notes I occasionally come across in older books I've acquired. And I always attempt to imitate them with various pens, from modern flex nibs to vintage fountain pens, as well as some antique dip pens.

nice video, I only though I was doing this investigation into writing, this is great, thanks for the book reference

Wow,what an interesting method. I will watch it a few more times and then try it out. Thank you.