I could teach a system like this my very slow neat handwriting. And then as I write on my whiteboard while teaching, it replaces my quick bad handwriting with the neater handwriting.
i know it might sound dumb, but have you tried playing with a fountain pen?
The feedback is way different from a ballpoint pen and it also depends on paper and the kind of ink. It makes writing way less "predictable" and a bit more enjoyable.
a cheap one (5-15$) with a medium nib might be a good start... some people move on to collect fountain pens, but i do most on my (on paper) writing with a ~20$ Pelikan Jazz.
It's only half a joke: having to regularly dip the pen in ink, be mindful of how much ink you have, having to swiftly wipe it once in a while to avoid drying ink (& flow issues), forces to slow down & take "micro-breaks".
This benefits the handwriting, but also the quality of the study. And is surprisingly relaxing.
(so called "crow-quill" nibs are relatively cheap, available, carry a fair amount of ink)
If you are stuck using a very smooth paper, I would suggest either a fiber-tip or a drier gel pen. Gel pens with a clicker (e.g. Zebra Sarasa) tend to write drier than those with a cap (e.g. Uniball Signo). Also try a fatter tip. Although this may not be acceptable in many situations, a soft pencil may provide even better control on smooth paper.
Will give the Zebra Sarasa a try.
I've considered the "just learn to write better" approach and I've tried here and there but I've been handwriting journals for 28 years and I'm just not sure it's possible to write cleanly at the speed I handwrite at this point. Especially since it's in cursive.
Fountain pens enthusiasts are like music gear or mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, that justify their hobby and believe spending on the next shiny thing is the key to fulfil their whatever, until the next shiny thing arrives.
The thing is... if one dislikes or doesn't care about writing that they have basically forgotten how to, it is not spending money on a fancy writing implement that is gonna turn them into a medieval monk scribe.
The thing is, it does actually... Because it "forces" you to slow down and take time for it.
I hated writing (heavily dyslexic) but after getting a fountainpen and purposely slowing down I noticed it went better. Now I write in my own language again, I spend whole evenings writing scenes, essays, debates and letters.
Sometimes it is the tool that forces a bit of change (if you want to change of course).
OTOH, it's an improvement over the other world of solving everything through "discipline" and other kinds of wishful thinking.
Like, you can complain and worry that your kid can't seem to learn how to cut things right with their scissors, try to force some discipline and conscientiousness into them - or you can stop causing them and yourself so much grief and realize that a left-handed person needs left-handed scissors, as using the wrong type for your hand works to prevent the cutting action.
kinda, the truth is somewhere in between in my opinion.
most things related to our body movement do require training to be mastered.
I think that writing is no different endeavur. It's just that fountain pens can make it more pleasant.
The latter requires much less effort to write (no constant pressure) and enables writing with the hand held mostly still, using the larger muscles of the upper arm and shoulder to create the letters. The downside is that they can create impressively large ink blots on your clothing if uncapped/unretracted, and the ink can be smeared if you touch it while wet. But pretty much every writing system still out there in use (i.e., not cuneiform or runes) was designed with a quill or brush as the instrument.
That's if you know cursive. I don't think the standard small-case script most people use in their everyday life is quill-friendly.
Or just by itself if you bring it with you on a plane :)
This looks like a perfect rabbit hole I'd be wise to avoid. At least I have a good excuse of being left handed since I would be constantly smearing all the wet ink.
The cartridges for it can, of course, get expensive, but a 1 mL syringe and a big bottle of ink (even Mont Blanc ink is only $25 for 60 mL) will let you refill them cheaply.
I use a Pelikan Jazz (20$) and a bucket of black cartidriges (100 pieces) I got off amazon for like 8$ (like two years ago).
I got a kaweco fountain pen a few months ago and i honestly regret spending those money, it's a shitty pen, some of the most dumbly-wasted money of my life.
I got one because my wife, who actually is an aficionado, suggested that it would be a good one to carry with me (and it is) due to the non-leak. I would carry it more except that we have some forms at work that are duplicates, requiring pressure, so it's useless for that. A Pilot Precise V5 RT retractable rollerball is nearly as good and cheap (in small quantities, $2-3 apiece).
There is a subreddit /r/mechanicalheadpens for these three specific interests.
That's a long way from what you're describing.
It's exactly what millions of schoolchildren are required to use when they're learning to write.
Also, it's not $25 or $2,500 that will stop you from doing 95% of your writing on a physical and smartphone keyboard because that's how society works nowadays. This comment cannot be written with a fountain pen, nor my work emails or communication with friends and relatives. Many people can't write any more simply because they don't really have to.
Turns out I can get by just fine with hardly ever handwriting anything. The only people disappointed by this are my elementary school teachers who had insisted this was something I needed to care about.
Its not going to make me write like a scribe creating an illuminated manuscript, but there is an awful lot of room for "better" between that and my usual handwriting with a cheap ball point.
Sigh... I'm not american and i don't live in the US.
> Fountain pens enthusiasts are like music gear or mechanical keyboard enthusiasts, that justify their hobby and believe spending on the next shiny thing is the key to fulfil their whatever, until the next shiny thing arrives.
Yep, I'm aware, that's why i was explicit on the fact that a ~20$ Pelikan Jazz is just great and "getting into fountain pens" is something that you can definitely avoid (I do avoid it, as a matter of fact).
> The thing is... if one dislikes or doesn't care about writing that they have basically forgotten how to, it is not spending money on a fancy writing implement that is gonna turn them into a medieval monk scribe.
you do you i guess. good luck.
In reality, it's a bit more complicated. I've found the following impacts my handwriting:
- Grip format on pen (i.e. shape of pen)
- Ink I'm using
- Paper I'm writing on
- Nib
- And yes, type of pen (ballpoint vs fountain pen)
At least way into the 90s kids here learned to write with fountain pens. For me this meant pages full of smudges, forked pens and generally unreadable text.
As soon as I was allowed to switch to a regular pen my handwriting improved a lot (still not great, but better).
[1] https://www.jetpens.com/Schmidt-EasyFlow-9000-Hybrid-Ballpoi...
[2] https://www.jetpens.com/Zebra-G-750-Gel-Pen-0.7-mm-Black-Ink...
That's one of the "game changing" hints I received during my time as a tutor at university. (One other was to always copy books from back to front; very useful but somewhat outdated now.)
What's so useful about that?
I strongly dislike this advice. The slowing down is probably actually the feature here that works; as for the uppercase, it definitely hurts comprehension. Go lowercase, slow, and deliberately never joining any letters, for your beginning, and I think it will probably be better for all parties involved: reading and comprehension will be improved, you'll get at least as much improvement in your handwriting, probably more, and certainly in a more useful area.
I don't know if uppercase hurts comprehension. I think, I have no problems whatsoever. But block letters are not all upper case anyway. You make them of different size to signal upper and lower case, i.e. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Block_letters
Esp if you fuse the audio of you explaining the equations along with the LaTex it can correct for errors.
But, I am forced to use digital tools occasionally, and I am not opposed to improving them.
If the computer is the one transforming your writing it should be perfectly quick.
To be clear, afaik current handwriting recognition software is not good enough for this. But if we had software that could transform bad handwriting into good handwriting, why not go all the way?
Historically, that didn't seem to be the main reason for the many inventions of the typewriter. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typewriter#History
> According to the standards taught in secretarial schools in the mid-20th century, a business letter was supposed to have no mistakes and no visible corrections.
Certainly, there were other reasons like speed, repeatability, official-looking, etc... too. Most typewriters wanted to be cheaper and on-demand printing presses. Some even managed variable width fonts! :)
But I'm not sure why you quote something about the md-20th century, when we are talking about the (many) invention(s) of the typewriter? They were already old and well-established technology at that point in time.
Why bother having campfires when we have portable space heaters? Heck, why bother camping at all if we have a nice comfortable space at home? More generally, why do any of the things that connect us to our past?
Personally, I think it’s important to learn by doing and then provide a “here is how we made that easier, and now you know why” type of foundation. Perhaps better is having people develop versions of those solutions for themselves so we don’t just expect someone else to solve all of our problems.