﻿Have you ever been envious of someone else’s handwriting?
Like their hand was blessed with this precious gift from above; meanwhile you’re struggling to make your garbled mess of letters even legible?
Hi, I'm Josh from JetPens and, today, I’m here to tell you, it’s not too late for you!
When I first started working at JetPens, my handwriting was passable, but it was nowhere near as nice as it is now.
I spent over two years working on improving my handwriting and now I'm going to share with you what I’ve learned in five easy tips.
1. Practice
Practice, by far, is the most important thing, but that doesn’t mean it has to be difficult.
I wanted to improve my handwriting because I knew it was going to be on camera more often,
so whenever I had downtime I would practice.
I had a scratch notebook that I kept at my desk and I’d write the alphabet or my favorite pangram in it, over and over again.
You should find a specific reccurring downtime that you can assign to that, mine was when I was rendering videos.
Using a graph notebook will help you keep your letters consistent.
I like using ones that have a small grid like the 4mm graph paper found in the Kokuyo Sooofa Soft Ring Notebook.
Remember, if you’ve been writing a certain way your whole life, it’s not going to change overnight!
If you want more tips on how to practice, check out our How to Improve Your Handwriting video in the card above.
2. Pick a Reference
Practice IS the most important thing, but it’d be nothing if you didn’t know what to practice.
Pick a reference font that you would like to imitate.
For me, that was easy; I wanted to imitate the JetPens writing sample font.
If that’s how you want to write as well, check out our free practice sheets in the card above.
And of course, you can always alter your reference as you see fit.
Personally, I've changed the way I write particular letters and numbers like “a”, “y”, and the number “4” several times.
3. Manage Your Expectations
Most comments I see ask how to write nice and fast at the same time.
I can tell you from personal experience, neatness and speed don’t usually go hand in hand.
All you can do is close the gap between the two as best you can.
This happens by building muscle memory.
Go as slow as you need to to write neatly and the more you practice, the faster you’ll get.
When I have to jot down notes quickly, usually my handwriting starts to get a little messy again or I revert to my old handwriting.
But if I want something to look nice, like a personal letter, I’ll write it slowly.
If you’re a student, I recommend not worrying about what your handwriting looks like while you're taking notes in class.
Then later, when you’re studying, that's when you can rewrite your notes neatly.
This way you can better organize the information, while practicing your handwriting.
On top of that, rewriting notes helps with memory retention.
4. Use the Right Tools
Use writing instruments that cater to you.
There’s a whole world of pens and pencils out there, all unique in their own way.
Ballpoints, rollerballs, gel pens, and even fountain pens all write differently from one another.
Do you like fine tip lines or bold? Don’t even get me started on all the amazing technology.
Try a variety of writing instruments to see what works for you.
I’m a heavy-handed writer so when I tried the Zebra DelGuard Mechanical Pencil for the first time, something just clicked, pun intended!
The graphite protecting mechanism has saved me from breaking my graphite countless times over the years.
I also do a lot of highlighting, so when the Zebra Sarasa Mark On debuted, it immediately became my everyday pen.
Coincidentally, my previous everyday pen was the Zebra Sarasa Dry.
When dry, the Mark On can stand up to the toughest of highlighters, so I never need to worry about smearing.
As for highlighters, I used to only use Mildliners because of their beautifully muted colors,
but lately I’ve been enjoying the Kokuyo Mark+ 2 Way Marker Pens.
The fine tips allow for another layer of color coding since they’re still visible after being highlighted by their chisel tip counterparts.
As a side note, if you’re also a heavy-handed writer, give your gel pens a little more time to dry before highlighting,
since ink tends to pool with our type of handwriting.
If you feel confident in the tools you use to write, it will reflect in your handwriting.
Personally, I feel more confident with a medium or a bold tip, like the 0.5 mm Mark On I use daily.
Writing with a fine tip tends to show how shaky my hands can be.
5. Track Your Progress
Remember how I said that I used to have a scratch notebook that I wrote in?
Well, unfortunately for me, I already recycled that notebook, but looking back now I recommend holding onto it for comparison and tracking your progress.
It’s definitely rewarding to look back and see how far you've come, especially for something that changes so slowly.
If you do any journaling, you can use your daily entries as your practice!
Improving your handwriting is essentially changing a habit, you have to teach your hand new muscle memory.
So the more you practice, the more it’ll become second nature.
We hope this video helps; let us know in the comments below if any of the tips ended up working for you! Or if you have any other tips to share!
Don’t forget to subscribe for more content like this and as always you can find all the featured products of this video at JetPens.com,
the place for pen and stationery lovers.
Thanks for watching!
Also, if you didn't notice in the background...
is my lil' shtuffed animal. It's a little Godzilla. And his name is Jira.
That is all.